CHAPTER 28
Green marketing
KEN PEATTIE and MARTIN CHARTER
Introduction
The twentieth century was a time of unparal-
leled growth. The world’s population grew to
pass the six billion mark. We witnessed the
birth of the mass market and the boom in mass
production to satisfy its needs. As markets
became more competitive, so formal marketing
emerged and became increasingly important as
a means by which companies could continue to
grow their markets and their market shares.
The comfortable assumption was that the all-
out pursuit of economic growth was the most
beneficial strategy for development, because
the wealth generated could be invested to
improve the quality of life of those inside and
outside the industrialized economies.
At the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury, the social and environmental consequen-
ces of the unquestioning pursuit of economic
growth have become increasingly clear. Increas-
ing levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmos-
phere, a hole in the ozone layer caused by CFC
releases, widespread destruction of the rain
forests, and a growing list of endangered
species and ecosystems are just a few of the
indicators that all is not well. By 2000, World
Bank figures showed that nearly half the
world’s population live on under $2 per day.
For this half of the world, issues of consumer
choice and sovereignty or discretionary spend-
ing have little meaning, and promises that the
growth in the industrialized economies would
lead to a better quality of life for them have
generally not been fulfilled.
For the new century, the key challenge for
mankind is to find more sustainable and
equitable ways to produce, consume and live.
Sustainability was once a vision of the future
shared by an environmentally-orientated few.
The publication of the Brundtland Report ‘Our
Common Future’ in 1987 brought the issue into
the mainstream. In the wake of the 1992 Rio
Earth Summit, the world’s governments and
major corporations have increasingly adopted
the pursuit of sustainability as a goal. The real
challenge lies in turning these good intentions
into meaningful progress in the face of power-
ful vested interests, a deeply entrenched and
environmentally-hostile management para-
digm, and a global economy with tremendous
momentum on a trajectory which aims towards
conventional economic growth.
For marketing, the challenge is twofold. In
the short term, ecological and social issues have
become significant external influences on com-
panies and the markets within which they
operate. Companies are having to react to
changing customer needs, new regulations and a