Now more than ever, the green movement is gaining momentum and finally reaching the public sector. You cannot open a magazine, read a billboard, or watch television without at least a mention of something pertaining to sustainability. While the average person may still have their initial reserves about "green", I think they have also accepted that this is not going away in the future.

Still, the public sector has not embraced this movement like corporations have just yet. I believe this has to do with the fact that consumers cannot realize not only the ROI, but perhaps even both the tangible and intangible benefits quite yet.

The lack of embrace is not due to a lack of available choices. The average consumer has a vast number of green products they can purchase for use in all parts of life. Examples include; low VOC paint, efficient bulbs and appliances, hybrid cars, geothermal power, solar panels, renewable energy plans, bamboo flooring (by the way, I hate the plant...neither here nor there), and also organic food, etc. Enough, you get it. The point of this is that still, with all of the known tangible and intangible benefits, the average consumer will not go green in their personal lives until it is cost beneficial for them, especially when times are rough.

Smaller items with huge initial ROI’s, like CFL type bulbs, are now common in the public. This is partially due to the instant gratification and tangible savings right away, sans a large investment. On the other hand, spending that extra $5 dollars for a certified organic meal may sound great in practice, but times are tough, and that mass produced hormone -injected chicken breast is cheap. Sure, there might be intangible benefits to eating organic, but a large fact remains…There is no immediate monetary reward or savings for the organic food (usually the opposite!). Comparable cases to these are really when you get to test a consumer’s green conscience.

So is it cost-beneficial for the average person to install solar panels on their house? Is bamboo flooring going to be a better choice than laminate? Will a homeowner see a certain return on their investment for a tankless water heater? As seen in a recent article from the Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/green/chi-091025-buying-green-myths-pictures,0,5048990.photogallery, these are all case-by-case scenarios for individuals to decide which answer is the best.

Yet, similar to every economic decision that consumers’ encounter, there is that opportunity cost and benefit debate that each of us will have to make. And even though it is improving, for the time being the opportunity cost is greatly outweighing the benefits of going green in our personal lives. The good news is that this is all based around simple economics; supply and demand. Inevitably, the supply and demand curves will shift to a point where the consumer will have more economically feasible choices in the green marketplace, and the green conscience in all of us will rejoice.

Remember when Plasma TV’s first came out and they were the same price as a compact car?? Now you can practically win them in a cereal box. The same thing will inevitably happen with green products.

In the mean time, it is the duty of us “in the know” to open eyes on both the tangible and intangible benefits to going green and help expedite the inevitable transformation to a green economy. We are that part of society which can help influence how economically feasible going green is in the long-run. It’s kind of a cool thing to be on the forefront of something so big…I wonder if folks realized this during the Industrial Revolution?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Green Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.