Buying green: Is there any point?

(CNN) -- What's the point?

It's a question everyone shopper must have asked themselves at some time while weighing up the choice between "green", and non-"green" options.

Faced with the scale of the planet's environmental crisis -- climate change, pollution, species extinction -- what possible difference can the choices we make at the mall produce?

The answer is a lot, according to Clare Harris, editor of New Consumer magazine.

"The choices we make as individuals are important, if only because I think humans work by example," she says.

"What one person does, another will follow, and then we begin to see the numbers that will make a real difference."

When the tipping point toward green shopping behavior is reached, when enough people change their behavior, then collectively we will make a difference.

"There's always a danger that if people think too hard about the issue then they may think 'what's the point, I can't make any difference,'" says Harris.

"But together we can, and I think and hope buying green will` just become the default option for people. Just what they do."

Because in our consumer society we all seek to define ourselves by what we purchase, being seen to be green is a powerful motivator for change.

"Consumerism is all about behavior, and while in an ideal world we would consume less, we need to work toward that by consuming better," says Harris.

"If someone in the street buys a hybrid car, other people will see it and think 'that's quite cool', and perhaps buy one themselves. When that begins to happen we start to see a real change."

Following the herd

Retailers also operate a herd mentality, and react swiftly to an increased interest from the public with a wealth of new -- or re-designed -- products.

"Because more people are buying green, it's got much more High Street," says Harris.

"It's lost that rarefied status: now it is the average Joe going green, as well as the West London film star."

For some though green equals expensive and there is the danger that it will just become perceived as another mark of exclusivity -- something for the rich to buy to show their wealth and flash their conscience, rather than a solution for everyone.

There is even the danger that we will actually buy more, additional 'green' goods to equip a new lifestyle.

But Harris argues that the upscale image of environmentally-friendly goods is just a stage in the development of the market.

"In some ways it needed to be exclusive and aspirational to begin with in order for normal retailers to see it as something worth aping and taking on," she says.

This has meant that 'green' products have moved from the expensive and exclusive to the everyday and widely available.

"(British supermarket) Sainsbury's has gone so far as to say that its organic sales, at $14m a week, are fueling its current growth spurt," says Matt Reed, a research fellow at the Countryside and Community Research Institute.

"Now organic is embedded in people's beliefs, so they may be more reluctant to surrender it."

Plus, as more and more people buy green, the products get better: more money is invested in research and development; they are more thoroughly road-tested.

"There is still this myth that buying green means getting something substandard," says Harris. "But that really is an outdated view. 'Green' is now just as good."

"Of course, there is a compromise if you want to live a truly low-impact life. But perhaps we need to shift our expectations of what we can have. Ultimately, we can't just swap our current lifestyle for a green version, that's not enough, and we will have to make real changes.

"We need to ask: do we need all this stuff? Can we buy different? Make and mend? That's what we used to do, but we've sort of been trained out of that way of thinking."

In the end, many environmentalists would argue we simply have no choice -- we have to behave differently, we have to mutate to survive to face the challenges of the new century and buying green is the first step on that road.

"We are already seeing the consequences of what happens when we don't buy the green option with climate change," says Harris.

A step along the road

Are there reasons to hope? Certainly.

The hole in the ozone layer, remember that? In the late 1980's and early 1990's it was a serious concern that the CFCs in aerosols, refrigerators and other products were harming the Earth's protective layer.

In response to public and governmental pressure manufacturers changed their products and a crisis was averted.

Admittedly the scale of change required is dwarfed by climate change, but there is another factor that offers hope: price.

As the hydrocarbon-based fuels blamed for climate change -- oil, gas -- rise in price, green becomes the cheaper option, and the simple dynamics of the market may help shift consumers on to less energy-hungry options.

"As oil and gas prices rise so is the price of artificial chemical fertilizers - the lynch-pin of industrial agriculture's claims to be 'efficient' and capable of high-yields," said a spokesman for the organic food advocates the Soil Association.

"In the UK, the price of nitrogen fertilizer has doubled over the past year to around $660 per tonne. With oil currently at over $130 a barrel and with OPEC warning it could reach $200 by the end of the year, it has been suggested that the price of fertilizer could hit $1,000 a tonne.

"At these prices, the claimed efficiency of fossil-fuel and fertilizer dependent industrial farming begins to collapse."

Organic food production uses up to 26 per cent less energy than conventional farming, with the Soil Association predicting the UK market will grow ten percent in 2009 despite rising fuel costs, that's four of five times more than the general food sector.

"On a prosaic level you can see the difference straight away in your wallet when you buy green, and this will only get more apparent as energy prices rise," says Harris.

"The green option is frequently the cheap option; if not upfront, certainly over the long term.

"This awareness is spreading, the profile of people getting involved in things like campaigns against plastic bags is changing. Now a much more broad section of society is getting involved and we have seen a huge shift in behavior," she says.

"So yes, I do feel positive, and I really do see the point."

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