Companies try to cash in on green trend, but should consumers buy it?

Does anyone want a tree?

It's a foot-tall spruce. I'll even throw in the green-checkered, cotton bag it was tucked into, along with the pine cone decorated with a tiny wood chip painted to resemble a little bird.

How, you might wonder, did I wind up with a tree in a box?

Follow the logic of Coinstar, the Bellevue-based coin-counting company that sent it to me:

Copper mining has big environmental impacts. Coins have a lot of copper in them. If you leave those pesky pennies sitting in your sock drawer, someone has to mine more copper to put new pennies into circulation. Thus, taking your change to a Coinstar machine is good for the environment.

And nothing says eco-friendly like mailing a spruce to a newspaper reporter.

Welcome to the green-selling machine.

The idea that sex sells is now sharing space with the fact that green sells. Big time. Corporate America has discovered that it tugs at customers' heartstrings these days. People seem to have a big appetite for all things green.

Sales of organic products have gone from $10 billion in 2003 to more than $16 billion in 2006, and were expected to surpass $20 billion last year, though the numbers are still being tallied. More broadly, products sold as sustainable or healthy — everything from vitamins to wind power — added up to more than $200 billion in the U.S. in 2005, by one estimate.

But it's become a Wild Green West out there.

Legions of marketers are trying to infiltrate your overtaxed eco-consciousness, with pitches ranging from earnest to ridiculous.

The result is customers are growing warier. And now government watchdogs are taking notice. The Federal Trade Commission is looking to update its 1990s-era guides advising companies what environmental claims they can make.

"I think the amount of terminology that has creatively come out of the marketing departments to describe attributes of 'green' rivals the ability to name paint," Michelle Harvey of the Environmental Defense Fund testified at one of the FTC's hearings. "How many ways can you name a green color?"

Trinkets and junkets

As an environment reporter, I get an extra dose from companies hoping to get free advertising.

Next to my desk sits a bag of inducements. A bowl made from a palm leaf. The label says it's "Renewable, Compostable, Elegant."

A green-tinted water bottle from a company that sells replacement parts for toilets: "Save Water, Save Money, Start By Fixing A Leaky Toilet."

A chain of thrift stores just mailed me a used CD from a band I've never heard of, Oleander. The accompanying note says people are going green by buying used stuff.

Some companies go much further.

The Body Shop, purveyor of various beauty products, recently offered to take me on an all-expenses-paid trip to Nicaragua. I would spend a few days touring a "fair-trade" plantation where some of their sesame oil comes from.

Alas, I can't take gifts from people I'm writing about. And my boss isn't about to foot the bill for a junket to Central America.

Getting into your head

Around here, The Hartman Group has been a chief beneficiary of the rise in green marketing. For 19 years, the Bellevue-based marketing-research firm has literally picked through people's pantries and bathroom cabinets, trying to figure out what motivates them to buy eco-friendly products.

In the past, many of its clients were smaller companies, focused on things such as organic food. But recently Hartman's president, Laurie Demeritt, says she's seen more Fortune 500 companies that are convinced that "organic" is no fad.

Demeritt says she has also seen an evolution among consumers. The latest trend is "local" — products either made nearby, or connected to a distinctive place. Like cheese made in some idyllic English village.

"It's not enough to say you're organic if all of your competitors are, too," Demeritt says. "If you really want to stand out at the shelf, you're really going to have to take it to the next level."

Environmentalists welcome genuine corporate efforts to make products more benign — and to let consumers know about it. Even Wal-Mart, reviled by some environmentalists as an engine of wasteful consumerism, has won praise for efforts to reduce waste and improve energy efficiency.

This year, for the first time ever, the venerable Sierra Club endorsed a product — a new line of home-cleaning products from Clorox.

But not everyone with a green label gets kudos. There's a fine line between real environmental efforts and "greenwashing."

Last year, a Philadelphia marketing firm called TerraChoice went to big-box stores and counted no fewer than 1,018 products claiming to have some environmental benefit.

All but one of them committed one of what the company dubbed the "Six Sins of Greenwashing."

The most common was the "sin of the hidden trade-off." For example, a company might bill a computer as "energy-efficient," but doesn't mention things such as toxic metals in the electronics.

Another sin is vagueness. Think how many things you see labeled "All Natural."

"Arsenic is natural," TerraChoice notes. "So are uranium, mercury and formaldehyde."

In April, the FTC had one of its hearings on green marketing and heard about all kinds of catchphrases: carbon neutral, fair trade, compostable, sustainable, renewable, recyclable, organic, natural and biodegradable.

All things eco-chic

In April, a carnival of green consumerism materialized at a downtown Seattle convention hall as the Green Festival — a 7-year-old cross between a trade show and an environmental rally, billed as "parties with a purpose" — made its Northwest debut.

Thirty thousand people showed up.

Most of the companies that came were small, and sincere. The booth for Manitoba Harvest, purveyor of food and oil from hemp, was erected next to Dagoba, which sells organic, fair-trade, sustainable chocolate.

In front of them all, televisions greeted visitors with clips from "Planet Green." That's a new offering from the people who bring you the Discovery Channel. It's 24 hours a day of all things eco-chic.

Through all this hoopla came a prime target, wheeling a stroller. And Holly Sommer, mother of 4-month-old Oliver, looked a little dazed.

Sommer is 30, lives in Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood, teaches English at Ballard High and doesn't think of herself as an environmentalist. She associates that with people "chaining themselves to trees."

But she describes herself as "environmentally conscious." She can't bring herself to use cloth diapers, because it grosses her out. But she has a twinge of guilt for using disposables. She came to the festival to check out options for residential solar power.

Skepticism, though, has clouded her green vision.

"You don't even know if it's real or not," she said. "Every company is a 'green company.' "

What shade are you?

Marty McDonald spends a lot of time thinking about people like Sommer.

As the founder and creative director of egg, a Seattle marketing firm, his clients have included environmental groups, a renewable-power company, the Seattle Monorail Project, the company that makes Gardenburgers and Nature's Path, a company that makes organic breakfast cereal.

So McDonald is a student of what motivates people to buy environmental products.

Yet counterintuitively, McDonald says that usually means not trying to persuade someone to buy a product because it's better for the Earth. Instead, he tells clients their primary mission is to figure out how to appeal to a customer's self-interest.

Don't say an organic apple is good because it saves the planet. Say it's good because it's more healthful without toxic pesticides.

Don't try to convince Holly Sommer that disposable diapers are evil. Tell her your organic, fair-trade, local, carbon-neutral, biodegradable, reusable ones aren't as messy.

And, for the record, McDonald does not recommend mailing a spruce tree to reporters.

seattletimes.com