Real green promises

When people know what I do at work, they tend to expect me to ‘know the answer’ to questions like: “Which is better, Fairtrade or locally grown?”

It’s a bit frustrating, because there’s still plenty of space for the retail sector to move forward on several fronts at the same time. So why not buy some fairly traded coffee and some locally grown potatoes?
 
Since the retail business is massively consumer-driven, however, it is encouraging that people do increasingly want to make informed choices about the environmental impacts of the goods they buy. They’re also concerned about what to do at home – whether it’s washing at 30 degrees, or sorting the mounds of packaging for recycling. But they don’t always know who or what to believe. Even the growing mass of labels and communications can be a problem, creating confusion and mistrust instead of helping consumers understand the environmental credentials of goods. Then there’s the rise in corporate ‘greenwash’; complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency about false, unjustified or misleading environmental claims have more than quadrupled in the past year.
 
It’s a key challenge for the sector, something we are working on right now, to work out how best to engage with consumers and help them make those more sustainable choices. This, in turn, will drive change in other vital areas – how far to go on ‘choice editing’, how to support suppliers through a process of change, what kind of overall business model will make the most of the many opportunities. That’s why Forum is keen to stop companies falling into the greenwash trap – and why we have come up with a new report on ‘eco-promising’.

The four crucial questions it answers are:

• What issues should producers and retailers be highlighting?
• How can they best communicate to consumers?
• How can they ensure that environmental messages align with broader business objectives?
• What benefits can business expect from better eco-promising?

Produced with the global business membership organisation Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Eco-Promising: Communicating the environmental credentials of your products and services is full of invaluable practical guidance and industry examples – and concludes with eight practical steps to ensure that eco-labelling is most effective.
 
Honesty and clarity about a product’s big impacts, for instance, will help consumers navigate through the complex issues they face when they shop. Companies can begin by removing the worst sustainability ‘villains’ from their shelves, and offering incentives to buy less impactful products. Integrating these actions into a clear corporate sustainability plan, and then communicating the plan effectively, will do no end of good for the brand and, hopefully, the planet too.

Retailers and consumer brands alike can use their marketing expertise to make the whole sustainability offer attractive – linking environmental virtues with such desirable attributes as quality, luxury, durability, good health, freshness and lower costs. Brands such as Green and Black’s chocolate have done this, for example, by marketing which emphasises the quality of the product as much as its organic ingredients. Taking sustainable products from niche to mainstream involves this kind of attention to the qualities that make them desirable, for more than just the green consumer.

Tom Berry heads Forum’s work with the retail sector

24 June 2008

Tom Berry

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