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At work, we have become much more conscious of how our actions might have an impact on the environment. Most of us have heard the word green used as an adjective as applied to a policy or action that is beneficial, or less harmful, to the environment. On several occasions, we have struggled to come up with the word for the opposite of green in this sense.
We seem to have settled on brown.
e.g. "He made single-sided photocopies for everyone with 10 extras. How brown can you get!"
Has anyone else faced this problem? What solutions have you come up with?
I haven't heard conversations needing such a word, but I think "brown" fits very well. It reminds me of what was once alive but now is dead: fallen leaves, decay, etc. If the occasion arises when I need to express that meaning, I'll use your word. Maybe it will catch on in the mainstream.
I too like "brown" as the opposite of "green," at least in that context. Saying "un-green" is like 7-Up's "un-cola" … awkward and contrived. Nor does "red" work, even though it's the complementary color to "green," as that would be lost on non-artistic types. Saying "ultraviolet" is even more a stretch, because not all environmentally-unfriendly practices lead to ozone depletion.
Does "ultraviolet" even count as a color? Never saw that one in my box of Crayolas.
So I'm gonna go with "brown" should the term ever be needed. I like johng423's reasoning.
It appears that others are going with "brown" as the opposite of "green"
Video: How Green is Your Internet" - At around the 47-second mark, there is a mention of the "the Tech industry's brownest companies."
This is in the context of a Greenpeace report titled "How Dirty is Your Data?" but the Greenpeace report doesn't appear to use the word "brown."
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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