Do We Really Need To Spend More Green To Be Green?

By Author: John David
Total Articles: 11
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On July 21, 2009, the Green Brands Global Survey was conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) with fellow WPP (NASDAQ: WPPGY) agencies Landor Associates and Cohn & Wolfe, as well as independent strategy consulting firm Esty Environmental Partners to give us some relevant consumer information. Basically, consumers were willing to spend more green to get green. The question is of course why?With growth of a large number of household and pet commodity items ranging from Multipure water filters (think less plastic water bottles) to biodegradable dog poop bags, it is a wonder why we have to spend more money. I use the term commodity intentionally here as that is what products like these are becoming and thus, if economics is any indicator, once something becomes a commodity, prices should go down rather than up meaning consumers should spend less green to be green.Lets look at a very basic commodity, the biodegradable trash bag. Everyone uses trash bags whether at home or in the office, but somewhere as there is no avoiding it. In India, with a population of 1 Billion plus residents, one can imagine that ...
... trash bag usage and disposal on a daily basis would number in the low hundreds of millions per day. That's a lot of non biodegradable garbage bags going into landfills every day. It is a commodity that is cheap to produce today but that wasn't always the case. I can remember my parents using paper bags from the grocery store as trash bags back in the 1960's. Yes, the original biodegradable trash bag. Where is the revolution today?As I look around my home today, there are a plethora of green items reflective of our current lifestyle. Yes, of course we have the biodegradable garbage bags and yes, since we are concerned with the quality of drinking water out of the tap, have an installed multipure water filter so that we can keep stainless steel water bottles in the refrigerator for the days when we need h2o on go, we have active children that have an endless thirst. But looking around, the same material used for our biodegradable garbage bags has be used in our biodegradable dog poop bags. These by the way are definitively, one use bags, but hey they are biodegradable and at less than $.10 per bag are a way to feel good about taking the dog for a walk in the neighborhood and feeling good when you meet other dog owners on a similar venture.The good news from the survey is that all countries that participated, the United States, United Kingdom, China, Brazil, India, Germany, and France all responded at 77% or higher that they thought it was important for companies to be green. India by the way was the highest at 98%. Do we need to spend more green to be green? Let's hope not and if history is our guide, then plastic trash bags, plastic water bottles, and our other current commodity items will soon be replaced with the up and comers. The simple answer is supply and demand economics. The more consumers use biodegradable trash bags, the greater the competition and the greater the competition, the prices will drop. In the meantime, if you are concerned about the high cost of going green, take your dog for a walk and spend the dime with a dog poop bag that is biodegradable.
If you want to read more on the survey, please follow the link to Sustainable Life Media, http://sustainablelifemedia.com/content/story/strategy/consumers_are_ready_to_spend_green_on_green

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