Is it a carrot or a stick?I’ve previously written about the difficulty consumers face when trying to do the right thing by the environment and trying to ensure they buy from responsible companies. Well this week I’ve come across two initiatives that appear to be aimed at helping them. Walmart announced last week that it is launching a sustainability index. Starting with a questionnaire aimed at establishing the responsibility of its many suppliers the ultimate aim of the index is a simple product rating that informs consumers. The other initiative I found out about is GoodGuide which is collating information about the health, environmental and social impacts of products which results in a simple score for the product. The main mover behind goodguide has form – he exposed a lot of the problems encountered in sweatshops in Vietnam. GoodGuide came about when he realized that even with his specialist knowledge and interest he still didn’t know what products were harmful for his child. GoodGuide has developed an application that Apple are making available on iPhones which will enable users to get a product’s rating by holding their phone over it. These interesting initiatives follow on from Tesco’s promise to carbon label many of its products and attempts by Boots the Chemist to do the same. All scoring, rating and labeling systems come in for criticism. People don’t understand them, they’re not standardised or are too standardised, only some people look at them etc. But maybe they don’t need to help the consumer. Maybe we won’t understand all the labeling and maybe we’ll still be confused about what action to take. Does that matter? The people behind GoodGuide are saying that companies are coming to them to give them more information and changing practices so that they improve their scores. Walmart’s enormous buying power means that suppliers are sure to want to improve scores as well. So the impact will be that supplier companies improve their behaviour so that they can look better. Seems like a pretty effective carrot to me. Add a CommentYour comment will appear once it has been approved. |