Growing in the green market - marketing environmentally friendly products - includes related article on use of environmentally friendly cleaning products at federal courthouse

American Demographics, August, 1997 by Tibbett L. Speer

When the polls closed last November in the fog-swept northern California city of Arcata, a remarkable thing occurred amidst the coastal redwoods and farmland. For the first time in U.S. history, Green Party members were in charge of a city. "We're nonviolent folks dedicated to environmental and social justice," explains Bob Ornelas, a brewery co-owner and one of three Greens who captured a majority of the five-member city council.

Bicycling and recycling are a dominant way of life in Arcata, as are tofu and composting. More than 15,000 people live in this university town. To many of them, biodegradable isn't an adjective, it's a mantra. Ornelas's business, the Mad River Brewing Company, recently won an award for reducing its solid wastes by a whopping 97 percent.

Arcata may or may not be the future. It's certainly not the present. Americans' relationship with the environment is evolving past the 1970s' fervor that spawned Earth Day. On the whole, our affection for the earth has broadened and become incorporated into our everyday lives in small ways. Many municipalities have adopted mandatory recycling, for example, out of sheer necessity and economy. It's as if we've gotten past the initial intensity of an infatuation and moved toward the more relaxed phase of a relationship with our surroundings. We pay more attention to it on an ongoing basis, but the attention is less focused and perhaps more complacent.

Our increased awareness of the environment coupled with our more casual attitude toward it poses a challenge for those who produce and sell environmentally sound products. How do you sell a product attribute that matters a lot to a few people, but just a little bit to most?

One solution is not to try so hard. "People talk about the green market, but I don't believe there is one," says Harvey Hartman, president and founder of the Hartman Group in Bellevue, Washington. His research and consulting firm specializes in environmental strategies. "We've gotten on an emotional bandwagon with this subject. We've developed a sense that the environment is more important in most people's daily lives than it really is." This doesn't mean there's no market out there. It means that the approach has to adapt to the changing moods of consumers.

From Stumbling Origins to Reality Check

In the "old days," hippies were supposedly the only ones who cared about ecology. They felt that no one shared their concerns. Young adults like Gene Kahn, now the 50-year-old founder of one of the nation's largest organic-food companies, worried about pesticides, soil retention, and water pollution. "We hated business," says Kahn. "Business was the problem." This year, his own business, Cascadian Farm, could post $30 million in sales.

In the years following the first Earth Day in 1970, a contingent of Americans insisted on developing pesticide-free systems of farming and anti-chemical methods of food preservation and preparation. They did it for themselves at first, then for others who appreciated organic food. Health-food stores sprouted up here and there, usually in collegetowns.

As environmental consciousness began to spread from communes to the larger community, growing numbers of mainstream Americans passed through the doors of health-food stores. Health food and other natural products trickled into mainstream outlets. Their debut was, to use the vernacular, a bummer. "Consumers went to stores and were disappointed by the offerings," says Jacquelyn Ottman, president of New York City-based J. Ottman Consulting, Inc. "In the early 1990s, the products that moved into [regular] retail stores were often the same things that had collected dust on health-food store shelves since the 1970s."

Recycled paper sometimes looked and felt substandard. An early brand of "green" fabric softener clogged washing machines. It wasn't just that the products were outdated and low quality, says Ottman, author of Green Marketing: Challenges and Opportunities for the New Marketing Age. They were overpriced. Consumers soon caught on to the double whammy of inferior goods for ridiculous prices.

These days, companies take a more realistic approach to green product launches and promotions. They have no choice, according to Hartman, who says the toughest lesson learned to date is that green matters much less to consumers than do price, quality, convenience, and other factors.

The ecological friendliness of products was never of primary importance to consumers, and its importance is waning. The general public has become more lukewarm about the environment in the past few years, according to the Green Gauge Report conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide of New York City. Since 1990, the study has tracked Americans' environmental knowledge and concerns. It reveals that the most environmentally dedicated group hasn't declined, but the group most willing to put its money where its mouth is has shrunk dramatically. The most apathetic group has grown.

True-Blue Greens are the most proactively green Americans. For these people, being environmentally aware isn't an on-again, off-again activity; it's a way of life. They're the recyclers, composters, and volunteers who elected the city council in Arcata, California, but who are a decided minority in most communities. They make up 10 percent of the American adult population, down just a bit from the 11 percent they represented in 1990.