I recently went looking for a new phone case at my local shopping mall and stumbled upon a couple of “environmentally friendly” cases for sale at the store. Out of the more than thirty cases that were on display, the two eco-cases available in my opinion were far less pleasing to look at than their non-environmental counterparts. To put it plainly, the environmental cases were ugly. One of the cases was made out of canvas which looked as it if had been pulled directly out of a landfill and shoved in a makeshift shoebox, and the other was made out of 100% post consumer plastic bottles (which is great) but had the visual attraction of a worn spare tire (not so great).

In another “eco-example”, earlier this year Motorola announced a new Phone, the W233 or “Renew”. The Renew is made entirely out of recycled water bottles (at least the plastic parts) and it comes in packaging made from recycled materials. In addition to its complete recyclability, it is also the world’s first phone to be certified Carbon Neutral. With an estimated talk time of nine hours, it also uses less energy than other phones that need to recharge every few hours. Overall, I’d say that makes it a fairly environmentally friendly phone; however the problem in my opinion lies not in its environmental qualities, but in its lack of function and style. The phone is as plain as they come. It’s a standard candy bar phone with poor screen resolution, basic call and text functionality and virtually nothing else.

I’ve noticed this on a number of other occasions when I went looking for an environmentally responsible alternative to basic products, that the eco-conscious alternative did not live up to my standards for what a good “green” product should be. One of the problems that some companies have is coming up with ways to design style and function into a good environmentally conscious product. I believe that this is partly due to a (wrong) mindset that people who care about green products will settle for less as long as the product has environmental attributes. People who care about green should never have to settle for less quality, less function, or higher prices than other non-green products. 

In an “all things being equal” scenario, it is up to the product manufacturer to ensure that the eco-conscious product is the same or better in every way to its non-eco alternative. Innovative companies are working with leading designers and engineers and figuring out how to make the existing products they have more environmentally friendly. Instead of designing an entirely new product line from the ground up, it would make more sense for companies to focus on taking their products that are already hugely successful in the marketplace and work on making them “greener”. This way, consumers won’t have to settle for anything less than they have come to expect from any product whether green or not. No matter the product, the green industry deserves great performance, price, and quality from manufacturers touting eco-claims. To have it any other way negates the progress of the industry and works against the needs of the green consumer. After all, “Eco” doesn’t have to mean ugly.