There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that detailed the efforts of several large companies, including Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, and Jarden, to make their products more environmentally friendly. Reacting to pressure from Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer of their products, these companies have been working to decrease packaging size by concentrating soaps and detergents into smaller, more potent bottles. Among other benefits, this could help reduce fuel use, and lead to lower carbon emissions.
The companies acknowledge that the new practices may be money savers for them in the long-term, but that consumer prices may well increase in the short term. According to Jarden CEO Martin Franklin, “What’s on the horizon is going to be to see if consumers will be willing to pay more for products that are environmentally friendly.”
And that’s where we come in – it’s very easy to blame large corporations for destroying the environment. But we have to recognize that environmentally responsible methods, particularly in the short-term, are expensive, and are going to lead to higher prices for us as consumers. There’s no silver bullet when it comes to lowering carbon emissions and improving the environment – it’s going to have a cost, and it’s going to impact all of us. But I think it’s a price worth paying.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Eco-Business Strategies . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I wonder if this is one of those “charity”/”good works” projects where more effort is made on announcing the change than actually required to make the change.
Like Chevrolet spends many thousands ($15,000 ?) in commercial fees to announce that they have donated $1,000 to a college at an NCAA football game to honor a MVP.
I bought concentrated All Free (the first detergent to market AFAIK) so I generally support it. But the water saved in shipping concentrated laundry detergents is not a drop in the bucket of bottled water shipments. And WalMart still sells “Made in Canada” bagels in New Orleans, hardly a fuel saving strategy. So I am VERY under impressed.
One note worthy and I think significant step forward is the Apple MacMini ($599). The power saving “guts” of a laptop in a 6.5″ rounded square (2″ tall) but no battery. Reuse screen, mouse and keyboard from the old computer (USB required for last two), saving those from being thrown away prematurely.
My Kill-a-Watt shows that the computer uses just 31 watts without Airport on, 33 watts with Airport on. (My old LCD screen uses 51 watts). Packaging was the MOST minimal I have ever seen for any computer ! Only what was needed and not a bit more.
The major savings in in the low power consumption, but all else is good in this under publicized product.
Best Hopes for REAL conservation,
Alan
October 12th, 2007 at 8:39 am
I’ll be interested to see your comments on Gore winning the Nobel peace prize. On the one hand, he has done more to promote awareness of global warming than anyone. On the other hand, he was the Presidential candidate of the other party and has views on many issues that are unpalatable to most conservatives. There is room to work together on the environment even with serious disagreements on other issues.
Of course, that is a two-way street; Gore also needs to put aside his views on other issues to work with conservatives. In his recent Senate testimony, I was impressed that Gore reached out to Republicans and vice versa (with the spectacular exception of Inhofe), so I’m cautiously optimistic.
October 12th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
To address Alan’s concerns, which I believe all of us share. The key in telling real efforts apart from green washing is Transparency. There are methods and standards for companies reporting their environmental impact, and they can be compared against other companies in the industry. Look up GEMI.org or google ISO14000 if you are feeling really wonky today. These works are in development but can produce real tools to tell who is really working at it and who’s faking. For an example you can go compare Toyota and Ford’s sustainability reports and you’ll get a sense of which company is doing real work in this area.
The next challenge will be to create more ‘consumer friendly’ reports that we can take shopping with us to make choices in the supermarket isle.