For many years, we have been hearing about green adhesives, paints, household cleaners and buildings—basically, green everything. With the majority of U.S. consumers, numerous non-governmental organizations, such as the U.S. Green Building Council (which developed the LEED green building program), as well as countless special interest groups and various state and federal agencies all pushing for “green” materials in every phase of life, it seems like we should have made significant progress toward a greener world by the year 2013. The fact that we are not closer to that new paradigm sometimes seems puzzling—until one starts to take a closer look at the reasons why the sustainability movement is moving so much more slowly than most of us would have thought a decade ago.
Let’s start with the consumer. Countless polls have shown that more than 80% of consumers favor the introduction of green products in all phases of the economy, but only about 17% of them actually purchase green products. It seems they only do so when the premium for buying green is generally no more than 5% over the non-green version of whatever they are purchasing. A premium of greater than 5% tends to represent what we in the business refer to as the “kiss of death.”