Talking About Green

When most people think about organic and environmentally sustainable products, they like the idea in theory, but tend to shy away from actually buying the goods due to the upfront costs involved in going green.

Before the recession hit, the eco-friendly market was doubling in growth every year. Unfortunately, now that many people are being forced to operate on a tighter budget, one of the first things cut from most families expenses is organic foods and sustainable products.

According to Briand Howard of TheDailyGreen, the average consumer doesn’t take into consideration the long term personal advantages green products provide over regular produce, such as the health benefits from eating purely organic foods or the extended life expectancy of environmentally friendly electronics. As a result higher prices means that only the most committed eco-shoppers have remained entirely green during the current recession.

Whilst one third of Americans do claim to regularly buy some forms of eco-friendly produce, the green industry would like to achieve far larger market penetration. Manufacturers and retailers are aware that people view green goods as luxury items (due to the cost involved) and are working hard on ways to bring prices down.

One of the ways in which the industry hopes to encourage new and returning customers is through the use of coupons. Mark Kastel, co-director of The Conucopia Institute (a group dedicated to promoting organic farming) has stated that “manufacturers have become very aggressive with couponing”, seeing it as an ideal way to promote their products whilst also providing consumers with a means by which they can save money.

As a result there are a number of places people can look online to find various kinds of coupons to reduce the price of eco-friendly goods:

CouponSherpa

CouponSherpa.com is one of the best places to find coupons online. There are plenty of deals available if you know what manufacturers produce environmentally sustainable  or organic products, all you have to do is use the on-site search feature and away you go. CouponSherpa also has a great smartphone app available for paperless coupons and a full on guide to living eco-frugal for people committed to going fully green whilst still saving money.

Freeshipping

Freeshipping.org is another deals based website, one which focuses on coupon delivery and web stores that provide freeshipping. It has various eco-friendly sections, which you can look through by using the tags eco, environment, green or organic when using the on-site search function, this will bring up predictive categories in the search bar that should reflect the goods you want. Â

Manufacturer Sites

Teri Gault, founder of coupon site The Grocery Game, says that tt is always worth checking out a manufacturers website when it comes to goods you hope to buy regularly, more often than not most will have some kind of coupon or rewards based scheme that you can take advantage of to save money. Just some of the Eco-friendly companies that use printable coupon programs include Earths Best, Organic Valley, Seventh Generation and Stony Fields.

Supermarket Sites

As more and more people resort to shopping either online or locally, even the big supermarkets have begun to get in on the increased custom bought in by the distribution of coupons. Supermarket sites will often promote deals and coupons for major manufacturers, as well as offering similar savings for their own store brand items (which can include own brand organic food). Due to the immense buying power of supermarkets, their own brand eco-friendly goods tend to be at least thirty percent cheaper than name brand goods, so they are well worth checking out.

Most big supermarkets also give people the eco-friendly option of attaching coupons found on their website to personal loyalty cards, saving the need to print anything out for customers that actually want to do their shopping in store instead of via the internet. Giant Eagle, Kroger, Whole Foods and Safeway are just some of the big name supermarkets which have their own online coupon sections.

This is a guest post by Viral Mom who celebrates eco-friendly living with her DIY gadgets blog

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