Your credit card can help save the planet. That’s the message companies are pitching to consumers as they roll out new credit cards designed to cash in on people’s worries about global warming.

These “green” cards allow users to channel a percentage of their spending toward efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. General Electric Co.’s Earth Rewards MasterCard, launched in July by the company’s GE Money unit, targets as much as 1% of total spending on the card toward emission-reduction projects.Bank of America Corp. followed in November with its own green card, Brighter Planet Visa, which matches every dollar spent with one point that can be accumulated and traded in for “carbon offsets.” Carbon offsets are meant to reduce the impact of emissions made somewhere else — such as by planting trees. Additionally, Storm Lake, Iowa, savings bank MetaBank, a unit of Meta Financial Group Inc., in August launched its GreenPay MasterCard, which also allows users to accumulate carbon offsets with each purchase.[...]

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Global warming ranks far down the concerns of the world’s biggest companies, despite world leaders’ hopes that they will pioneer solutions to the impending climate crisis, a startling survey will reveal this week.

Nearly nine in 10 of them do not rate it as a priority, says the study, which canvassed more than 500 big businesses in Britain, the US, Germany, Japan, India and China. Nearly twice as many see climate change as imposing costs on their business as those who believe it presents an opportunity to make money. And the report’s publishers believe that big business will concentrate even less on climate change as the world economy deteriorates.

The survey demolishes George Bush’s insistence that global warming is best addressed through voluntary measures undertaken by business – and does so at the most embarrassing juncture for the embattled President. For this week he is convening a meeting of the world’s largest economies to try to persuade them to agree with him.[...]

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Why do you market your company as ethical ? Do you do it because you have to, or because you want to
?

Some companies might do it as a form of self-preservation, because they are afraid of what customers will say if they don’t. Other, more progressive firms may do it because they realise that there is an opportunity to target customers who feel strongly about the issue.

In the UK, the Co-Operative Bank’s 2007 Ethical Consumerism report, published in November, showed that ethical spending in the UK had jumped by 81 per cent since 2002. At £29.7bn, the market is still relatively small compared to the annual consumer spend of over £600bn, but that presumably means that there is plenty more headroom for market growth. Meanwhile in the US, the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), a market research firm that focuses exclusively on this area, classifies the whole target market under the banner of lifestyles of health and sustainability (LOHAS) – the sector is worth $209bn on that side of the pond.

Who is buying these ethical products and services, and how can companies reach these customers effectively? Trying to pigeonhole the green consumer by pointing to a single demographic was probably naive 20 years ago. Today, it would be extremely foolish.[...]

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