Losing green while going green
Friday, 7. August 2009
While munching away on some cracker/chip things and glancing at the package, I became aware of 
Terracycle, a company that takes waste reuses it and sells a new product. For example, they take old pepsi bottles, stuff them with the excrement of worms, and sell it as fertilizer. I recently read the not-so-recent article on how “Recycling Is Bullshit“, and even though recycling is not, in fact, bullshit, it made me rethink my waste habits. I love gadgets and I like to buy shiny new things, but I know I really should, in addition to recycling, start to reduce and reuse things.
So clicking through Terracycle’s website was pretty fun for a bit, signing up to terracycle, checking out the goods they had to sell, and scrolling through their blog. I am not sure how well the terracycling will go on my end…it is reassuring that everything is paid for – after you sign up a container will be sent to your home – but the quantity of what they are asking for is a little daunting. I signed up for the yogurt one figuring, hey, I eat some yogurt! But not only do you need to eat a specific brand you also need to send back 400 containers. I…don’t eat that much yogurt in a year…additionally, sometimes I like to reuse the pots for something (they are very good for holding nuts and bolts).
If the amount of materials I’ll need to be storing in my home before I am able to ship them out wasn’t a strike against it, the products they sell would be. It’s a new company so there isn’t much, but their recycled lunch box is simply some capri sun cases sewn together. Soda bottles sent in are rinsed out, filled with cleaning product, and given a new label – no melting down of materials or anything! Seems strange, then, that a bottle of window cleaning solution from terracycling costs about the same as a bottle of windex. Oh, but that is before the shipping and handling I need to pay to get it to me – a whopping ten dollars. I’m assuming this high S&H tag is because it is a chemical…but I am not sure I want to pay thirteen dollars for a liter of window cleaning solution….
Which brings us to the final point, which was a question raised by teracyle itself on the blog, The Eco Capitalist, and which is not necessarily Terracycle-centric. The question is,
Would you pay more to go green?
In my salad days the answer was yes. While living with my parents all the small income I had was disposable. I would buy cfl bulbs and recycled paper towels, telling my parents they needed to get on this bandwagon – we have to save the earth!
…and then I started accumulating bills. Between rent payments, student loans, gas prices, I must be frugal with the miniscule amount of money I am left with. Currently I buy green when it is immediately practical – I will fork out the extra money for CFL bulbs because I do not have to change them as often and they will save me electricity, I buy “organic” soap because it is trichlosan-free, I keep my hybrid (which I initially financed during those green years) because it saves me money on gas. But when it comes to the $4.99 box of granola in the recycled package versus the $3.99 box that hasn’t been recycled, unless I happened to have found an extra dollar in my jeans, I will go for the lower priced one.
These days the hierarchy is nutrition > price > green
I am not alone in this thought, as many of my friends will voice their love of Whole Foods, a market with wonderful produce, organic foods, and an atmosphere that just makes you feed good inside its walls, but hardly any of them shop there. “Their fruit is so fresh and it tastes so good….but it is so expensive!” said a friend just yesterday. Two of my siblings work at Whole Foods and receive a discount, but despite that it is still too expensive for them to do the majority of their shopping there. Even without these tough economic times it is hard to make people pay more for relatively little immediate gain.
One question that is always on my mind is – why are these “green goods” more expensive in the first place? When we talk about the benefit of recycled and reused materials, we talk about how less energy is needed to make them. Less energy use = more green, right? Well, less energy use should, logically, mean less money. If Terracycle is getting most of its raw materials for almost nothing, then why does it cost the same as a company that is purchasing completely new plastic? If paper towels are made with 50% recycled paper that did not need to undergo the same energy-intensive process as new paper does, why is it still more expensive to get them?
There are probably some very good answers to these questions but there are also probably some bad ones. The bottom line, though, regardless of what the answer is, is that as long as it is more expensive the majority of people will not buy it. Does this mean they are mass polluters that don’t care about the planet? Not necessarily. Some may do what they can to help, some may, oh, I dunno, buy that cheaper, non-green toilet paper, but shove it into a reusable bag and spend the next half hour pedaling furiously on their bicycle to get it back home. Who knows.
So how do we get cheap and green? It has to be a three-tiered solution consisting of the consumer, the producer, and the regulators (i.e. the government). Most of the time it seems to fall only on the consumer – it is green and goes towards the greater good, therefore you must pay more. Green consumers seem to accept this, “I will pay more because I am doing good!” but it leaves the people who cannot afford to pay more out and feeling guilty. We should also begin saying to these producers – your product is for the greater good and you should accept a smaller profit. The government, too, should realize the country benefits from these practices and offer tax breaks to all producers of green goods (not just the ones with the best lobbyists) and incentives to the consumers of those goods. Perhaps the sales tax could be less in certified “green” markets.
Currently the only people who seem to go green are the higher classes who have large disposable incomes. Sure, it costs very little to live off the grid, but getting off the grid requires sums of money the average American does not have access to.