It’s a nice headline and makes it sound like the green product
and business movement is in trouble. But the story, while
interesting, doesn’t really change the reality for business.

Here’s the story. The Times piece focuses on the rise
and (sort of) fall of Clorox’ Green Works cleaning products.
Launched with much fanfare in 2008, Green Works quickly became the
biggest player in the niche green cleaning space, hitting $100
million in sales before falling to $60 million in the recession
(which is still a very respectable number in this market
space).

First, consumers never liked to pay more
for green and, second, consumer pressure is not the biggest force
driving the greening of business.

The Times crows that “As recession gripped the country,
the consumer’s love affair with green products, from recycled
toilet paper to organic foods to hybrid cars, faded like a bad
infatuation.” So green products are on their way out, right?

Not quite.

First, as the next sentence points out, “sales at farmers’
markets and Prius sales are humming along now” (fyi, href=”http://www.hybridcarblog.com/toyota-hybrid-sales-up-over-60-percent-in-february/”
target=”_blank”>Prius sales jumped 70% in February as oil
prices rose). So two of the three categories the Times uses to make
its point are actually growing, not fading.

Second, at the end of the article, a fascinating chart shows the
“green share” of household products holding steady at about 2
percent over the last few years. The conventional brands like
Clorox have flattened out - even as Clorox sales dipped, the total
number of entrants has continued to grow. The niche brands, such as
Method and Seventh Generation, have continued to nibble away at
market share and actually grew during the recession.

To the extent that the premium-priced green products named by
the Times have taken a hit, consumers’ disdain isn’t news:
Recession or not, mass consumers never loved paying extra for
green.

Asking people to pay more for green is usually doomed. Green has
always been most effective as the “3rd button” (as my co-author and
I called it in our book href=”http://www.andrewwinston.com/books/green-to-gold.php”
target=”_blank”>Green to Gold) to press in marketing
pitches, after price and quality.

The Prius is the premium-priced exception that does not disprove
the rule. It’s is a special case, since the purchase confers a
range of emotional and value-laden benefits that household products
just don’t have (critics call the pride of ownership smugness -
and, yes, I own one).

Therefore, in the trenches of consumer product development, the
real story is the pursuit of more sustainable products that, as
P&G execs say, create “no tradeoffs” for customers. Why ask
people to pay more?

As more companies present green
products at no additional cost, Wal-Mart and others will be happy
to give them more shelf space, because what’s really happening with
consumers is subtler than a supposedly fading infatuation with
green.

As the Times story indicates, there is no rise in the percentage
of “true green” consumers who will pay more for sustainable
products. But there is a serious rise in the number of so-called href=”http://www.andrewwinston.com/blog/2008/06/conflicted_consumers.php”
target=”_blank”>”conflicted” or “conscious” consumers, which
has been building for years.

These buyers, which are quickly becoming the majority of
consumers, not a niche segment, want it all. They demand more
sustainable products at the same or lower price. The last sentence
of the Times article actually captures this phenomenon:

“Sarah Pooler, 55, said she did not normally buy green products
but would pick them up if they were on sale…’Bottom line, if it’s
green and it’s a good deal, I’ll buy it’, said Ms. Pooler.

And so the race is still on to provide green products at the
same price and quality.

But exactly because Ms. Pooler and millions of other buyers are
still waiting for that price equality, I would argue that what is
and has been driving the greening of business is not consumer
pressure but a mix macro-level forces and operational
sustainability success stories, the countless examples of reduced
packaging, lowered toxicity, and condensed versions of products(in
detergents for example) that save shelf space and tons of energy in
shipping and storage.

At the macro level, the greening of
products and companies is accelerating because the sustainability
drivers are only getting stronger.

Rising resource prices, ever-increasing transparency demands
about what’s in every product, and continuing pressure up the
supply chain from business customers are just a few of the big
forces.

Does anyone in the consumer product space seriously think
Wal-Mart (and other retailers) will stop demanding
sustainability-driven operational and product changes just because
of the recession? On the contrary, the need to lower costs in the
face of rising commodity prices is making eco-efficiency even more
economic.

So even if consumers develop fickle infatuations with certain
products, the business world is clearly developing a deep, abiding
love of - or at least growing respect for - the power of
sustainability.

(This post first appeared at href=”http://blogs.hbr.org/winston/” target=”_blank”>Harvard
Business Online and is reprinted here with the kind
permission of the author.)

Andrew Winston advises some of the world’s leading
companies on how to profit from environmental thinking.  He is
a globally recognized expert and speaker on the business benefits
of going green.  Andrew is the author of Green Recovery
and co-author of the bestseller Green to
Gold.