"Geoff Greene of Greene Futures announced today that he will be transitioning toward a carbon-neutral blogging model, by hooking his MacBook Pro to a Voltaic Systems solar-panel backpack for clean energy, and buying carbon offsets to reduce the ecological impact of his Blogger server space..."
Well, not really.
But it sounds quite familiar, eh? Yes, everyone from British Petroleum ("What size is your footprint?") to the Miami Beach Marina Sailfish Tournament ("The world's first carbon-neutral fishing tournament") are jumping on the green-wagon. Great news, right?
"Man, Billy-Bob, ice fishing just ain't the same, what with global warming 'n' all..."
Ladies and gentlemen, if I hear another beaming reference to eco/green/clean/organic shoes, toothbrushes or lawn gnomes, I may become green with nausea. And not because my name is Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and consider global climate change the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
No, it boils down to the fact that a pig with lipstick on is still a pig. And just the same, slapping the label "green" on any good or service you durn-well please merely causes apathy and cynicism among consumers.
"'Well BP, I'm gonna need a few more drinks to become
convinced that you really care about the environment"
The environmental marketing company TerraChoice came out with a study last month called the The Six Sins of Greenwashing, which asserts that a full 99% of 1,018 common consumer products are guilty of "greenwashing." That is, these products are far more style than substance, marketing to the consumer the image of environmental consciousness and health without any substantial evidentiary basis. Enviromedia Social Marketing's Greenwashing Index catalogs such "sinners" by having users post and rate ads according to the Index, very similar to TerraChoices's Six Sins metric. Thusly, does a web 2.0 tool apply consumer pressure via social networking in an attempt to keep companies honest.
This is not merely an image issue, either. TerraChoice, in its study, judged the products in question according to existing Federal Trade Commission false advertising regulations guidlines, as well as parallel regulations in all 50 states. In the early 1990s, the combination of muckraking journalists and a regulatory crackdown deflated the last incarnation of this green business trend. At that time, the FTC cracked down on several purveyors and in 1990 A task force of state attorneys general, headed by Minnesota's, Hubert H. Humphrey III, held hearings and issued two reports with new guidelines. The result was a cooling effect on both the producers and on consumer perception of green business that lingers to this day. Might the same occur once again?
Consumers (such as myself) are overtired of hearing green claims shoved down their throats from all angles. Canadian market research company Ipsos Reid published a report last October finding that 70% of Americans and 65% of Canadians say green labeling is "just a marketing tactic."
EcoAlign's 2007 EcoPinion Survey found among the 54% of consumers who haven’t already adopted green technology, they perceive it to be “ugly,” “expensive,” and “difficult to understand and maintain.” In other words, potential converts are quite skeptical, and have generally negative feelings towards green products and services.
According to IBM Global Business Services' Plugging in the Consumer: Innovating utility business models for the future (2007), only 15% of Americans have quantified their “carbon footprint,” despite widespread attention given to the fad.
Even green energy, the most talked-about and well-financed wing of the green business movement, still leaves consumers scratching their heads. According to the same 2007 EcoPinion Survey, 30% of consumers don’t know what “clean energy” is at all. Only 13% of the studied think energy efficiency has to do with saving money or cutting down on fuel costs.
What does this all mean for you?
- Transition to green business for pure marketing value is a waste of time and money. Consumers are confused and skeptical. Worse still, you may likely incur the regulatory wrath of Uncle Sam (or "the Governator").
- If you do do it, it should be for cold hard dollars and cents. You can witness dramatic savings in production, operation and distribution costs through increases in efficiency and decreases in waste. Ernst & Young speculates that rising energy costs and efficiency will drive the green business trend. When energy costs rise--and $100/barrel oil is only the beginning--so do the competitive advantages of efficiency. Furthermore, you can reap opportunity for growth if you are the first to a developing market. Guess who the richest man in China is right now? None other that Shi Zhengrong of Suntech Power, who made his billions by selling cheap solar panels worldwide.
- Don't even include your marketing department. Leave this one to the bean counters and the engineers. The "boy who cried wolf effect" assures that even the most sincere and substantial efforts will be viewed with skepticism if you market them to forcibly. The type of consumers whom you can impress through your efforts are information-savvy, and will discover what you've done themselves. Be nuanced, and allow your actions (not words) to matriculate through the infosphere via word-of-mouth and third-party reports (newspapers, magazines, television shows and blogs).
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