Smug twats aside…
1) Consumerism has the power to empower less environmentally degrading products in the marketplace.
2) Trends have the power to alter consuming habits.
I found a great deal of irony in the fact that Whole Foods Market sold the Hindmarch bags last July. The company has some seriously strict quality standards. For example, the banned ingredients list spans anywhere between 6 and 8 pages. Even if an item meets those criteria, the manufacturer/supplier’s background (e.g labor practices, environmental impact of aquaculture methods) are taken into account. So why did Whole Foods Market sell the Anya Hindmarch bags?
I believe that this situation is representative of the ever-present divided clientel of this natural foods giant: the Granola Groupies and Fashion Foodies. The motive was to push reusable bags into the fashion limelight, as “Fashion Foodies” represent the largest obstacle to the company’s phasing out plastic bags*.
Background info in a nutshell: You have to be flexible to customer demands (to a certain extent. If a change results in rioting in the streets, that change is typically considered a bad move for business.
Back to changing perceptions of reuse from granola to fashionable… Though such a move only spawned further consumerism, it will have longer lasting effects on the marketplace as consumers will be much more accepting of a phaseout. News on eliminating plastic bags from Whole Foods Market tomorrow…
*This was deduced out of company meetings on the subject spanning from June ‘05 to Oct ‘07. -One of which was with Tom Wright, the company’s top sustainability consultant and founder of Sustainablebizness.com
