The Struggle with Being Green
To all the momprenuers and greenies out there! As many of you know we market our business, Whole World Baby as Eco-friendly. I’ve got to say, there is a hectic balance between practicality and Eco-friendliness that has been quite a struggle and on a couple of occasions even compromised.
What I’m talking about is the reality of being green. We started out with our best intentions of being as green as we possibly could. Our fabrics are remnants, we drive locally to pick up and reduce landfill waste, our organics are made in USA instead of receiving from overseas, communicate 90% of the time electronically to reduce transportation and for convenience. Our mailers were going to be made out of left over junk mail we collected from family and friends, our labels were going to be left over reused cardboard we cut ourselves, our biz cards were home printed and cut using old manila folders and the label on the headscarves were going to be non toxic stamped images.
Well? Honestly? We compromised, our values were revealed as we started to make business decisions affected by branding and image, and what will “sell” and what’s “expected”. Our nerve for being “way out there” conflicted with being fashionable. We needed to sell our product if we wanted to help our children’s aid partners, right? The stamping idea came out sloppy looking and inconsistent, who would buy that? The business cards looked like we were being cheap NOT eco friendly, and they took a lot of time to make, so we settled for professionally printed cards on recycled card stock. The mailers made out of junk mail ended up looking like trash and not worthy of the headscarves for babies that are priced a little more than normal to include a bit for charitable giving. Can you image a package arriving looking like rolled up trash? A customer might throw it away! We tried to make it look better, but had to keep adding material to it, which defeated the purpose of minimal packaging. So we decided recycled paper envelopes were good enough. How could we raise money for charities if no one wants to buy the head scarves because our image doesn’t meet expectations!! Are we making decisions for the right reasons or are we so immersed in this ideological and aesthetic driven paradigm that we crush our best intentions out of our need to sell?
Where we have been very clever and successful was with the headscarf’s tag. Each tag is made from 100% post consumed paper. The loop that attaches the tag to the headscarves is a tassel. Once untied the tag with tassel can be used as a bookmark, therefore no trash! We also use just about every inch of fabric we can, even small scraps are combined with other fabrics to make unique and charming “one of a kind” scarves you can find only at our retail partner shops. So we are very creative in our green efforts at every opportunity we can. The balance is always a challenge, but I think when all is said and done, we’ve done a pretty good job making some conscientious compromises.
Thoughts? Ideas? Love to hear some of your ideas.
