GreenPepper Blog

Convenience and comfort before going green

It’s probably no huge surprise that while most of us like to talk the green talk, we’re a lot less likely to walk the walk if it’s inconvenient.  In fact, a study from the Shelton Group released this week found that when purchasing products, 38 percent of respondents would choose convenience, 35 percent would choose comfort, but only 26 percent would choose the environment when making a choice.

I’ve always been a strong believer that if you want people to go green and make environmentally sound decisions, you have to make it easy for them, and small steps should be rewarded and encouraged.  Green products need to be of equal quality to their non-green counterparts, or it’s just not going to work, and this survey shows that.

With this in mind, companies that are taking the steps to encourage greener behavior should be rewarded, not disparaged for not doing enough.  For example, Scott’s Naturals products only contain a portion of recycled paper material, a fact that has brought the ire of many environmentalists.  But if this keeps the TP softer and makes people more likely to buy the product, it’s a huge step up for someone who used to use triple-ply Quilted Northern, and a huge win for the environment.

Finding that sweet spot, in business and communication, where you pull at the environmental goodness heartstrings, while still selling a product that everyone can enjoy, is going to be critical if we’re going to make any real change for our planet.  It simply can’t be an all or nothing proposition.

Enough Packaging

By Ann Barlow, GreenPepper

This past weekend, I was at Safeway doing the usual biweekly (Triweekly?  Daily?) grocery shopping.  Cereal was on the list, so I picked up the usual Kellogg’s Smart Start for my husband, Bob.  I don’t like a lot of the mass-produced cereals, not so much because I prefer small, locally produced fare, but because I just prefer the taste. So I went to the ‘organic’ aisle to see if I could get some granola. At my local Safeway, the organics are relegated to their own section rather than being interspersed with the regular chips, yogurt, cereal, etc.  As if they could catch high-fructose corn syrup or trans fats if they came too close.

But I digress.  I bought a bag of granola, which had 12 oz. of cereal versus the 14 oz. box that Bob picked up.  The difference in the sizes of the packages, though, was laughable.  The granola bag was about a third the size of the Kellogg’s box.

That got me thinking.  The razors that I put in the shopping cart were so surrounded by plastic and cardboard that we would need an electric saw to open them.  The Oil of Olay night cream came in a box with two more plastic boxes inside, one above the jar and one below. The contact lens solution came in a large box and the spout was basically hermetically sealed against any tampering.

When, oh when, are we going to cut out this incredibly wasteful packaging, and who will lead the charge?  It’s absolutely unconscionable that we allow this to continue.

It probably won’t be the grocery store chains who call for change. Clearly they couldn’t care less, so long as the current packaging allows them to get as much as possible on the shelves and display them in the most convenient and attractive way.  And it probably won’t be the manufacturers either.  They’ll no doubt cite the Tylenol scare as reason to avoid eliminating anything that increase the public’s, and their own, risk.

But wouldn’t it be great if Johnson & Johnson, which became the de facto standard of safe packaging, led the way in creating new packaging that was less damaging to the environment?  And surely they have the kind of power necessary to convince grocery and drug stores to be more environmentally friendly, too when it comes to shelf-stocking?

Here’s hoping.  In the meantime, I’m going to start buying the less packaged stuff.  I hope you’ll do the same.