In one of the large stores, two packages of dishwasher tablets of a certain well-known Polish brand of household chemicals stand close together on the shelf. One contains „ordinary” tablets, and the other contains „eco-friendly” tablets, which is, by the way, confirmed by a solid EU ecolabel certificate. The latter are almost twice as expensive. I purposely do not name the brand, because I do not know whether the difference in price is caused by the manufacturer or by this particular retail chain. However, the effect is the same.
By positioning „green” products as more expensive, average customers are reinforced in the belief that sustainable goods must cost more. So their customer base will never expand beyond wealthier consumers who are particularly concerned about living a responsible lifestyle. Marketing departments will get the message that sustainable products are a niche that may be worth maintaining, but efforts need to be concentrated in other areas.
Launching sustainable brands or product lines is often one of the first reactions of a company that decides to tackle sustainability. The thinking behind such a decision can be for one of two reasons:
- Let's release a sustainable brand / product line; as it develops, we will expand it. In the existing business, we don't need to change anything.
- Let's release a brand / line of sustainable products; we boast in the report that we already have „green” products, well it looks good in communication. We don't need to change anything in the existing business.
Can you see the error? It is, after all, the existing business that needs to change. Transforming a company into a sustainable organization is not about adding some small percentage of sustainable business to unsustainable business. It's like if we start filling our car sometimes, maybe even increasingly, with biodiesel instead of regular diesel. We will not become more sustainable by doing so. We need to change the car to an electric one, and one powered by zero-emission sources. Or maybe we need to give up the car and use other means of transportation, such as public transportation. And on top of that, reduce trips if they are not necessary.
Adding one or more „green” products to the portfolio is a simple solution that soothes the conscience of the company's management, but also puts the company's vigilance to sleep. Transformation into a sustainable organization is a difficult set of many complicated and interrelated processes to implement. In implementing them, we also encounter many unknowns, so the answers to the questions we ask ourselves along the way are also fraught with uncertainty. Let's think about this, especially now, on the threshold of spring, when the annual report season is coming to an end and we are all preparing for the next development steps.
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