Season’s Greetings : Eco-Shopping Comes of Age as Consumers Opt to Spend Less While Saving the Earth, Too
“Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place? Why Not Make Your Own Electricity From the Sun?”
That’s the non-traditional Christmas sales pitch in the Real Goods Trading Corp.’s winter catalogue. Not only is the company offering freedom from Arab oil, it also is introducing one of the planet’s largest selections of holiday solar games and toys.
Yes, Christmas has come to Ukiah, Calif.’s Real Goods and to other companies that offer products that conserve our natural resources. They are enjoying an unprecedented rush of holiday business, driven by a new blend of environmental awareness, economic uncertainty and outright rebellion against the season’s usual conspicuous consumption.
This year, Real Goods has added a gift section to its nuts-and-bolts alternative-energy catalogue, enlarged its telephone sales staff and is processing 500 orders a day for Christmas gifts including solar toys, environmental card games and water-saving shower heads.
Across the country in Colchester, Vt., trendy Seventh Generation (“Products for a healthy planet”) has mailed 4 million copies of its first Christmas catalogue. The company says business is up 800% from last year, fueled by a surge of interest in such gifts as the monthly delivery of paper towels, toilet paper and facial tissues made from unbleached, recycled paper.
Toilet paper and low-flow shower heads for Christmas? Those prospects may seem about as inviting as a stocking full of switches. However they appeal to a new breed of eco-shopper.
“People are starting to look at the consuming they do around the holidays through a green lens,” says Joel Makower, editor of the Green Consumer Letter, whose December lead story is entitled “Season’s Greenings.”
“I’m not saying we have become a nation of ecological holiday shoppers,” he continued, “but it’s encouraging to see some green values creeping into this hyper-consuming season. I think the thing we’ve learned this year, if we’ve learned anything, is that we have to start thinking about the Earth in almost everything we do.”
Makower, a Washington-based journalist who has been tracking consumer behavior on environmental issues for three years, is not alone in believing that something more than the tree is coming up green for the holidays.
The ever-exploding number of environmental catalogues and specialty shops report that business is booming.
Mainstream retailers also are showing green touches. The Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue offers Geo-Safari games and Hug-a-Planet toys along with its traditional luxury items. (“Concern for the environment is a social issue on everybody’s minds,” a Neiman spokesman said.)
And even such consumption-driven magazines as Glamour are devoting some December pages to “Gifts that Save the Planet.”
Christmas and Hanukkah cards from recycled paper are being promoted for their environmental value in saving trees and landfill space. Shoppers can buy “Eco-baskets” loaded with non-phosphate cleaning products, books and Rainforest Crunch, the season’s ecologically correct candy, made from rain forest-harvested nuts.
Gift certificates will Save the Whales, Plant a Tree or Adopt an Acre. Mail-order shoppers are thumbing through a whole new generation of catalogues that read more like lifestyle handbooks and science manuals than sales pitches.
The tiresome annual debate over fresh versus artificial trees is being resolved by innovative recycling programs in many cities, including Los Angeles, that will grind post-Christmas trees down to wood chips and compost instead of dumping them in landfills.
Are these just the last reverberations of an Earth Day year, or the beginning of the celebrated Environmental Decade?
Everyone agrees that eco-consumerism is more than a passing fancy.
For instance, public-opinion polls consistently show that Americans say they will buy environmental products if they are available.
However, with consumers expected to spend $37 billion over this holiday season, retailers and analysts disagree over just how much of that money will go to green gifts.
Some are positively bullish.
Richard Thalheimer, president and founder of Sharper Image, a $200-million upscale specialty chain with 75 stores nationwide, sells a few environmental items now but thinks the issue will dominate the ‘90s for mainstream businesses like his.
“The increased acceptability of environmentalism as a socially desirably product over the past year is truly astounding,” he said. “It’s so contagious. Yes, it may be that a low-flow shower head is a popular gift to give just this year. But what’s not going to change is the need people feel to address environmental problems. That will shape the next two decades.”
Retail forecaster Kurt Barnard agrees but cautions that change will be slow. “We are still in the process of awakening everybody,” said Barnard, who publishes the Retail Marketing Report newsletter. “You can’t expect this Christmas suddenly to bounce off the floor and sweep through the entire spectrum of merchandise and promotion.”
