When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
I think there is two important points that you haven’t considered:
Information asymmetry: in economics, this is the situation where one party has more/better information than the other. Of course a big corporation will have more information about a product I’m using that I would on every product I use, especially given that they can hire as many specialists as they want. Because of this, consumers should not be expected to take care of all societal change through their choices
You seem to imply that these companies only exist to satisfy a customer need. While this is partially true, this completely omits the fact that since 15 years, every company has a marketing department, whose sole purpose is to suscit this need in the consumer mind. Company are not just need-fulfilling machines, but also self feeding systems. You can’t talk about the fact that renewing your phone emits a lot of carbon without talking about the fact that every phone company spends millions at making you want to renew it