Jargon runs rampant in business, design, and the business of design. Why?

“Jargon, buzzwords, and corporate-speak usually exist because of a dearth of clear, powerful thinking,” writes Bart Egnal in Leading Through Language: Choosing Words That Influence and Inspire (Wiley, 2015). “The impact of this language is that audiences are left confused, alienated, and uninspired.”

This is especially true in sustainable design, a topic that should be inspiring but sometimes feels overwrought with technical details. Architects and designers occasionally default to shorthands without clarifying for their clients, audiences, or colleagues what those terms mean and why they’re relevant. Even seemingly simple words, when overused or misused, can become virtually meaningless.

From my experience, the six terms listed below are the most widely misunderstood in sustainable design.

“Sustainability”
Perhaps the most confusing thing about sustainability is the word itself. A 2015 survey from the marketing company Shelton Group found that nearly half of consumers say they don’t understand the word or feel it conveys anything important. People commonly use the word as a vague reference to resource conservation alone, but this misses the point.

As I wrote in 2016, the earliest published instance of the word with its current connotations likely occurred in The Limits to Growth (published by Universe Books in 1972; 2004 update published by Chelsea Green Publishing): “It is possible … to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future,” declared Donella Meadows and her co-authors. “The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that … each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.”

Half a century ago, the core concepts were intact. Sustainability refers to the integration of social, economic, and environmental value. Rather than narrowly focusing on resources, it addresses a much broader scope—how to realize human potential equitably and responsibly.

“Nature”
Architects and designers routinely refer to their work as “connecting to nature,” when really they mean their projects offer views of the outdoors. Even when those views are of planted areas, the areas are, for the most part, commercially developed—that is, artificially cultivated, not naturally occurring. Such landscapes often consist of large, manicured lawns of nonnative grasses, which require significant amounts of water and energy to maintain.

Conventional wisdom holds that planting vegetation is always good. “Want to fight global warming? Just plant more trees,” a Mother Jones article proclaimed this summer. But not all trees are created equal. Some species are far better than others at absorbing carbon emissions, according to the U.S. Forest Service. And the spike in allergies and respiratory ailments in recent years is partly attributed to planting too many pollen-bearing (male) trees. An unnatural overabundance of trees is actually undermining biodiversity, which experts say is the single-most important aspect of ecosystems to protect.

A dictionary definition of nature is “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.” Designed landscapes are human creations, even when they incorporate living material.

When in doubt, use landscape, green space, or simply the outdoors. Chances are that nothing you build is anywhere near nature in its wild states.

“The Environment”
We speak of the environment in the singular and with a definite article, which suggests one uniform condition rather than a vast series of peaks and plains, hills and haddocks, woodlands and wetlands. In last year’s The Environment: A History of The Idea (Johns Hopkins University Press), Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin explain that this perception is relatively new, rising out of postwar reconstruction and global consciousness. People began to see themselves increasingly as part of a planetary community, especially once the first photos of Earth from space (1968-1972) made our planet appear simultaneously beautiful, fragile, and objectlike.

The environment also portrays nature as a thing—something separate from us, rather than a wholly immersive experience. For precolonial cultures, however, concepts of the universe arose from experience in a particular setting, and their worldview depended on an actual view of the world, the unique terrain of a community. Can we evoke this sense by referring to environments in the plural, hinting at the seemingly boundless diversity of Earth?

“Environmentally Friendly”
The popularity of this phrase is mammoth: It gets more than 70 million hits on Google, 25 million more than apple pie. But the term makes little sense. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “not harmful to the environment.” (There’s that phrase in the singular again.) But all industrial production and certainly all building construction is environmentally harmful to some degree. For example, if we reduce energy consumption on a building by 50%, a fairly ambitious goal, the building nevertheless will produce harmful emissions—just half as much as it would have otherwise. Research reveals that many energy-efficient buildings will need up to 80 years to offset the impact of their construction in the first place. Even a building that produces all its energy on-site with renewable sources has a negative impact during construction.

Buildings can have an enormously positive impact in many ways. However, despite claims to the contrary, arguably no building ever built has had a "net-positive" ecological impact. The most we can claim of even indigenous structures, such as an Inuit igloo or an Apache wickiup, is that their impact on surrounding ecosystems or the climate is nil or negligible. Is that truly friendly, or just not unfriendly? I tend to prefer high-performance or higher-performance buildings. If you insist on the “E” word, use environmentally minded.

“Healthy Materials”
In recent years, this phrase has become all the rage, as architects and designers rightly have become more aware of the chemical content of materials and products. Yet, as I wrote six years ago, the World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” According to dictionaries, healthy can refer either to the state of the thing itself (a healthy person) or the effect it has (inducing health); synonyms include prosperous and flourishing.

Removing some or all the harmful substances from materials does not make them healthy—it just makes them not as harmful or, at best, not harmful at all, at least not to health. Better to refer to less harmful, safer, or benign products—but only if they are truly safer or benign.

“Natural Daylight”
Think about it. Other than a Klieg lamp in a hothouse, does any other kind of daylight exist? Natural light or just daylight, please. (Bonus tip: Never say you want to “maximize” daylight, since too much light can be very bad. You want to “optimize” daylight or provide “good daylight.”)