Shop Green Lest It's Black from Now on

I must confess that I've never ever, ever, thought about it when purchasing things online. That would make me a bad example, but at least I'm not the only one available. Besides, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone and if there be one, let him miss by a lot.

A survey was conducted in Europe regarding this aspect of everybody's Internet life and boy, oh, boy, does publicity turn out to be there for a reason. You might not be familiar with the big media coverage of the issue in Germany and the United kingdom, but if you are, you now know why: its users have proven to be the least eco-friendly of the lot, while the Danes and the Dutch are leading the "pack".

"Despite overwhelming media and government attention to green issues in the UK and Germany, our surveys show that consumers in smaller European countries like Denmark and the Netherlands exhibit much more concern for environmental issues", said Dorothee Vogel, European commerce analyst at JupiterResearch, the company that conducted the survey, and lead author of the report in question.

Further efforts to improve this could be made by the retailers, who would both encourage environmentally-friendly consumption and taking an edge over their competitors. But then again, if all do start selling green, there would be no more problem and no more advantage either, right?

Vogel also noted that "overall suppliers' efforts online don't correlate with consumers' attitudes in Europe and clearer sustainability communication will have the greatest short-term impact on green shopping adoption."

As I said, I wasn't all that eco-concerned with my online shopping, but I guess all this must be important; Google wouldn't just pick things up and start campaigning for it, just to get a change of pace from their mundane world domination thingy they have going on at the moment. I'll most definitely give it a try. The green shopping part, not the world domination one. I've been trying that for ages and haven't quite gotten it together.