"Climate One" Produces Fabulous Conference on Consumer Adoption of Green Products
I attended a terrific conference on Friday produced by “Climate One” at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. For those who may not be aware of this incredible organization, formed 88 years ago, “The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum.”
What does that mean? Think: “TED Talks” – “ideas worth sharing” – talks LONG before there was an Internet by which they could be shared so easily. And think: no political spin, as hard to believe as that may be to comprehend. There are democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives, scientists and politicians; there is UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Vice President Dan Quayle. Just important ideas, good reasoning, and great communication skills (OK, I know what you’re thinking about Dan Quayle, but you didn’t hear me say it, did you?)
The conference I attended Friday covered the consumer acceptance of environmentalism – the adoption of eco-friendly products, and the rush of product marketers to add “green” messaging, whether honest or not, to their brands. I hope readers will be interested in the notes I took from the conference, which I reproduce here; I’ve italicized the comments I added on later.
• There is an increase in awareness and demand for green products, and thus a proliferation of such products. Green products are the fastest growing sectors of cars (hybrids and EVs), food (organics), cleansers, etc. Though they are the fastest growth segments, we’re talking about growth that is starting from very small bases; note that going from 1% of a market to 2% in a certain product category is 100% growth. True. But from my perspective, all movements start from a small group of early adopters; there is reason to believe that we’re seeing the formation of a huge event in human history.
• Sustainability needs to be more than a corporation’s going through the motions for the PR value; it needs to be elevated to the very top of the organization and become a part of the culture/DNA. I’ve heard this a million times, but I’m skeptical. Sustainability, in my mind, ultimately means leading this massive population away from blind consumerism into a lower carbon way of life. Companies want people to buy more of their stuff, and most of the world’s successful corporate entities will come to ruin if we truly head in a sustainable direction. Coca Cola and McDonalds want more people drinking more sodas and eating more Chicken McNuggets, regardless of how many trees they’re planting to distract people from their atrocities. Toyota had the PR coup of the last 50 years with the Prius, but they sell far more Sequoias (13/18 MPG) and the dozens of other planet-killing members of the fleet. The average electric drill is used for 9 minutes from the time it’s taken from Home Depot’s shelf to the time it finds its way into a landfill. As gross as that is, it causes heartburn neither to the people who built it, nor to Home Depot who sold it.
• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has, after 18 years, finally come out with an edict banning the most egregious forms of green-washing, i.e., lying about the eco-friendly virtues of your product. This was hailed as a disappointment, as, in those 18 years, the world has become far more sophisticated in deceiving the public, and the FTC has barely caught up to where green-washing was ca. 1990. I have to admit that policing this would not be easy for any governmental agency, regardless of how sharp and honest. Consider that the Lexus SUV hybrid gets worse gas mileage than the non-hybrid version. Of course, this didn’t slow Lexus down from promoting it to its eco-conscious buyers – but what can government do about that? The world is powerless to deal with issues like these if people are really that dishonest.
• Consumer messaging is complicated by the fact that it needs to be extremely simple; consumers in supermarkets, for example, even those who make any effort at all to determine the eco-characteristics of the products they’re buying, spend just a few seconds making their decisions. It’s unrealistic to expect any reasonable percentage of consumers to sort through the relative vices and virtues of, say, a rain jacket, that may have been manufactured with well-treated labor, sent to the U.S. with highly fuel-efficient ships, but may have been treated with a toxic chemical to achieve waterproofing. No one can be expected to absorb and make sense of all this information. Thus, eco-conscious people increasingly tend to trust their peers – perhaps out of necessity; the level of trust that we place in corporations is the lowest ever, in the entire history of measuring this statistic. Yes, it’s true that we don’t trust them, and yes, we do have access to a wider set of peer-based information on which to make our choices.
• Corporations that try to work around this with clever attempts to harness the power of social media often wish they hadn’t. A good example of this is what is referred to as “bashtags” (as opposed to hashtags). When McDonalds thought it could generate good PR by taking advantage of the vast audiences on Twitter and FaceBook and asked people to share their “first McDonalds experiences,” I’m sure they thought it would elicit stories of mommies bringing their little ones for burgers and French fries after their first little league games. Instead, the comments, which went mega-viral, were things like: “I heard about the rat feces in BigMacs,” or “I learned that McDonalds is the biggest single source of deforestation on the planet.” Something to watch out for, to be sure. The campaign “Chevron Does” met a similar fate. The intention of the campaign, obviously, was to highlight Chevron’s many claims to humanitarian activities, e.g., “Who invests in renewables? Chevron does.” Within minutes, however, there were swarms of suggestions like this: “Who ruins the Ecuadorian rainforest?” and “Who profits at the expense of our health?” Ouch.
