Fighting Eco Fatigue – Green Companies Need to Take The Lead

Call it green fatigue or green over exposure or green noise. Whatever it is, consumers are starting to feel it and react. At first, it’s just throwing plastic water bottles in the trash, and then it’s using bleach and hot water to really get those white clothes, white.

Valerie Davis, president of Green Canary Sustainability Consulting. wrote a funny article at Environmental Leader titled Are Consumers Falling Off The Green Wagon, And Should We Care? that examines what we, as green business leaders should do about it.

While it appears that the green movement has finally reached a tipping point, the inevitable over-exposure is not far behind.

Consumers who never considered going green are surprisingly conserving energy and sorting trash. But on the other hand, green messages are everywhere and there’s only so much most consumers are willing to do.

Until this point, the green movement has been driving consumer change through a mixture of tactics focused on creating negative emotions – guilt and fear. Conserve and recycle to save the earth. Eat organic to save yourself.

At some point it becomes too much.

Any marketer or psychologist knows that creating a sense of concern can drive changes in behavior. People like to feel good, even superior about their actions. Consumers like to feel good about their purchases.

They do not like to be put in a position where it’s hard to generate those good feelings. In some ways, that’s where we are today. Years of creating a disposable, feel-good society leaves us with lots of behaviors to change…beginning with the way we do business.

As more and more companies take the lead in creating sustainable packaging, refusing to waste resources and finding the most eco friendly way to do business things will change. Until then consumers will increasingly find it too burdensome to do everything required to be eco-friendly.

It’s a race against time and eco friendly companies need to be leaders of the pack.

Photo Credit: Officenow at Flickr Under Creative Commons License