Will Wal-Mart’s Green Jewelry Be The Social Responsibility Tipping Point?

Posted on | July 22, 2008 |

We’ve been expecting this.

At a BlogHer discussion last weekend, moderator Susan Wagner said one of the three main trends she saw was green beauty. (Another was renewing and recycling clothes.) On SheFinds.com, we’ve been spotlighting “eco-chic.”

And now Wal-Mart is jumping into green fashion, with a traceable jewelry line called Love, Earth. According to the Love, Earth section of Wal-Mart’s website, which shows a blue-eyed blonde dangling a $38 pendant in front of a wheat-stalk backdrop, the jewelry is “created with materials form eco-responsible, community-friendly sources.” The pieces will be traceable from mine to retailer via a batch number that consumers can enter online.

Many of the designs, like the Love, Earth logo, have a hippie-ish feel, as does the line’s polished site, hinting that Love, Earth is more a holistic marketing campaign than a supply-chain sustainability effort alone. Consumers are eager and proud to make sustainable purchases, which means that socially responsible companies no longer have to go it alone when implementing sustainable practices – social responsibility can help sell your product, so telling your customers about it and getting them involved (by tracing their goods or in other ways) could be a great opportunity – and certainly an effective way to generate buzz.

In a nutshell, if Wal-Mart’s doing it (and they plan to do a lot more of it by 2010), we can all probably benefit from similar strategies.

Products that outwardly convey their environmental responsibility seem to be gaining an edge in this dawning age of green-ness. We recently featured a “crocheted” bag made of soda-can pull-tabs, and I’ve gotten a dizzying number of complements on this clutch made from recycled Luna Bar wrappers. Designing or featuring products that tell consumers and onlookers that you’re a friend to the earth is not only responsible, it’s increasingly cool. With that combination, green is marketable to almost any demographic.

Online shopping expert, Michelle Madhok, is the CEO of White Cat Media LLC publisher of blogs SheFinds.com and MomFinds.com, sites that help busy women shop online.

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