Do you wear green? What kind of green exactly? How does it make you feel? What message does it send to others?

It may not yet be the new black, but the colour (and the word) green has been latched on to with great enthusiasm by large corporations, small businesses and individuals alike. I’m not suggesting that this is necessarily a cynical ploy – not least because my own company uses green in its visual identity – but perhaps we should think a bit before being so ready to snuggle up with something green.

The colour green has many associations, and not all of them positive. Most of us are familiar with them and tend to think of the positive ones first. But green has associations that are financial (the once-coveted greenback), cultural (think of Ireland) and religious. Even sex gets a look in, for that matter. Of course, businesses that align themselves with the colour green are assuming that only the ‘good’ connotations will rub off on them. No doubt the Australian Greens will be relieved to learn that we don’t automatically think of sex when we hear their name, but we do live in a cynical world and anything is possible. The sex thing, by the way, has something to do with green M&Ms – go figure.

Of course, the feel-good connotation du jour is nature, in all its verdant wonder – presumably the European type, since Australia is largely brownish in colour. (And never mind that the natural world can be as ruthless and indiscriminate as any dictatorship.) There are other ways, too, in which we proclaim, like an antithetical Gordon Gekko, that ‘green is good’. Being blessed with a green thumb is a gift indeed, while some consider green to be a great healing colour: soothing and relaxing. And then there was that revered benefactor Robin Hood and his merry men, all dressed in green.

The other side of the coin is that we can be ‘green with envy’, ‘green around the gills’ or just plain ‘green’. ‘Greenwash’ has been damningly applied to many companies that are deemed to have played fast and loose with their environmental and social responsibilities.

On a more serious and profound note, the colour green is also very significant to Muslims and appears on many flags of Islamic nations – have a look at some of them on Wikipedia. So you would expect the colour green to have very different associations in those nations.

It was at a community sustainable-living event that I realised that the word green had begun to make me wary. So I think it is time for those interested in sustainability to move on from a reliance on the word. The climate-change sceptics are surely the ‘green’ ones now.

Chris Haddon is Creative Director at WellmarkPerspexa, one of the first creative agencies to design and produce sustainability reports for some of Australia’s leading corporate entities.

Where do you stand?

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