Green Design

Bright Green Retail

July 23rd, 2009 Posted in Features, Green News

To live in the modern person is to be a purchaser of things. We all shop.

Many of us are paying more attention the quality and impact of the things we buy. More and more of us are questioning how much we shop and whether we need so much stuff in the first place. But in the last few years, there's a been a quiet revolution emerging in where and how we shop as well.

Right now, many of us in the developed world shop by driving to large chain stores -- this is especially true in North America, but has become common elsewhere too. The problem is, this way of shopping adds an enormous ecological burden to all the good we buy: not only do we burn gas getting to the store and back, but the building and operation of that store and its parking lot have a huge impact; the supply chain that keeps huge stores stocked with masses of various kinds of goods adds more impacts; while the packaging and sales presentation of the goods we buy tops it all off with more energy and materials waste. From the lighting to the loading docks, the freezer cases to the shopping carts, conventional retail is unsustainable.

Retail today has other costs as well. Big chain stores are not generally known for their excellent labor practices, meaning that part of the savings we get by shopping in them comes from the mistreatment of the people who serve us while we're there. The kinds of volumes that it takes to stock big box chain stores means that these stores will only buy things in huge orders, often from the lowest-cost big provider, which often means supporting sweat shop work conditions, factory farmed food or toxic knock-off products. Furthermore, because the backstories of the objects they sell is often so atrocious, big chain stores are often at the forefront of fighting transparency and labeling laws (Walmart's latest effort may or may not be an exception to the trend).

Not all chains are as bad as this, of course, and certain leaders, like Marks and Spenser, have shown that even giant retail corporations can take seriously their ethical obligations and offer better products, with clearly labeled impacts, in more energy-efficient stores. But there are real limits to how much the model of big box, auto-dependent chain stores can be improved.

A better model is emerging. Innovative companies that are changing not only their stores themselves, but how the whole experience of shopping works and what it means. Think of it as bright green retail.

What are the main components of this better way of shopping?

*Webfronts: having stores which work as the physical showroom for a virtual store, which let you try clothes on, try tools out, and so on, and then order the thing online for later delivery, saving money and facilitating smaller storefronts, minimal stock costs and car-free shopping.

*Flexible spaces: sharing under-utilized spaces between multiple businesses, for instance, having two restaurants share one space by offering meals at different times of the day, which cuts down on their costs and maximizes the use of the facility, lowering its ecological impact.

*Microcommerce: direct purchases from a producer (whether at a farmer's market or an online service like the craft site Etsy) means more of your money goes to supporting that producer, rather than middlemen and brokers. Increasingly, there are even stores and markets designed to mix the webfront model with microcommerce, offering sample products from small-scale producers, like São Paulo's Endossa (pictured above).

*Backstories and display transparency: backstory management has become a big trend, provoking leading companies to explore new ways to not only try to track everything that went into their products but where and how they were made. Increasingly, these backstories are being built into the brand identity of the product itself, and detailed information about their origins and performance is being made available online (sometimes without a company's permission). When companies actively engage in transparency, though, they also gain another benefit: they can offer their customers participatory retail experiences, allowing them to pick the precise origins and characteristics of the products they will by, down to the farmer that grew their coffee, or the worker who assembled their laptop.

*Delivery: the shipment of good from producer to store, and store to customer has been undergoing a rapid shift, with a move toward low-impact shipping and home delivery from centralized locations, both of which save enormous amounts of energy. Even bigger savings are to be had through dematerialized delivery (Netflix streaming a movie to your TV instead of you picking up a DVD at the video store) and decentralized manufacturing (having a neighborhood fabber where you can go to pick up a printed-out version of the product you've ordered online).

*Dropshops and reverse supply chains: as producer responsibility and zero waste laws become more common, "reverse" supply chains -- systems for taking back products, breaking them down, recycling and/or salvaging their parts and then getting them to the appropriate manufacturer for reuse -- become needed parts of the commercial system. Some leading thinkers have begun to imagine that returning used products may become a major part of the shopping experience, that special stores may even emerge to facilitate consumer returns (I like to think of them as "drop shops") by offering a cafe setting, public information on the future fate of the returns dropped off in that store, and affirmation of the consumer's effort. This would make a chore more pleasurable while building further brand loyalty in shoppers who can look forward to enjoying returning a product almost as much as they enjoyed buying it. Perhaps they'll even shop for the replacement while they're there.

No single one of these innovations will suddenly reverse the massive damage mega-scale retail is doing to the planet (and our communities), but taken together, they offer the outline of something pretty exciting: a smarter way of connecting to better stuff, with a smaller impact on the planet.

Photo credit: "Endossa" by flickr/g.ferris, Creative Commons license.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Features at 8:00 AM)