Kermit the frog used to sing a song on Sesame Street that began, “It’s not easy being green!” While he was lamenting his color and worrying about his own identity, American consumers might be singing the same song in their reluctance to buy ecologically friendly products.
In the “Cultivating the Green Consumer” in the fall 2008 publication of the Stanford Social Innovation Review (HTTP://WWW.SSIREVIEW.ORG/ARTICLES/ENTRY/1030/), Sheila Bonini and Jeremy Oppenheim discuss the difficulty in getting individual consumers to “walk their talk” about their concerns for the environment. Their statistics show that 87 percent of consumers surveyed are concerned about the environmental impact of the products they buy, but much fewer consumers actually follow through.
According to a 2007 Chain Store Age survey, only 25 percent say they have bought a green product other than organic food or energy efficient lighting. Even something as simple as using green laundry detergents and household cleaners hasn’t caught on with the general public; with less than 2 percent of sales in that category.
Bonini and Oppenheim present good information about the barriers they see that keep consumers from using green products. First of all, there is a lack of awareness as evidenced in their survey indicating that more than one-third of consumers would like to take action against climate change but don’t know what to do. Consumers only identified one of the top three ways to reduce their own emissions of carbon dioxide. They could identify driving a more fuel-efficient car, but were totally unaware of the huge impact that improving house insulation and eating less beef have on carbon dioxide emisions.
Another barrier that they discuss is the negative perception that many environmentally friendly products have. For example, early models of hybrid cars had less power than non-hybrid cars, and early versions of the CFL light bulbs were slow to light up, as well as having weaker illumination. Consumers still carry those old perceptions and are reluctant to give newer models a chance.
There is also some distrust of green products, and maybe rightfully so. They quote the results of a 2007 study by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, Inc. (“The Six Sins of Greenwashing”) that found that all but one of the 1,753 environmental product claims that they studied were misleading or even false. In addition, some products highlighted one positive product feature, but failed to identify more negative aspects that the product contained.
High prices and low availability were the last barriers that they examined. Is a ten-year payback on solar panels worth it? How easy is it to find biofuel to fill up a tank? Where can contractors purchase green materials? Like Kermit said, “It’s not easy being green!”
