Special Guest Blogger: Dorothee Vogel on How UK Retailers are Handling Green Issues

Nate Elliott | November 09, 2007, 03:18 PM

My colleague Dorothee Vogel covers online commerce and online travel in Europe, and is Jupiter's resident expert on green issues -- especially how green issues are impacting the travel and retail industries. She attended a conference on that topic last week, and filed this report:

"Carbon off-setting is like paying the RSPCA so you can kick your dog," was one of the quotes from the Alliance Boots Group's Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at the Carbon Footprint Consumer Research Conference last week in London. At the same event, sustainability consultancy CarbonSense said that they have stopped recommending off-sets as a carbon emission reduction strategy because this approach limits creativity, and distracts companies from impacts of their actions. But while off-sets were being roundly criticized by some, one delegate responsible for environmental projects in developing countries said that a lot of their projects would not receive funding without donations from off-setting schemes. It's just one of the many dilemmas in the current green debate!

Changing consumer behaviour through leadership is another dilemma. There is a gap between consumers' attitudes towards improving sustainability (which are quite strong) and the actions consumers take to live a sustainable lifestyle (which are not nearly as strong). Governments and companies can do much to help bridge this gap -- and consumers are expecting guidance and help with behavioral change. Interestingly, both Boots and ASDA have chosen to pursue certain environmental efforts without promoting them to consumers. ASDA have given themselves a target of delivering no waste to landfills by 2010, but is not marketing this effort ("...because our consumers know we are not the most environmentally friendly company around"). Meanwhile, Boots is working to reduce its emissions, but it doesn't list carbon-footprint information on product labels because they don't think consumers yet fully understand such information. Retailers are also wary of using claims such as "locally sourced," "natural," and "carbon neutral" because they don't want the extra attention from the ASA that such claims inevitably bring.

Of course companies should undertake green initiatives altruistically, for the benefit of the planet. But when retailers choose whether and how to promote their green initiatives, it's important that they keep in mind which audiences will respond to these promotions, what issues are most important to those audiences, and what the retailers reasonably stand to gain.

Dorothee's been researching and thinking about these questions quite a bit recently, and will soon publish two reports on these topics. "European Green Consumers: Identifying and Seizing the Opportunity Online" should be released next week, and "Green Online Travel Buyers: Assessing the Ethical Marketing Opportunity Online" should be released by early December.