• Sustainable products, to be successful, need to be high-quality and well-priced. I’m sure this is true, but here’s the challenge: There is a reason that unsustainable products are cheap: there are externalities that are being passed on to innocent bystanders. This hits close to home here at 2GreenEnergy, as coal is the cheapest form of energy. Of course it is! No one is forcing the coal companies, nor the consumers of the electricity from coal-fired power plants, to pay for any of the damage they’re causing to our lungs or our ecosystems. Clean energy solutions are shunned because they cost more; obviously they cost more than solutions that pass the majority of their costs on to the unwitting customers (and their grandchildren).
• Zipcar, the car-sharing success story that Avis bought this week for $500 million, is an example of what is called the new “collaborative economy.” I’d like to think there is some truth there; I guess we’ll see. Apparently, Bill Ford is contemplating morphing his company from the traditional car business of the 20th Century to the “mobility” business of the 21st. I.e., he’s claiming that he’s thinking beyond the concept of car ownership for as many people aged 16 – 96 as can afford it. Again, I’m skeptical. When the mobility paradigm changes, and I think it’s in the process of doing exactly that, I’m not sure you’ll want to be holding onto Ford stock.
• So far, this has all been fairly good news for the human race. The bad news is that most people in the U.S. really don’t care about any of this at all. In surveys, 75% say that we would pay a bit more for an eco-friendly product, but in practice, only 1% – 3% actually do. Apparently, we suffer from what’s called “green fatigue.” The “green” story is old and getting older; evidently, people are tired of hearing it. I can understand that. On Wednesday afternoon, our media tells us about Lindsay Lohan’s drug relapse; the following morning, we’ve all heard too much about it, and so it’s on to something else. This cultural ADHD is a total mismatch for the problem here. People say that recovering alcoholics are in recovery until the day they die. Fighting a lifelong battle of anything, especially slow-rolling things like the destruction of our environment or of our social fabric caused by our addiction to fossil fuels, is the LAST thing the average American wants to do. As long as there’s plenty of Budweiser and Doritos at the Walmart, and a Toyota LandCruiser to pick them up in, the typical American is comfortably numb.
• Looking at the problem differently, we environmentalists often have trouble communicating our messages, as our culture responds to visual images. We had minute-to-minute TV coverage of the BP oil spill and the disaster at Fukushima, as those events lent themselves to imagery. But as we speak, tens of millions of children’s lungs are being ruined by the effects of coal. There’s no way to tell that in an exciting, newsworthy story with real-time televised images.
Great event. I’m so glad I took the time.
Excellent article! You summarized the big picture with straight forward words. Thanks and keep up with the good work!
I agree – excellent notes on a fabulous conference. I will say this – that unless the sustainable aspects of our lifestyle can be scaled down to a small project that many people can partake in and contribute to – NO amount of evangelist dogma or fabulous conferences will sway the average Joe or Mary to change their views very much.
You have to be personally involved in this quest to really make any difference. The more we can encourage real companies to invest in really green ventures – the more people will find that their job depends on helping to save the planet, and then they will take a meaningful role in promoting the message.
Yes, very lucidly and vividly summarized notes on the conference. Of course, one has to get involved in this quest to really make a difference. Sadly, the current economic paradigm globally pushes everyone into a state of subordination or addiction to consumerism in the formative and impressionable stage. Then it makes no sense to expect the people to wean themselves away from the lifestyle that has been foisted on them.
There has to be a fundamental change in the education system right from kindergarten level. Unless environment-mindedness is inculcated from a tender age everyone gets ‘hardwired’ by the time one becomes an adult worker/ professional. For instance, engineers think of thermodynamic efficiency in terms of delta-T, difference in temperature of source and sink. And that “sink” is conveniently always environment/ atmosphere/ nature! But in nature, thermodynamic efficiency is closely associated with conservation, equilibrium, assimilation and balance. Unfortunately, conventional engineering/ technological thinking couldn’t care less.
Thus the world is in urgent and critical need of new learning and brand new teachers capable of teaching it.
I loved to write but I could not then I thank Craig Shields and others who put about having old car vs new many cars to put show this kills those serving in most difficult environment simplify ideas in small taking all into so all helps our earth.
