There are two big reasons many businesses never think of adopting sustainable practices. One, is of course money. Many stores and retail establishments operate on tight budgets and the owners usually assume (often times incorrectly) that making green upgrades or sustainable retrofits will cost them more money . This misperceived premium owners pay for the initial first cost of some green upgrades is usually coupled with the belief that they won’t make a return on their investment when in fact sustainable retrofits and/or green practices are almost always money savers in the long run and can attract more eco-conscious customers.
Which brings us to the second reason many retailers don’t see any green in being ‘green’. Often times owners don’t understand or see the effect their decisions on how they run their stores or what they choose to sell has on their customer traffic. I know for myself personally that I make a point of not going to delis or eateries that I know serve all their drinks in styrofoam cups seeing as there are plenty of better alternatives out there that could be used.
Greening Businesses One Sticker At A Time
Though a consumer’s decision may either be conscious, like my own, or unconscious when it comes to where he or she chooses to spend his or her dollar, the role the environment plays on such a decision continues to increase amongst the general consumer as environmental awareness also increases. Seeing as this decision making process is largely unobservable, businesses have a hard time understanding and verifying who is coming into their establishments and why.
The Viv sticker is a simple, yet clever, attempt at solving this disconnect that exists between businesses and their awareness of the eco-influenced decision making processes of their customer-base. The way it works is people request the free sticker from Viv then place it on the credit or debit card. Each sticker has a barcode that is scanned when the card is used to pay for something at a participating business. Once a participating business records a certain number of Viv purchases, it agrees to perform a “Green Action” outlined in its “Green Action Schedule” established at the outset of the program. For example, Joe’s pub will agree to retrofit all of its lighting to CFLs once they count 50 Viv stickered payments.
The idea of the Viv sticker is basically to get businesses to see the purchasing power of the green-minded public as well as the effect business owners’ decisions have on attracting that type of customer. Enrolling in the program allows a business to display the “Viv participating retailer” sticker and hopefully attract participating customers who may not have been interested otherwise. The program is still in it’s infancy and currently is only subject to San Francisco and the Bay area, but buzz is already being generated with it and plans to expand the program are in the works.
The Good: A simple clever way of attracting green-minded customers to businesses who in turn pledge to be more green.
The Bad: Though probably necessary for most ’sustainably reluctant’ businesses, it seems a little silly for a business to not be willing to do something that’s better for the environment, and its long term bottom-line, until they see a certain number of Viv sticker customers come through. Some may view it as akin to saying “we will kill this baby panda unless you buy 20 t-shirts” or passive environmental blackmail on the part of the business. The program is only in San Francisco at the moment.
The Bottom-Line: A good idea at connecting green-minded customers to businesses who somewhat perversely reward their patronage by going ‘greener’.
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