This beginning project for our class was able to give me insight into what it actually means to be sustainable. I had never really been introduced to the topic of sustainability or really even how to be sustainable. Of course, I had the usual teaching of what to recycle and how to be environmentally conscious, but never really thought about how to be a sustainable human. Whether that was reducing my consumption, or looking at better ways to consume, I never know how to be sustainable. It was nice to be introduced to a topic in a low-stress environment like this project to realize how it is important to be sustainable. With that idea, I never actually realized how hard it was to be a sustainable product or to produce sustainably. There were always factors like price and a new product, but when you create those products, it never made sense to me why they could never break into the market. Now, after the projects, I truly understand why it is nearly impossible for these products to break into the market.
First, the price or value of a product is the most important factor in sustainable products. People want to get the best value, and they want to buy it cheap. They always want to weigh the benefits with the costs, and usually pick the product that has the least costs. However, they never take into account what their consumption could mean for other parts of the environment. Usually, at least in the United States, consumers are only concerned about themselves and concerned about the value that they are getting. That is why no products can break into the market. When you start a new company, it is hard to come in at an affordable price, and have the necessary marketing to make them a household name. It showed me that many people are focused on price alone, and companies cannot compete on price alone. These companies are breaking into the market, so they need some sort of bottom line. That is where these sustainably conscious companies stand. During these presentations, I noticed that all but three or four of the projects were at the third tick mark or higher on the living principles assessment. I would consider three to be average and that they are doing ok in the market. This was an alarming realization for me. That meant that all of these companies were doing the right thing, but were unable to break into the market, which kept their prices very high. These products are not able to change the intrinsic behaviors that consumers have, which is making it more difficult for them to get into their respective markets. The value that they are showing in their products is still far too low, and that is why they cannot break into the market.
Another reason these products are sticking is that they are not the “disruptive” type of product that make them break into the market. As we read in the third generation reading, a product needs to be disruptive in order to really be considered a part of this sustainably conscious consumer. The products that we all presented were conscious of how they were making the products, but nothing was disruptive to the market. The ideas may be innovative, but they are not changing the market, and that is what is needed in these products. You need to be finding the need better for the consumer, rather than trying to be sustainable to be sustainable. Making the need for the consumer to be sustainably conscious would be the way of being disruptive in the market. Finding that change is critical, along with balancing it with the need. Finding a niche market is the way to start off, then you can expand as a company. That is how a company must start. The companies that were presented in class did have that change, but there may not have been a need necessarily. They may be good in concept, but they do not change anything significant. Instead, they are feel good companies and make the consumer feel good about buying from them or trying to help the company. That is not satisfying a need. Instead, that is just making yourself feel better, and that will get you nowhere in the marketplace and sustainability will continue to be an afterthought.
Lastly, as I mentioned at the start, the main problem is consumption. Consumption is what is causing us to be more focused on sustainability and how we can fix our issues as a country when it comes to consumerism. In the United States, consumerism is starting to become a real problem. It is a behavioral characteristic that we don’t know if we can truly change. That is the problem with sustainable companies and products, is that they have to find a way to disrupt that behavior. These behaviors have become so intrinsic that we buy most products without thinking. We just look for the brand name and buy it without thinking about the potential consequences. There is never a value of the trade-off, and that was apparent in our presentations. For example, in the Bite toothpaste presentation, we just take toothpaste for granted. We think that toothpaste is something that we must have and just buy the nearest tube of toothpaste. But, we are consuming without thinking. There are many chemicals and many potential problems for the tubes of toothpaste that we buy. Now, there must be a new way to combat that, but since toothpaste tubes are such a part of our society, there is almost no real way to stop it. The only way is to find a product that is so disruptive that it stops the entire toothpaste industry. Consumerism is starting to kill more people and organisms around us that we don’t even see it. Innovation is the key to that success, but just because we have innovation does not mean that we will have that success in changing our consumerism problem. Instead, we must find the innovation that will disrupt the market place to change our intrinsic behaviors. Overall, these cases helped teach me what it means to be sustainable and opened my eyes to how I can change my own ways of buying products.