Washington economic analyst Sandra Shaber downplays the impact of environmental buying. She likens the activity to “rivulets outside the mainstream.”
“I think it makes some dedicated people feel warm and fuzzy,” said Shaber, whose specialty is consumer spending, “but for the mass market, I don’t think that is a big factor. People are too worried about the economy.”
One thing is certain: The people who are looking for a greener, simpler Christmas can find plenty of new ways to do it.
Earth Care Paper Co., which was founded in 1983, has expanded its holiday gift-wrap patterns from one choice (a green leaf on white background) to 40, featured in a products catalogue that also includes so much environmental information that it’s called an “edu-catalogue.”
“We know people want information about changing their lifestyle and their questions are getting much more sophisticated,” said Earth Care spokeswoman Carol Moseson. “People used to ask what recycled paper is. Now they want to know about bleaching, about inks, about post-consumer waste. We get tons of letters from kids.”
Earth Care, whose staff has grown to more than 100, is a counterculture success story that offers one measure of the nation’s environmental vitality.
The possible leader in that field is the Real Goods Trading Corp. whose Christmas catalogue message declares: “Alternative energy goes mainstream.”
Founded in 1978 by John Schaeffer, a former Berkeley anthropology major who anticipated the coming environmental crisis, the company sold alternative energy to areas without electricity. Real Goods now also serves city customers who want an “environmental lifestyle.”
Schaeffer says that his rising sales reflect America’s awakening to the environmental crisis. “Our (urban) business has continued to boom since Earth Day,” he says. “We’re getting about 1,500 inquiries a week. We expect to do $6 million in sales this year.” His customers are buying such small items as energy-saving light bulbs (“If every household put in just one, we could shut down one nuclear power plant immediately”) and such large items as the Sunfrost refrigerator that, says Schaeffer, saves 10 times more energy than the standard energy-efficient refrigerator.
“Our solar toys have always been a presence, but this year they have mushroomed,” Schaeffer continued. “And we have a solar mosquito guard that people just love--we’ve sold more than 3,000.”
People this year are putting much more thought into sensible Christmas gifts, he says. “There is definitely more green out there than the Christmas tree this year. They are buying shower heads and battery chargers for stocking stuffers instead of candy canes and lollipops.”
“Something is happening, but it’s not of a tidal wave nature,” says Mike Keiser of Chicago, who co-founded the Recycled Paper Products company 19 years ago. This year, he is offering 1,000 Christmas and Hanukkah card designs on recycled paper. He would like to see more competition from the giants like Hallmark, which does use 15% recycled paper, in the 2.3 billion-card Christmas glut. “Our corporate objective is to be imitated, but that hasn’t happened yet, although our business has grown steadily.”
In Vermont, a relative newcomer to green retailing has pulled out all the stops this Christmas. Seventh Generation, which was started two years ago, is promoting conservation as a mainstream lifestyle.
The average customer, says chairman Jeffrey Hollender, is a “sort of well-educated, upper middle-class person who wants to do something environmental and socially significant without engaging in some major lifestyle change like solar energy.”
Seventh Generation has “positioned Christmas as a way to give gifts that are utilitarian and environmentally beneficial,” he says. The idea developed last year after a review of customer shipping requests showed them that “thousands of people were using the regular fall catalogue to send Christmas gifts.”
“It was a profound experience for us.” said Hollender. “We realized that people were using the holiday to give a gift with a message--to increase someone’s awareness. So this year we decided to lend some credibility and take a little of the risk away.”
Hollender thinks his catalogue, which offers more than 300 gifts and features an environmentally correct “Night Before Christmas” on its cover, offers an alternative to the holiday pressures of conspicuous consumption. “It says you are taking a risk, breaking out of the mold, which says this is how you have to celebrate the holiday.”
For those breaking out of the mold this year, green vigilance doesn’t end once the gifts are bought. Attention must also be paid to what goes gets thrown away.
