There is one thing that might help the green cause (9-Aug-07)

From Lauraibm

MI Summary

It is thought that people will not pay a premium price for “green” products, unless they are eco-eager, however they may well choose a product over others if it costs the same while having more green credentials. This can be backed up by Dell’s recent “Plant a Tree for me” scheme, where customers can offset their carbon emissions by paying a couple pounds extra for the computer, in practice only 1% of Dell’s customers have supported the scheme.

In reality such schemes need to be made mandatory by legislation in order for them to be a success. In contrast to the customer paying the extra to offset the emissions, the article argues that Michael Dell could pay the extra at the cost of only 1% of his fortune; this could be an option to helping the green cause.

Text of Article

Earlier this year, I was asked by the representative of a big computing company (no, no that one, nor the other one) about how it ought to market its new line of more "green" computers. My job emphatically is not to do marketing for computer companies, but I remarked that my suspicion is that people will not pay a premium for green anything, unless they're eco-eager, in which case you can flog them almost anything. In an email, I said: "Look at how many people profess that they back green measures - except when it comes to their cheap plane flights and petrol prices ... They won't pay more. But they will choose it over others if it costs the same while having more green credentials."

At that moment Michael Dell was planning an empirical test of my assertion. In January he launched the "Plant a Tree For Me" scheme in the US, where you could pay a little more for your computer in order to have its carbon emissions for three years offset by a tree (well, one-third of a tree) planted on your behalf. But would people pay £1 more for a desktop or £3 more for a laptop to be green?

The answer - or at least, what we managed to wring out of Dell - was that by April in the US it had planted 20,000 trees through the scheme (How green are Dell's customers in Europe?, August 2). It sounds like a lot, but the back of my envelope says that's just 1% of Dell's computer sales. For every 100 customers, only one was prepared to pony up the money that might ameliorate - in the most minimal way - the effects of their decision on everyone else. Bear in mind that offsetting wouldn't make up for the emissions of the factories which made the machines, nor the effects of the mines needed to extract the raw materials in the machines.

Need another example of how un-green we are? Look at Microsoft's "Live Earth Tree", launched on July 3: "17,863 pledges so far!" it said, bravely, precisely a month later. This on a site where you can pledge - nothing more active - what you're going to do to "join the battle to halt climate change", as one breathless site put it: "The tree is a unique social networking site, as visitors can search the tree to find leaves created by family, friends and celebrities worldwide." It's hardly rivalling Bookface, or whatever that site with millions of users is called, is it?

The reality is that most of us won't do enough on our own to make any difference to climate change. We won't sacrifice things now for pleasant uncertainties in the future. That's the entire problem with climate change: it seems so much less proximate than terrorism. It doesn't make handy videos that the TV channels can show.

The reality is that we, as consumers, won't make those decisions voluntarily. They have to be made mandatory by legislation. Self-regulation won't work. Self-sacrifice doesn't work, and thank you Michael Dell for providing such a wonderful laboratory in which to demonstrate it.

But there is one thing that might help. Some of the richer folk could make contributions to things like tree-planting. Michael Dell's net worth is estimated at £7.7bn (en.wikipedia.org). Last year Dell sold 39m computers.

At £3 each - because Dell sells a lot of laptops - it would cost Michael Dell £117m to personally get trees planted to offset all those computers Dell sold last year. That's less than 1% of his fortune. Funny how that number keeps turning up. Could you bear to be 1% less rich, Michael?

• Source: Guardian Unlimited