Grossly Misleading Claims in “Green” Products — Office Depot: What Are You Thinking?

Here’s an Office Depot product that shows quite clearly how misguided it’s possible to be with respect to sustainability.  We’ve all seen hundreds of ostensibly “green” products sold with fraudulent claims, but in my book this one takes the prize.  For a $2200 purchase price plus the 600 watts of electrical power it consumes, you can have your own device that condenses two gallons of drinking water per day out of the atmosphere, and then pumps the water through filters to minimize the growth of bacteria while it’s sitting in its tank.  It’s inventors bill it as environmentally friendly on the basis: “Not using ground water and no bottles to throw in landfills.”

I struggle to think of anything more misleading.  You’re using an incremental 14 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day – enough to drive a Nissan Leaf more than 50 miles, but you’re saving 2 gallons of groundwater (about one-third of a toilet-flush), and not using (99+% recycled) bottles — and you think that’s a benefit to the environment?

Apparently, Office Depot has very little regard for what they’re doing here on planet Earth; they really should be ashamed of themselves for selling garbage like this.