Thanks, Tom Falk, for speaking at Seattle University!
One of the “truths” about economics, one of those fundamental building blocks upon which modern economic theory rests, is the idea that consumers and producers have imperfect knowledge about the market. For example, a consumer might want to purchase a new pair of shoes, and decides to buy pair A instead of pair B because pair A look sturdier. However, little does the consumer know, pair B is actually made out of Kevlar, and thus, a “bad” (or irrational, I think they call them) choice is made.
It goes around the other way, too, of course. Producers are unsure of what exactly consumers want, and so they aren’t quite able to make the “perfect” product. Granted, in this age of focus groups and constant polling, producers can come pretty close to knowing how to get consumers to buy their products, but the theory of imperfect knowledge still stands.
The moral of the story?
It’s frustrating to live a good life as a consumer. Even though so many of us out there try to do the right thing with regards to our purchasing, it’s impossible to know every detail about every possible product we need to buy in order to survive. Does this jacket, which the producer claims was made in a union factory, have a smaller ecological footprint? Were the fibers used to make it stained and dyed with harmful chemicals? If so, where did the chemicals go? And what about the zipper on the jacket? Was it produced by union workers, as well, or did the producer buy the zippers from a shady international corporation that uses unsafe death-trap factories to make their fasteners?
The cycle is never ending, and for good reason. It all hearkens back to that oversimplification of ecology: everything is connected to everything else. Of course we can’t know every little detail about the products we buy. Even if we spent hours of our day researching the minute production details of the various toothbrushes we’re considering for purchase, we’d be at a complete loss.
This leads me to where I was trying to go: finding out the supply chain of Kimberly-Clark (click on the URL if you don’t know why I’m trying to figure it all out) has been an excruciatingly painful process. I’ve looked at the NRDC website, Greenpeace site, Kimberly-Clark’s own website, and the website of the logging company from which K-C buys their pulp, and I’m still struggling to come up with a complete and accurate supply chain.
And that’s only from one tiny mill in Canada! Imagine trying to construct an entire supply chain for the whole company. You probably couldn’t even find all the necessary documents in English that you wanted. Frustrating.
So if we can’t be sure where K-C gets the pulp it makes, and if we can’t know what percentage of that pulp comes from clear cutting old growth forests, what can we do?
The only option is to rid ourselves of the K-C option altogether.
Kimberly-Clark won’t change its purchasing habits if it looks like consumers don’t really give a damn. It goes back to the problem of imperfect knowledge. Well, for the Kimberly-Clark folks out there, I just want to let you know: no one thinks cutting down old growth to make Kleenex is cool. So cut it out (no pun intended). Getting consumers to buy better alternatives, like products from Seventh Generation or Cascades (a Canadian paper company that uses 96% recycled content in its products), we’re sending Kimberly-Clark a message that says, “Stop destroying the last remaining forests in North America.”
Think of it as a really, really big focus group.
Anyway, the point of all this is to say that I think it’s important that consumers realize that even though they might not be able to know every detail about every purchase they make, they can certainly be aware of what choices are really bad, what choices are slightly better, and what choices are pretty good for the planet. Imperfect knowledge is certainly a reality. But a ruined planet doesn’t have to be.
