Beware the green con

The path of green consumerism is paved with good intentions - but it is also littered with pitfalls. Juliet Kellner explains how to tread safely.

Today is Green Shopping Day. This is the day that I, the consumer, am being asked to 'use my buying power as a vote for the planet'. It is a catchy slogan. But can I really improve my relationship with the earth by going shopping?

The problem is that whatever I consume greenly or ungreenly constitutes a bite out of the earth's resources. And as a member of the Western world, I currently take very large bites. The average Westerner uses over 260 lbs of paper every year, for example - and as a voracious reader and copious writer, I probably use much more.

Not only do I consume vast amounts of raw materials - I am also a high-level polluter. In the US the average consumer creates nine lbs of hazardous waste every day and gives little indication of slowing down. The extent of our devastation is changing the chemistry of the planet on a scale that it would take nature hundreds of millions of years to equal.

This harsh reality means that we must do everything possible to limit our impact on the earth. And green consumerism is a step in the right direction. The challenge is for consumers to control the movement so that we do not end up its victims. We can do this best by recognizing its pitfalls.

My daughter encountered one of these quite recently. Eager to be a good green, she spent her entire week's allowance on a giant aerosol spray because it announced itself as 'environment-

friendly'. A few days later she discovered that although the can was CFC-free, it contained other gases contributing to the greenhouse effect. She had been hoodwinked into spending money on a product that she cannot, eco-soundly, use. The manufacturer profited from the sale of the can by exploiting her good will towards the planet. But the planet scarcely benefited at all.

My daughter had stumbled into Pitfall Number One for the Unwary Green Consumer - the 'Bit-Less-Bad' trap. The CFC-free aerosol is a bit less bad than one which spews out CFCs - that's one step forward. But my daughter would willingly have advanced two steps and bought a non-aerosol product, had she been more honestly informed; the labelling on the can misled her.

An important task for the green consumer movement, therefore, is to make producers and retailers label their merchandise fully and honestly. The movement must also persuade governments to add their muscle to this reasonable demand; accurate labelling should become a statutory requirernent.

Another example of the Bit-Less-Bad trap is unleaded fuel. This does not stop motorists damaging the environment but only stops them destroying it quite so violently. This one-step change is not enough. The real way to protect the earth is to stop motorists from being motorists or at least to persuade them to use their cars only when absolutely necessary. And nowhere on the advertising hoardings aimed at would-be green motorists, do we see suggestions that we should stop buying cars.

The logic of big business is to promote consumption. So however green-tinted companies become they are unlikely to encourage people to consume less. And this gives the.green consumer movement another role: to make shoppers stop before they buy to ask whether they need a product at all.

'We must consider not only the quality of the products we buy, but the quantity,' thunders Jonathon Porritt from Friends of the Earth in the UK. And unless the green consumer movement constantly reiterates this point, it lays itself open to being hijacked by industrialists who simply wish to look green enough to make naive shoppers purchase more of their wares.

The danger of this is very real. Close examination of apparently-green producers reveals Pitfall Number Two for the Green Consumer- the 'Green Image Game'. An article written for marketing executives entitled 'Selling to the greens? It's not so simple', urges industrialists to include a green benefit in the marketing of all products and services. For example, adding a little recycled paper to a package enables them to claim that the item is made of recycled materials and convey a sense of ecological responsibility. By making products sound as if they are good for the environment, manufacturers can 'attract extra sales from around a third of the population'.

So caveat emptor viridis: let the green buyer beware. You may have sacrificed the comfort of your ultra-soft toilet paper for what you think is the recycled stuff - but it is possible you are being conned. Producers could be exploiting your wish to be ecologically responsible - without taking such responsibility themselves.

Green consumers are easy targets. We are soft sells with dreams in our eyes and money in our pockets. We tell market researchers, hands on our hearts, that we are willing to pay 25 per cent more&emdash;no problem - for goods that are environment-friendly. The researchers listen and tell the producers who can hardly believe their luck - customers who say exactly what they want, and are willing to pay MORE! Small wonder that green products, halfway genuine or frankly fake, are filling up the supermarket shelves. In fact those with a 'green image' may be little better than the non-green products beside them. But why are non-green products on the same shelf in the first place? This is Pitfall Number Three 'Niche marketing' by which each product is targeted at a specific market.

The supermarket may hand out pretty green-and-white leaflets boasting its environmental concerns. But don't be fooled. The owners' real agenda is to boost the profits they get from customers, green and ungreen. Why else - when there are plenty of environment-friendly products now available - do supermarkets still stock non-green items? And why do manufacturers still make them? Freedom of choice is a feeble rejoinder when the issue is global suicide.

Buying green involves tackling this duplicity. Customers need to know whether the company as a whole has an ethical policy - from parent company down to subsidiaries. Otherwise we could find that we are 'voting with our purses' for manufacturers that are anti-ecological - but indirectly so.

Heinz was recently caught like this. According to a Friends of the Earth bulletin, the company won a Green Manufacturer of the Year Award, and was on the point of signing a $114,000 sponsorship deal to support Green Shopping Day when it suddenly pulled out. It had apparently been made aware of plans to alert green consumers to the slaughter of dolphins by Starkis - one of its subsidiaries. The withdrawal showed how scared companies are of the negative publicity they might receive if they do not clean up their acts right down the line.

Environmental destruction can occur at many points in the life of a product, which leads us to Pitfall Number Four - the 'Cradle-to-Grave Trap'. A friend was recently pushed into this when he bought a CFC-free fridge. He knew he had acquired an object which emitted other noxious gases - Pitfall Number One - but that wasn't all. He had no way of knowing the quantity of valuable raw materials and energy that had been consumed in the fridge's manufacture. Nor was he told whether the manufacturing process had been polluting or not. Nor did he know if the fridge had been manufactured to last or to become obsolete quickly nor whether it consumed more or less electricity to run than other models; nor whether, when it was defunct, its parts could or would be recycled.

Many of us tumble into this trap. Yesterday I bought a juicer to feed my family in a healthier, more environmentally-friendly way - less red meat, more vegetables and more fruit but I completely forgot to raise any of the above questions. Had I remembered, who would I have asked? The harassed sales assistant wouldn't have known the answers. She would have written me off as a time-wasting nut.

We should insist that governments compel industrialists to give us this information as of right. We need to know exactly what damage a product is doing to the environment - from the mining of its raw materials to the end of its life. We have already forced manufacturers to acknowledge some of our 'green' demands. But we can't stop here. If we do we'll be like the man in the cartoon who fell off the Empire State Building and shouted just before he hit the ground 'I'm doing great so far'.

Green consumers have strength and it lies in our growing numbers and our deep personal conviction that we want a planet fit for our children. Producers need us to buy their goods. That gives us power. We must insist on products which do not harm the environment. After all, the future depends on it.

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