We all know we should reduce, reuse and recycle to help the planet. These days we have been spoon-fed about eco-friendly materials, products, and practices since infancy.
It also seems like every big-name touts the fantastic benefits of green alternatives. Eco-friendly products can be excellent for both the planet and your wallet. It can be hard to be objective about both the pros and cons when the media bias weighs heavily in one direction.
Before you go out, you can choose zero-waste products and try to weigh both the pros and cons before deciding to make that purchase.
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1: Long-Term Cost Savings
There is no question that eco-friendly products come along with an attractive pro that draws people into deciding to go green, and the potential for cost savings is usually at the top of the list of reasons. Here are just a few ways to make eco-friendly a good purchase and help save your money.
2: Eco-Friendly Appliances
Using less water and power typically helps lower your energy and utility bills. Eventually, saving your money after the savings that you have paid the difference in price for the appliance itself.
You can see immediate savings at certain grocery stores that pay you five cents per bag if you use reusable grocery bags. Eco-friendly products do away with convenient sizes and packaging. It makes the product smaller or lighter, lowers production costs, and reduces up-front consumer fees.
Conversely, water-filtering pitchers or stand-alone systems eliminate the need to purchase costly bottled water. Eco-friendly products are usually made well and come along with warranties. It also lasts longer than its cheap and non-eco-friendly counterparts.
3: Environmental Protection
When switching to eco-friendly products isn’t always about cost savings, though. There is no question that certain eco-friendly products not only help in saving your money.
But they cost you even more, and at that point, you have to look at the other benefits of the product, which usually revolve around environmental protections like:
Eco-friendly products are made with post-consumer recycled materials and have a smaller carbon footprint. It helps in keeping the earth’s air and water less polluted.
Since you do away with convenience packaging, you are producing less waste that would have just been thrown into the landfill. Eco-friendly products are made with materials that have a low environmental impact.
4: Health Benefits
A somewhat heated debate is ongoing about organic versus farmed crops and why people are so afraid of chemicals in their cleaning products, makeup, and processed foods. People who use organic and eco-friendly products swear by the resulting side-effect of better health.
Cons Of Eco-Friendly Products
Switching to bamboo products isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. And sometimes, it just doesn’t seem worth it. Here are a few of the cons:
1: Higher Up-Front Costs
Even though eco-friendly options can help you stop wasting money, it can take a long time for the actual cost savings to materialize. It is because investing in eco-friendly products almost always costs more initially.
The green washer and dryer set you bought uses less water and electricity. But you can spend nearly thousand of dollars or more to purchase the green machines in the first place. If the cost savings don’t materialize until after the machine’s life, eco-purchase might be worth it.
2: Difficult To Purchase
Finding the most eco-friendly option can be challenging because your local corner or chain store may not carry environmentally-friendly alternatives. Thus, as a result, finding an eco-friendly alternative can take both time and money.
If you have to drive several hours or pay to ship for something to arrive from a different part of the country, then it might be higher on that product when it comes by some automobile.
3: Inconvenience
Convenience packaging is known as convenience packaging for a reason. And when you do away with single-serving foods or single use, you are doing away with the convenience and eco-friendly products that take more time to use.
For example, you can buy a reusable single-use coffee pod
for your coffee system. But they are a pain to clean and reuse, and nothing is worse than spilling coffee grounds all over the floor and trying to clean out when you are already stressed and rushed in the morning.
Weighing The Pros and Cons
As an avid organic gardener with first-hand experience with the look and taste difference of organic produce versus what you can find in the grocery store, you can make the best use of eco-friendly alternatives when possible and do deeper care of the environment. Else, you can get the best sustainable products and maintain clean hygiene for the environment.
An eco-friendly product is one that keeps in check all the steps, and it includes all the steps involved from sourcing raw materials, manufacturing, and packaging. These products are biodegradable, recyclable, or compostable in nature.
