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The rise of eco-commerce
The green pound is up for grabs, and companies are keen to help us spend ours. But how do consumers spend in a way that is genuinely less harmful to the environment and avoid the greenwashing trap?
 
Author: Ruth Kibble, Features Writer
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The climate crisis has rightly or wrongly become a multi-billion-dollar marketing opportunity, but for individual consumers, the simple decision to ‘buy green’ can in fact be fraught with challenges. What use is buying an item marketed as eco-friendly but purchasing it from well-known polluters like Temu, which mass-produce thousands of tons of plastic per day, wrap it in more plastic, and ship to your door from thousands of miles away? And can we expect the everyday consumer to know and understand the implications of every single purchase in order to arrive at a decision that feels good but actually does good too?
For decades, small-scale, profitable eco-initiatives that blended environmental messaging with commercial success have launched, grown, become darlings of the market, and been snapped up by multinationals or, worse, had a crash down to earth after initial success. Big names that seemed to get this right for a long time were Tesla (at the vanguard of the EV sector until the recent catastrophic market consequences of Musk’s entry into politics), the Body Shop (independent for decades, bought by L’Oréal in 2006, and barely survived administration in 2024), Innocent Smoothies (famously now owned by Coca-Cola) and Wild plastic-free deodorant (recently acquired by Unilever).
Buying green and feeling seen
Ethical start-ups capture the hearts and minds of consumers who want to ease their conscience, but is it ‘selling out’ when those brands are acquired by big players, even if they are offering the capacity and resources to make the large-scale impact founders dream of? With every small start-up product that gets snapped up, fans of the original complain vehemently, but it also speaks to the willingness of corporates to pay attention and respond to consumer demand.
Certainly, big companies are buying the disruptors’ reputations that they could not generate organically, but it also speaks to an awareness of market trends towards that which is sustainable, low-carbon, and scalable as well as lucrative. It is a tricky route to navigate; maintaining the authenticity of these brands after acquisitions is crucial, as that often serves as their key differentiator. The moment that unique appeal fades, the brand risks becoming just another product, leading to disillusioned customers going elsewhere. But the reality is that customers who buy these products are often prepared to pay a premium, and big brands know this. They can market the product as a way for consumers to ‘do their bit’ and charge more accordingly, often because higher-quality, low-carbon emissions products genuinely do cost more to make and distribute, but also because there is a healthy profit margin that can be built in when such production happens at the scale that the big brands can access.
The cost of overconsumption
Anything and everything we purchase takes some sort of resource from somewhere, and that can feel difficult to grapple with for large, research-heavy purchases like cars, let alone dozens of times per week in your average supermarket shop.
Customers who buy these products are often prepared to pay a premium, and big brands know this
No one can claim ignorance of the crisis at hand: buying any item in 2025 means stewardship and responsibility of that item, including its packaging, carbon footprint, air miles, and disposal at the end of its useful life. That should be considered when making the decision to buy.
It is easy to simply say ‘buy less,’ but even that requires a level of diligence and determination to beat the algorithms slickly designed to sell, sell, sell, no matter the environmental cost. We can, and should, take a moment before spending our money anywhere to think – do I really need this? Where is my money going? Can I afford it, and what is the impact?
However, from making the items that are available in the first place, to considering options for environmentally friendly disposal at the end of their life, every consumer is operating within an imperfect system. Those of us privileged enough to be able to choose can do so in a way that strikes a balance between ethical and convenient. But the poorest in society, those who cannot access high-quality organic foods, plastic-free household items, electric vehicles and so on, must also operate within such a system, and with less privilege and bandwidth to allocate to such decisions. It is how the system supports itself, and us, to do better, that makes a bigger difference. While green consumerism is a step forward, vigilance is needed to ensure real impact, not just profit or empty promises.
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