NBC’s “Green Your Routine” Is A Positive Step, Albeit A Small One

Starting Saturday, NBC will begin the “Green Your Routine” campaign, which will feature NBC/Universal talent doing “The More You Know” PSAs (I wanted to link to Family Guy’s parody TMYK PSA, but I can’t find it anywhere. What gives, Hulu?) about living green, and NBCU shows doing special green segments. This effort is part of the larger Green Is Universal campaign, an “initiative dedicated to raising Green awareness, effecting positive change to the environment, and substantially greening its own operations.”

While we applaud NBC’s efforts to go green, much of the focus seems to be on giving advice to viewers on how to go green. Why not take a more internalized approach and, instead of creating a PR-driven Green Week, just consistently feature green behaviors in NBC shows both on and off the air. Let’s see some green product placement and Dunder Mifflin recycled office paper!

Speaking of product placement, NBC is launching a line of “green” merchandise to coincide with green week. We can’t help but wonder about the environmental costs of producing these products. After all, generating new things is often worse than sticking with old ones. For example, a new Prius takes more combined energy to produce than a new Hummer. A bit of a digression, sure, it’s easy to find reasons to question the motives of Corporate Social Responsibility efforts like these.

While it is outwardly positive and viewers could learn helpful green tips from NBC’s all-star lineup, after all is said and done we’d like ask, how has it changed the NBC for the long term? How green was the Green Is Universal campaign? We’d love to see the numbers.

Visit NBC’s Green Is Universal website.

The Futon Critic has the entire press release and a schedule of NBC’s green programming.