To Market, to Market--With a Mission : Environment: Yesterday they were yuppies; today they are ‘Green Consumers’ who are demanding goods that are ecologically safe.
There’s a new order of shopper in consumerland: Men and women on a mission, customers with a moral tone.
Pushing their grocery carts up and down the supermarket aisles, they are the ultimate label-readers, examining bottles of detergent, dish-washing liquid, glass cleaner and air deodorizers for biodegradability and absence of phosphates, picking soaps and fabric softeners in refill packages or packs, choosing shampoo and toothpaste from companies that don’t do animal testing.
They comb through the coffee filters to find a brand that is unbleached, look for baby diapers that are biodegradable and chemical free, sort through produce for organically grown fruits and vegetables, make special trips to a store that sells recyclable motor oil and, above all, reject any product that comes sealed in redundant layers of plastic.
Color them green.
And brace yourself for a ‘90s tide of “Green Consumers,” a swarm of grown-up yuppies who look for, and increasingly demand environmentally responsible products with the same vigor that they gobbled up VCRs, designer clothes, condominiums and BMWs in the 1980s.
Now they are shopping green: Asking for products that supposedly sustain the environment rather than damage it, which support natural resources rather than destroy them.
As they push environmentalism from its traditional niche in health food stores and co-ops into mainstream supermarkets, they are turning the retail field upside down, fueling hundreds of tiny new businesses, raising the stock of environmental mail-order companies and asking a multitude of questions about labeling as new products bounce onto the shelves in response to consumer demands.
“We are witnessing a green revolution on the shelves of America’s stores,” declared Minnesota Atty. Gen. Hubert Humphrey III, who convened an unprecedented public forum this week), bringing together a task force of attorneys general, federal officials, environmental groups and business representatives to study the “environmentally friendly” claims of a host of new products.
The whole process seems to have occurred almost overnight. “It’s like a spiritual consciousness-raising on a mass scale,” says Jeff Hutner of Santa Monica, a corporate development consultant who is “moving into the environmental product and service industry arena for the ‘90s” and is writing a business plan for an ecological department store.
“For the first time in history,” he said, “it seems like everybody on the planet is focused on the same concern--the environment.”
Although that might be an exaggeration, the magnitude and momentum of the movement does seem exceptional, even in a society fueled by fads. Like a rapidly emerging species, the Green Consumer is being identified by trend-watchers from coast to coast, sightings that all seem to lead to the same conclusion: Green is in. The phenomenon is propelled by individual U.S. consumers who spend an estimated $3.5 trillion per year on goods and services. According to a 1989 Gallup Poll, 76% think of themselves as environmentalists.
In Manhattan, marketing consultant Faith Popcorn, who coined the word cocooning , has labeled the new consumer trend S.O.S. (Save Our Society), and says it describes a major shift in consumer priorities from rampant consumerism to social consciousness. “After a decade of greed and glitz, consumers are ready to look beyond their needs, think ‘green’ and global, and give back to society,” proclaims Popcorn, whose BrainReserve Inc.’s trend-tracking process includes in-depth consumer interviews, media monitoring and weekly brainstorming sessions with marketing executives.
“Consumers are beginning to make connections between their actions and the greater good,” she says. “Having seen overflowing landfills, they realize that their garbage adds to this problem.” The implications, she thinks, will reach beyond the supermarket shelves to such diverse areas as new home construction (houses will incorporate recycling bins and compost drawers) to corporate ethics (pet-food manufacturers will donate funds to fight cruelty to animals and toy companies will help combat child abuse).
On the Yankelovich Monitor, an annual study of the social values of Americans, the issue of environmental concern measured so high in 1989 that “we thought there had been an error in tabulation,” said Harry Hiner, West Coast vice president of Yankelovich Clancy Shulman marketing research firm.
That was a sharp change. In the mid-’80s, interest in the environment measured so low on Yankelovich’s list of annually monitored values, or trends, that it was dropped because it was “not an impactful issue any more,” he said. “Then in 1989 we decided to reinsert it. It had gone from 16% to 28% of respondents who are almost activist: that’s very high. We also found that only 7% of the respondents had no concern at all about the environment. That significant change over only three years in one of the core values measured by Monitor is unprecedented in our 20-year history,” Hiner said.
“There’s no question in our minds that this is not merely a fad, it is instead a permanent change in the way Americans will deal with environmental issues,” he added. “We believe it has gone beyond a public issue and become a personal problem.”
Without predicting widespread change in behavior for the ‘90s, (“It’s one thing to favor clean air, it’s another to actually go through the steps of recycling”), Yankelovich does expect to see the new environmentalism manifest itself decisively at the supermarket. “It will be like nutrition, which began in the mid-’70s with people paying a little more attention to their diets, and developed into different eating habits in the ‘80s,” he said.
The signs are already there, Hiner added. “The whole category of laundry detergents has undergone permanent green adjustment in the stores: Now they are phosphate-free, biodegradable and sold in recyclable packaging. That’s just a start.”
In the view of Judith Langer, who runs Langer Associates in Manhattan and conducts focus consumer groups in major cities throughout the county, the Green Consumer is going to face a major conflict of interest in the near future.
