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. With Can’t “average people” do green things?
I’ve been brooding for a couple of days now about Treehugger’s recent post, 4 Reasons Why Recession is BAD for the Environment. It’s a perfectly reasonable post, but this is the bit that’s bothering me:
Average people, when money is tight, will look for less expensive products (duh). Right now, that usually means that greener products won’t make it.
I understand what they’re getting at, and that many “ethical” products cost more, etc. But I feel like it’s become too routine to equate the consumer role in addressing environmental or sustainability (or whatever) concerns with simply buying products. And in particular, with considering eco-ness as something like a luxury.
Too often I think people trying to build eco-businesses get caught up in chasing the high-end, moneyed niche, and using the quasi-lux positioning as a hook. I know some people think it’s good when green-ness and “status” become intertwined, but I’m not so sure. “Status” is a fluid concept. It can spark backlashes as easily as emulation. (Grant McCracken has explored a similar point here.) And it can seem optional — if you’re buying green for status, not because of something more tangible, it’s much easier to stop.
Selling eco as a luxury or a status marker may or may not build a profitable business, but when it does, it tends to be a niche business. And the more this approach is used, the more it ends up creating a broader impression that consumer ethics is itself a luxury good — and something that “average people” just can’t participate in.
I suspect there are other ways to participate in the general idea of environmental responsibility that have nothing to do with buying anything at all, let alone status-buying. That’s what I had on my mind when I posted the other day about consumer behavior and the potentially grim economy: That maybe non-shopping activities — unconsumption, if you will — would be a good thing to think about.
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Reader Comments
Being green and saving money at the same time: using public transit, turning in your bottles and cans for a deposit (where available), cutting down on electricity & gas use, wearing a sweater instead of turning up the heat, eating more beans and less meat, drinking tap water instead of buying bottled water, making your own coffee at home instead of buying it in a disposable cup… there’s a bunch of stuff like that that “average” people can do.
Even consumer-driven econess is often inexpensive: Those CF lightbulbs are often available for huge/subsidized discounts AND save money when you use them. The Whole Foods house brand is both natural and affordable, as is the dreaded Wal*Mart/Costco organic selection. And at my supermarket, the local organic milk is actually cheaper than the big-name dairy conventional milk.
Agree with all. Great comments.
You can’t get much cheape/greener than cleaning with vinegar.
I agree that green goods and sustainability is marketed to a narrow segment of the population as a hip, luxury item rather than
in a way that would engage accross all segments and as something that is more a necessity than something that is trendy and
something to feel superior about.
In a recent NY Times article Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You a brief blurb about the carbon budget for kiwis rather
tickled me.
And the response I got at Greenhomes NYC when I
asked why people “doing the right thing” were charged a premium, rather than the other way around. Personally I found the
response absurd and it prompted me to draft a response, to both my utility provider as well as my various representatives.
I have to confess to putting a green spin to my own quest to unconsume, but to be quite honest, the strategies I found to be the most effective in achieving this goal, weren’t what you might call cutting edge and have been around for years now (e.g. Freecycle, donating to charity, craigslist). All I really did was try to put some advance thought into how I disposed of things I know longer wanted and make a committment to do so as often as possible, to whatever extent possible. Along the way, I also began to rethink how and why I acquired things in the first place and whether I needed to do keep doing that.
The need for thoughtful consideration is also something I learned about green buildings (aka high-performance buildings). Initially I thought it was about sexy, whizzbang techy doo-dads like solar panels and the like, but I eventually learned that first and foremost, it’s about giving some thought to how you design and construct a building to begin with along with the materials that are used. Basically you need to build it right the first time and that will take care of quite a few issues right off the bat. Any gadgetry is the cherry on top.