Buying your way to a greener planet

Gayle B. Ronan • E-mail

"We need to realize we can have the world we want just by putting the right things in our shopping carts," says Diane MacEachern, founder of BigGreenPurse.com, a new Web site devoted to helping consumers get more 'green' for their buck.

Want clean rivers and healthy indoor air? "We have options," she says. Options like phosphate-free cleansers, low-vapor wall paint and formaldehyde-free flooring.

"Every time something is rung up at a register, it registers with the manufacturers — either reinforcing that what they are doing is working or that it is not," says MacEachern. She stresses that when it comes to being green, "It is not a matter of how much you spend but how you spend."

As product choices have expanded, buying green has become easier, and in many cases it is even cheaper than spending on less eco-friendly items and services.  Better yet, Birkenstocks are now optional.

For instance, at-home shopping service Peapod offers environmentally safe cleansers alongside the well-advertised high-phosphate versions, but with nearly identical unit prices.  Such products have migrated from the aisles of specialty stores to mainline supermarkets, although not to prime shelving locations, which sometimes makes them easy to overlook.

Other green products have also come down dramatically in price. "Compact fluorescent light bulbs used to be $20 apiece.  Now they are competitively priced with regular bulbs, especially when you consider they last nearly 10 times as long and reduce energy use," says MacEachern. 

These power-efficient bulbs in particular seem to be lighting the way toward greater consumer awareness: Home Depot celebrated Earth Day this year by giving away 1 million of them in a mass conversion effort. It was the "carbon emission equivalent of removing 70,000 cars from U.S. highways," according to the retailer’s newly launched Web site for its Eco Options brand, which encompasses some 6,000 of its products, including light bulbs.

It is far from alone.  Furniture retailer Crate & Barrel has begun selling a competitively priced sofa stuffed with soybean-derived foam. And according to Mike Italiano of the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability in Washington, which works with large multinational companies to create green manufacturing standards, global lighting products giant Philips has announced its commitment to move toward a fully energy-efficient product line. 

But while large corporations look for ways to help save consumers from themselves, consumers can help save the planet and some money by breaking themselves of environmentally insensitive habits and brand loyalties.

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