I love many comments thanks Don Harmon and Marc Vendetti
god bless all
c.k.p
Regarding your 4th bullet point…….. In my experience “geen product” DO NOT have to cost more than other products serving the same purpose. For those logical thinkers out there, less demand, more supply = lower prices. I think the issue are those businesses tat charge more BECAUSE of the perception that green costs more. I’ll give more detailed real world proof on that at a later date. Additionally, if I can afford the Landcrusier and subsequent gas to go in said fossil fuel eating planet destroying vehicle, everyone should be ok with that. Why ? Because I can pay all of the ADD ON taxes that go with that choice. Said taxes are a much larger contribution to the overall maintenance of our Federal govt (who gives tax creits away to the green fuel industry like a drunken sailor at a strip club) and the state, local govt fir the repair of roads. I for one do not care who drives what…what we should care about is balance and sustainability. The clean up of our environment and the CORRECTION of not the elimination of existing job center industry should be the pinnacle concern of us green biz guys. Good work ! Keep the info coming !,
I hope that the conference was not really fabulous. The topic is too important for fables.
Synonym of “fabulous” from an on-line thesaurus: fictitious.
Craig, where did you get that stat about the average drill only being used for 9 minutes? That is amazing!
It is amazing. I kept my first drill for more than 30 years and used it many times.
I came from one of the panelists in the conference; I had never heard that either — and yes, it’s amazing.
Social education about consumer waste and the full impact of actions is needed to get change actually moving in germane directions. I have tested to LEED GA level and going for AP now and can see the merit of true accountable actions. USGBC has quantified some “Green” things and socially we need to capture the real picture. Craig is one who is about this, as are others. Facts need to be clear, then they speak for themselves. The opposition to accountability (aka green stuff), is opposing because they know the actual cost of things and do not want to pay it. No free ride is available on the road across the earth. Cause and effect is a law we can only run from, but we can’t hide from.
Greg Chick, LEED GA.
Please keep me posted
Perhaps part of the problems is that for some people, shopping is a pastime with no particular objective. Some people buy clothing for which they have no use and never wear. It may be that some people buy tools that they will never use.
Recently I bought a $35 plane which I have used only once and it is unclear whether I will ever again use it, but that cost far less than hiring a carpenter to do the job. Eventually the plane could be donated to Good Will in which case someone else will use it. If people buy an electric drill that they use only once, surely they could also donate it to Good Will in which case it would not be a wasted purchase.
If a tool is expensive and needed only once, it would be more reasonable to rent it instead of buying it; I’ve also done that.
The other thing you can do is buy a used tool that still has lots of life left in it. You can even resell it when you are done with it (or donate it).
Better yet, some forward thinking and acting communities are creating “Tool Libraries”. I think Berkeley, CA was first. Here is a link to a new one that has sprung up in Seattle, WA http://wstoollibrary.org/ these are a good example of people-to-people solutions that completely bypass the corporate commerce loop.
Marc: In fact, someone brought up that very concept of the “tool libraries” at the conference.
Good comment. It’s amazing what happens when someone asks, “Do I really need this?”
It’s funny the transitions we make as people. I’ve had BMWs most of my adult life: a used 2002 as a college student (in fact, well-used to the tune of 138K miles when I bought it with the money I had made caddying), followed later by a 735i, and more recently by a 540i. I’ve “been there, done that,” and I don’t need it any further. My current car, a several-year-old 43 MPG VW Jetta diesel is just fine. I’m sure my clients, in the off-chance that they happen to see my car, ask: “If this guy has been as successful as his resume suggests, why is he driving a Jetta?” Though part of me understands this, the other part of me is happy for them to see a fuel-efficient car.
We arrived at our 2005 Passat TDI in much the same way. We are a 1-car household but we have 9 bicycles. Even though we could have gotten a new car, we chose the ’05 because it’s the last year you can run B100 biodiesel in with no worries. That means more to us than new and fancy. That and cool bumper stickers. :^)
It’s unfortunate that some people think that they need to buy an expensive car to enhance their status. No doubt there are people who are favorably influenced by such things, but there are some of us who attach no importance to status symbols. There are also people who really cannot afford expensive cars but buy them anyway. I tend to make fun of status symbols. Although I’ve generally owned new cars, they have not been expensive cars and I’ve kept them for a long time. If people look down on me for having a 2004 Mazda 3, which I bought new I really don’t care. It’s also amusing to see how people react to my riding a motorcycle and a bicycle.
Our (U.S.) economy is 70% consumer spending; it is predicated on consumption. The shark must keep moving forward to survive.
Cutting back on consumption is practically un-American, even when that consumption is killing us. The beast knows no other way.
Consumption and conservation are polar contradictions, and they must eventually collide head-on. The candle will extinguish itself when it burns from both ends.