What’s Good for Earth Is Good for Business : Environment: Companies are responding to consumer concern by promoting ecologically “safe” products. But experts urge caution.

Paul Stubbs, West Coast lawn and garden merchandiser for Home Depot, is banking on getting your attention this way:

A man in a suit and tie holds a can of insecticide in one hand and a fat, red apple in the other. After coating the fruit with bug killer, he takes a bite. Suddenly, his face constricts and he starts to gag. Then, just as suddenly, he smiles and regains his composure.

“Just kidding,” he says, and finishes off the apple.

The scene is an advertisement for Safer gardening products, a line of biodegradable pesticides that Stubbs has recently begun to stock in Home Depot’s 41 stores in California and Arizona. Next month, he says, the Kearny Mesa Home Depot will begin placing “Eco-Logical” labels on pest control products that the San Diego Environmental Health Coalition has determined are “safe substitutes” for more toxic pesticides. And by February, Stubbs says, all his San Diego stores will begin an informational campaign urging customers to sort their bottles, cans and paper trash.

Stubbs’ motive?

“I’d like to tell you that I’m a humanitarian and I’m doing it for very unselfish motives, but that would be a little less than accurate,” he said. “My responsibility is to generate business for my company, and I am convinced that once a customer understands that certain products are to their benefit, either personally or on a more global scale, that they will buy them. The customer will walk out happy.”

Home Depot is not alone. In Southern California and around the nation, a growing number of companies have decided that, to give customers what they want in the 1990s, merchants will increasingly have to give them what’s good for the planet.

San Diego’s Big Bear Supermarkets chain, already a leader in the effort to use paper instead of plastic packaging, now displays shelf cards and distributes pamphlets recommending products deemed safe for the environment. Tallon Termite and Pest Control, a Long Beach-based company that uses frozen nitrogen to exterminate pests, is promoting its nontoxic way to “kill ‘em with coldness, not chemicals.” And last month, Chief Auto Parts launched a campaign, endorsed by the San Diego County Department of Health Services, to recycle motor oil in its San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento stores.

“This whole area of using environmental concerns in marketing efforts is emerging as a definite trend,” said Dan Noble, executive vice president at EnviroQuest, a San Diego-based environmental research and consulting firm. “In the past, many industries have begrudgingly gone along with compliance. Now some of the more progressive industries have seen the writing on the wall.”

Indeed, in a recent survey commissioned by a New York new-product consulting firm, 89% of the 1,000 adults surveyed said they are concerned about how the products they purchase affect the environment. Noble believes that in order to survive in the next decade, many companies will begin “moving away from the ‘50s throwaway society to a resource-conservation and recycling society--from a linear to a circular economy. It’ll be the only way to do business in another 10 years.”

Officials at companies that have already adopted earth-conscious strategies recite a laundry list of reasons why they believe the fate of the earth is on their customers’ minds.

“The heavy pollutants, the Love Canals, the plastics . . . “ said Jay Tallon, chief executive officer of Tallon Termite and Pest Control.

“That Long Island barge of trash that floated around forever,” said Stubbs.

“The Exxon Valdez disaster . . . “ said Michael H. Manor, Chief Auto Parts’ chief executive officer.

“The ozone . . . “ said Thomas G. Dahlen, executive vice president of Big Bear Supermarkets.

While none of the four has done any formal marketing research on the subject, all say that by responding to their customers’ growing environmental awareness, they expect their companies to benefit both ethically and financially.

For example, Tallon says, in the two years he has used his family’s unique “Blizzard System” to kill termites, the company has doubled its business several times over. In 1987, he said, he employed 21 employees and did about $85,000 in business each month. Now, 170 employees do $700,000 worth of business in the same period.

“We care about the environment and what we put into it, and we know people do, too,” Tallon said. Still, he added, “I consider myself an entrepreneur. I have my personal feelings about my environment, but I also have personal feelings about providing for my family.”

Linda Pratt, household hazardous materials program manager at the county health department, said she believes companies that market earth-conscious products realize they can satisfy both “feelings” at once--what Noble calls a “win-win” situation.