The holiday season traditionally rides in and out on a tidal wave of waste--from wrapping paper to gift boxes to dead Christmas trees. (“Christmas is a solid-waste tsunami,” proclaimed Atlantic Monthly last December).
The first phase of the holiday garbage wave has already passed. That’s when the corrugated containers carrying Christmas merchandise are unpacked and discarded, and that’s the retailers’ concern.
But, with the second wave of waste still lurking post-holiday, consumer opportunities to save the planet still abound. Christmas trees, once wasted if they went to landfills, are now finding more fruitful destinations. Los Angeles is among the cities with a program to grind trees into mulch and wood chips, and will be accepting trees at seven public parks after Christmas, says Gyl Elliott of the Bureau of Sanitation’s Recycling Division.
The program, which was started three years ago, keeps growing, she says, because people are becoming more aware of the problems of solid waste.
In Redwood City, Calif., packaging manufacturer Arthur Graham has launched a campaign to divert Christmas polystyrene foam packaging from the nation’s landfills by pledging to recycle all that is sent to him.
Graham is a maverick environmentalist whose Free-Flow Packaging Corp. makes a special form of loose-fill packaging that allows him to use nothing but recycled polystyrene, he said.
“We’ve diverted tons and tons of material from the solid waste stream over the past 12 years.”
He expects lots of people to take advantage of his offer. “It gives them a chance to do something positive.”
Graham may be sounding the theme of the new green Christmas: a chance to do something positive.
If all this talk of reduced kilowatts and reclaimed landfill sounds a little grim, it needn’t be. In San Francisco, a group called the Evergreen Alliance has published a lighthearted paperback, “The First Green Christmas: How to Make This Holiday an Ecological Celebration.” Its 86 pages offer dozens of hints on how to make edible Christmas cards, decorate your home or throw an office party.
“What we’re really saying is there are ways to have more fun and less hassle,” said Susan Larson, one of the book’s authors. “This is the time of year when there is the greatest waste in terms of garbage and the greatest expense in terms of financial output. It’s a consuming frenzy.
“We’re talking about getting back to the old-fashioned basics of Christmas. Ecology is really a re-discovery of what the whole thing has been about.”
HOW TO CELEBRATE A GREEN HOLIDAY
“Don’t try and be perfectly green,” says Joel Makower, author of “The Green Consumer.”
“Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, or the winter solstice, don’t try to counter the whole commercial world. Just start somewhere. Buy one gift that has an ecological connection. “
Before Christmas Guidebook * “The First Green Christmas: How to Make This Holiday an Ecological Celebration.” $4.95. Halo Books, P.O. Box 2529, San Francisco, Calif. 94126. Shopping * Plan a schedule and map. Driving all over the city wastes gas. Car-pool when you can. * Bring a canvas tote bag instead of using store shopping bags. * Become a consumer spy--write complaints to companies that overwrap their items. Christmas Cards * Buy cards printed on recycled paper. * Cut the pictures out from this year’s Christmas cards, using pinking shears, and use them for tags on next year’s gifts. * Cut your Christmas cards on the crease this year and make them into Christmas postcards next year. You’ll save lots of trees by not using envelopes. Entertaining * Don’t use anything disposable when you can use the real thing. Use cloth napkins and real dishes. If you use paper and plastic, make sure they are recycled, and recycle them again. * Buy in bulk whenever possible: giant containers create less waste than lots of little ones. * Recycle all the bottles and cans from the office Christmas party. * Use your uneaten fruitcake as a doorstop or speed bump.
After Christmas Recycling Options * Save your wrapping paper and reuse it. * Instead of throwing out the molded foam packaging from gift cameras, TV sets, VCRs and other appliances, box it back up and send for recycling to Free-Flow Packaging, 1093 Charter St., Redwood City, Calif. 94063. “Just keep it clean, box the foam back up and send it to us--don’t send it C.O.D., though,” says manufacturer Arthur Graham. “We will recycle it and you’ll save it from the garbage dump.” * From Dec. 29-Jan. 5 (except New Year’s Day) take your Christmas tree to one of the available drop-off locations to be recycled into wood chips for compost material. Residents will receive a bag of compost when they bring in a tree. Hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Information: 1-800-CITY-SAN.
