Why green is the new black (From York Press)

Why green is the new black

9:56am Friday 10th February 2012 in Columnists By Kate Lock

Kate Lock

I am jolly grateful to Asda. And those are words that Mrs Eco-Shopper does not utter very often, since she long ago abandoned both the car and superstores, even if it does mean she has developed stretchy arms like Elastic Girl from hauling laden bags home from Bishy Road shops.

Why the conversion? Because Asda, bless them and their mass-produced, bleached cotton, little white socks – has said something which, if I said it, would get me pelted with overripe organic tomatoes.

Green is normal. The new weird is doing nothing.

This is not a new slogan, as far as I’m aware: apparently Asda’s shoppers themselves think this. The company has been surveying its customers – who it calls its Everyday Experts (nice touch) – and this is what they have told them.

Living sustainability is not a luxury, or a nice-to-do-when-I’ve-got-a-moment. It’s not just for yummy mummies or earnest students or eco-freaks. Everybody’s at it: all ages, all incomes, all shapes and sizes, all situations. Being green is now as nice and normal as having a cup of tea.

Since this information comes from Asda’s head of corporate responsibility, I would normally take such pronouncements with a pinch of salt or, since that tastes disgusting in a mixed metaphor, let alone a cup of tea, two large sugars and quite possibly three. However, since even your esoteric, non-everyday-experts like scientists and environmental researchers and David Attenborough and Al Gore agree with Asda shoppers, I think we may have a quorum here.

All it needs now is for Jeremy Clarkson to come on board and we’re laughing.

If he doesn’t, well, we get to laugh at him. You can be a smart-arse or you can be smart, and it’s the latter that will keep you warm, reduce your bills, clean up pollution, reduce waste and might, just might, prevent the planet from over-cooking.

Green isn’t kooky; it’s commonsense. Green is the new black, tailor-made for these troubled times, versatile, lean and sexy. Green is the way to go, not just to protect the environment but to grow the economy.

It’s time our politicians and councillors and the people churning out action plans and strategy documents in a succession of shiny pamphlets, bobbed down to Asda and listened to those shoppers. People want green stuff. They will happily make sustainable choices if (and here’s the crunch), if you make them realistic, accessible and affordable.

For example, we’ve just switched our energy provider to a 100 per cent green tariff which also gives funding to community renewables projects and gives us a free energy monitor. Result: happy Katie but also happy husband, because it’s exactly the same price as the not-green one so we don’t argue about it. How easy was that?

KISS, as they say in management-speak (Keep It Simple, Stupid), which I use here because acronyms and corporate clichés appear to be the language policy-makers and politicos deal in. Stop paying lip- service to sustainability with your mealy-mouthed promises and start doing the necessary so that people can make action for themselves.

If you don’t, you let us all down. Moreover, no-one’s going to vote for a bunch of weirdos … Personally, I am hugely relieved at this turnaround in public perception of greenness because it gets me off the hook. When I was consumer-testing products for Eco-Shopper people thought I was very weird indeed.

My “eco challenges” did, it’s true, involve conducting a series of bizarre trials, from salsa-testing natural deodorants (you have to get very close and personal in Latin dancing) and washing our clothes with balls (eco) and nuts (soap) to developing palpitations from taste-testing gallons of Fairtrade coffee.

I also experimented by moisturising with udder cream, resorted to waylaying a milkman, brandished unidentifiable root veg at the neighbours and forced the entire family to use compost loos.

Other consumer tests I devised involved getting academics drunk on organic wine (it wasn’t really a standardised test but it was quite a revealing one), dumping all my packaging at different supermarket checkouts (including Asda) and going for a bike ride wearing a Mooncup (don’t ask).

Anyway, I did all that so you don’t have to. I’m still doing most of them and they’ve become part of my lifestyle, apart from the udder balm. I now get buy my ethically sourced moisturisers from a lovely woman in Acomb who cycles round and leaves them under a bush.

I’m hoping this will make me appear the new normal, too.