“All of these companies have realized it’s a way to provide a community service and get some great publicity at the same time,” she said.

Companies maintain, however, that while they don’t shun media attention, their campaigns are more than publicity stunts.

“We’re concerned about the landfill issue in San Diego County,” said Dahlen of Big Bear, where the company motto is “Hometown people who care!”

At Big Bear’s 30 stores between Imperial Valley and San Diego, blue and white shelf cards tell customers to use non-aerosol containers and paper packaging. Deli foods and meats are packaged on paper trays, not plastic foam, and 96% of the bags used are made of recycled paper. Grocery checkers will even pay 2 cents for each paper or plastic bag a customer brings to the store to reuse.

“Our interest is in doing what we can to let customers know that there are choices they can make in their purchasing decisions. The customer really does want to do good things, but you have to assist them. We give an alternative,” Dahlen said. “We didn’t plan on any increased sales or increased customer count, and we’re not looking to make a killing--though people find that hard to believe.”

For Home Depot and Big Bear, the attempt to advise customers through shelf cards and labels does have risks. Dahlen said that Big Bear’s campaign has prompted calls from Procter & Gamble Co. and other manufacturers whose products are not on the “safe” list.

“They call to be sure we’ve got it right,” Dahlen said, adding that the calls have not discouraged Big Bear’s efforts.

Pratt, of the health department, said she is “cautious” about programs that attempt to rate the safety of certain products.

“Maybe, superficially, Product A looks like its safer than Product B. But you always have to wonder. DDT was looked at as a safe substitute 20 years ago,” she said, adding that instead of telling customers which product to buy, she prefers to give general advice. “Buy only what you need, and use it and dispose of it appropriately.”

But Pratt also admits that the less effort a program demands of a customer, the more success it usually has.

“People want to do something for the environment, but they want to make it as convenient and easy as possible,” she said. “It’s a trendy thing to do.”

Manor says Chief Auto Parts’ oil recycling program actually costs his company money but that in the long run, Chief will benefit by anticipating what he believes will be stricter laws governing waste disposal.

“We had three options: We could stick our heads in the sand and hope it would go away, we could wait until legislation is passed and then fight it every step of the way, or we could do what has to be done and be able to make a contribution,” he said, adding that he plans to expand the recycling program to all nine states where Chief does business.

“If someone says, ‘Gee, (Chief) is so convenient a place to dump my oil--I’ll do more shopping here,’ that would be great,” he said. “But as far as we’re concerned, we’re going to treat it as an operating cost. It’s one more piece of equipment we need to do business.”

Environmentalists suspect that, to a large extent, companies’ pocketbooks, not their global good will, have prompted this outbreak of concern for Mother Earth. Like the campaigns for healthier “all-natural” foods, business analysts predict, the hard sell of environmentally safe products could lure customers and boost profits for products, from detergent to gasoline.

That’s all right with Barbara Bamberger, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator in San Diego--as long as the companies tell the truth in their claims.

“If there are two things on the shelf, and one of them says ‘Safe for the Environment,’ the consumer today is going to buy that product. It’ll sell like crazy. And it should,” she said. “But people need to be very cautious about buying products simply because they have the label on them. It’s questionable whether all the products really are as environmentally safe as they say.”

Such skepticism prompted a coalition of six environmental groups to gather in Washington last week to call on Americans to boycott degradable plastic products. While manufacturers are promoting such products as “environment-friendly,” the groups say there is little proof that degradable plastics protect the environment. In fact, they charged, some degradable plastics may release toxic chemicals as they break down.

With such conflicting messages, Noble said, consumers will have to be discriminating in order to “sort the wheat from the chaff”--a process that he believes will become increasingly difficult as more companies jump on the environmental bandwagon.

“There is going to be a lot of snake oil, and we will have to sort out what’s true from what’s hype,” he said. “That will take discernment from industry analysts and consumers alike. But ultimately, the consumer will sort the sham from the reality.”

Bamberger says curious consumers should read labels carefully and make an effort to choose recyclable products over biodegradable ones when possible. When confused, she said, customers should direct questions to any of San Diego’s environmental organizations.