angus.todd

Devon Hardie made a blog which talked about how bad it was that companies were marketing their products as ‘green’ and ‘environmentally friendly’, which is true… it is bad. The question is, can you blame them?

The blog talks about how there are companies who market their water bottles as environmentally friendly because they use recycled materials in the production of their bottles, when in reality the product isn’t very friendly at all. This is a bad thing, I will agree, however I think whats even worse is why they CAN do it.

There has been a recent trend  toward being environmentally friendly and while this is a good thing, most people do not genuinely care about the environment, they care about THEIR brand. They are more concerned with how others think of them, than the well being of our Earth. People who buy these ‘green’ disposable water bottles aren’t thinking about the benefit to the environment, they are worrying about the bottles benefit to their image. Someone who did care about the environment would not have bought a plastic bottle that they planned on throwing away after one use, they would have used a permanent water bottle.

The Toyota Prius, a genuinely green product, has seen its sales booming over recent years while other hybrids cars are seeing declining sales. Why, because the Prius has a shape which is globally recognized as being ‘hybrid’. When people see a Prius, they think green. CNW Marketing Research did a study that found 34% of people who own a Prius admit they do because it makes them look good(and thats only the people that admit to it).

While it is bad that companies market themselves as green when they aren’t, they can do this because people are falsely marketing themselves as green and because that allows the companies to continue selling ‘faux-green’ products, it is worse.