Given my weekend activities, it was hard not to notice how environmental issues – sustainability, organic, alternative energy - have become so built into our corporate and consumer culture. From veggies grown without pesticides to cars that use alternatives to gasoline to companies that market themselves as green; things have really changed since the environmentalism of the 1970’s. Back then this was not part of Thanksgiving advertising, and was viewed by most companies and most consumers as at best elitist and at worst totally marginal.

How did this happen? Part of the answer is that companies have learned that “green” influences “green.” Consumers will factor into the choices they make a perception of the environmental impact of their choice; they may go beyond factoring it in, they might base a decision on this differentiator and may even choose to pay more. 

Why have consumers made this choice? Maybe health problems are so acute that consumers believe they must make different purchasing decisions if they are to protect their health and their families. Maybe the insecurity born of our oil dependence has pushed people to despair and now action? Maybe, they believe the science about global warming and, based on their affection for their yet to be born great grandchildren, they are trying to make new choices.

If people act out of self-interest even in the case of “Green” issues when those interests are often not that immediate or demonstrably linked to improving their lives, then how do people decide which interests capture their passions and commitments. Why not other food and goods production issues like workplace safety and employee protections?

When an employer doesn’t pay for employee health care, less healthy workers process our food and sick employees use public health facilities that drive up all of our health care premiums.

Employees earning low-wages and toiling without job security are less likely to do their jobs heroically, whether they are airport baggage screeners or office building security guards.

If your employer doesn’t invest in professional development and fails to identify career ladders so employees don’t see a future with the company, then work as a child care provider or home health aide is nothing more than a temporary disposable job not a source of pride born from taking loving care of our most vulnerable.

For all of the shortcomings of the environmental movement, they have succeeded in creating a market for environmentally friendly products. And the market can be a very powerful ally. Can we imagine what commercials we might see in ten or twenty years, if companies were compelled by their bottom line to reach consumers who cared deeply about how their workers were treated?