“In the last year or so I’ve been hearing a fair amount of concern about the environment,” she said. “The talk about the ozone layer and the warming trend has really scared people and made it all very tangible. Although I realize the issue of global warming is debatable, it did serve to shake people up.”
She foresees that anxiety about the environment will conflict with the present convenience trend in meal preparation, which says that “faster is better.”
“We can zap it in the microwave, and then toss the dish, which is environmentally wasteful, but women have gotten used to it and they want it. Our lives are pressured and women’s roles are overburdened.”
Nonetheless, she thinks green consumerism is a movement that is going to stick, glued by growing environmental worries. “It’s interesting to see a revival of the environmental movement,” she added, “and it seems a lot more upbeat than in the late ‘70s when everyone was so gloomy and dreary about it.”
Langer’s observation highlights a secondary theme of the Green Consumer movement--the whole push-pull relationship between consumer demands and manufacturing responses is charged with creativity and energy. The old image of the 1970s environmentalist who symbolically destroyed an automobile with a sledgehammer before retiring to live in the Vermont woods is passe.
“What we are now realizing is that every time you open your wallet you are casting a vote for or against the environment. That’s a new observation,” said Joel Makower, a Washington-based environmental and consumer journalist who has just compiled “The Green Consumer,” a comprehensive shopping guide that is just reaching stores this week from Penguin Books.
“Twenty years ago, being a ‘green consumer’ was an oxymoron,” said Makower, in a telephone interview. Then, “you had to stop. You couldn’t buy anything. You couldn’t go anywhere. There was an innate contradiction between being environmentally responsible and shopping.”
His book is a revised and expanded edition of “The Green Consumer Guide,” which was written in England by John Elkington and Julia Hailes and published there in 1988. Not only has it remained on the best-seller lists, with an estimated 350,000 copies sold to date, it is credited with igniting the green consumer movement in that country.
“Green consumerism is a lot further ahead in Europe than here,” said Makower who, with a staff of two, spent most of a year researching the American version of the guide.
The book is organized in three parts, opening with an overview of green consumerism in America today and looking at such key issues as packaging, recycling and plastics and how they contribute to contemporary environmental problems. “The idea,” says Makower, “is to provide an understanding of how everyday purchases have a direct impact on the environment.”
The second part of the book is a brand-name buying guide: Breaking the marketplace down by categories, from automobiles to groceries and personal care products, it suggests what to buy (unbleached paper towels) what to avoid (almost anything packaged in plastic) and how to look at these products through the eyes of a green consumer. (“Ask yourself what resources are used in making it, using it and throwing it away.”)
The book’s last section, entitled “How to Get Involved,” offers lists of organizations, publications and action groups, as well as how-to advice.
Makower isn’t promoting the book as the ultimate solution to the environmental crisis, but he notes that “one thing we’ve realized over the last 20 years is that governments and technology are not going to solve our problems.
“In short there are a lot of social and political flows coming together today that make the environment more personal than it was in the ‘70s, and the environment gets no more personal than when taking a trip to the grocery store or the hardware store or the drugstore.”
He adds that “virtually every consumer goods manufacturer is feverishly working to repackage, reformulate, reposition their product to meet the new demand for green products.”
What we can expect, he predicts, is fewer products that are over-packaged (“Packaging is at the core of green consumerism”) and many more products that are “green.” But “don’t fool yourself,” Makower cautions. “Companies are going to make a lot of money making their products green. There are lots of shades, and very few perfectly green products.”
He believes that the whole process of buying, and using, is going to require massive consumer reeducation. “The products will constantly be changing, but the rules of the game don’t change.” For tomorrow’s Green Consumers, the rules of the game are still evolving:
“I guess my awareness grows with each news item, like Sting doing the benefits for the rain forests and the people in Oregon protesting the redwoods being cut down,” said Dave James, 29, of Huntington Beach. He was on a telephone search for canvas shopping bags with a Treesaver logo to take to the grocery store.
“My girlfriend and I are into saving the environment, and we want these bags because they will make a statement,” he explained. Reflecting this week on the new notion of Green Consumerism, he decided that he qualified. “When I change the oil in my car I take it to be recycled. I didn’t use to do that--I’m just beginning to think about things. ‘It’s gotta start now,’ I tell people.”
HOW TO BE A GREEN CONSUMER
Don’t buy products that are excessively packaged or wrapped.
Look for products packaged in recyclable materials such as cardboard or glass, not plastic. Avoid buying anything packaged in Styrofoam or similar flexible foam materials.
Look for reusable containers and concentrated refills.
Look for products made from recycled paper, aluminum and other reusable materials that are biodegradable and that don’t contain bleaches or dyes.
Carry your products home in paper, not plastic, bags. Better yet, bring your own cloth bag.
Don’t confuse “green” with “healthy”: Not everything packaged in recyclable packaging is necessarily good for you or the environment.
Remember that there are few perfectly green products.
From “The Green Consumer” by John Elkington, Julia Hailes and Joel Makower. Penguin Books, 1990.
