Sunday, November 6, 2011

Going Green: a mere propaganda?

At this point Global Warming is no longer a myth. We now see in our own eyes Mother Earth’s wrath.

And because of this, we see continuous pressure for a lot of companies to “Go Green”. It therefore sets the bar higher for future innovations in the business operations.

Companies have been more keen and vigilant on reducing waste in their production line. And some take this call more seriously by creating products that are environmentally friendly. One that I am very familiar with is the creation of Prius, a hybrid, fuel efficient car of Toyota. From then on, we see more big companies’ committing to creating Earth-friendly products even to the little things like using of Reusable Canvas Totes instead of plastic bags in the market.

Although this new trend has created such a big fuss, I can’t help but to remain sceptic. Does it really reduce waste? Does it really reduce carbon emission? Does it really make sense? Despite these counter measures, there are still a lot of arguments against it that I somehow find plausible.

They say that green technology is very expensive. You need to invest a lot on research and development. This means you need a lot of money to jump start your green advocacy. But the problem just starts there, a lot of them tried but with only few successes. But even if the prototypes used in the R&D has been put into mass production, very few will be able to buy these products because the prices gets inflated due to high cost and investment. Well, companies still looks at their accounting books for a good ROI. This is the reason why we can see very few Prius along EDSA or elsewhere.

Also, the “Going Green” advocacy has been viral for consumers. They became more sensitive on products that they buy. They check the labels, the facts about it, etc. It is seen as a shaping movement by consumers not just to be informed but to have a direct participation on dictating market trends. At first, it was a consumer nightmare for companies. But, thanks to the ingenious marketing people to see this as another tool to increase their profit.

At first it may seem good. Companies are adopting the “Go Green” advocacy, but not really for the true intentions of it. It somehow became a Marketing race to create a new strategy that revolves in this new consumer craze. It is a race to gain sympathy for consumers to buy their product i.e. is the “Earth hour”.

My fear now is that, Going Green has not really served its purpose because of too much cheap pandering on it by a lot of insincere companies.

In the end, I would like to ask this question: Would we rather depend saving the environment to these profiteers or should we be a bit more sensitive and change our lifestyle? Just have a little sacrifice, a little change to make our home / ecosystem conducive for living for our children.

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