Over the course of the past decade, the movements focused on corporate social responsibility, sustainability, social innovation, cause-related marketing, micro-lending, buy-local, Fair Trade, impact investing and social entrepreneurship have grown at an astounding rate.
Here are the numbers compiled with the help of Dara O’Rourke, founder of the GoodGuide.
- Ethical personal-care products grew from $5.3 billion in 2005 to $8.1 billion in 2009, up 53%.
- U.S. organic food sales rose from $12.6 billion in 2005 to $21.4 billion in 2009, up 70%.
- Sales of local food, which travels less than 150 miles from source to table, rose from $4 billion in 2002 to $7 billion in 2011, up 75%.
- In 1994 there were 1,755 farmers’ markets, by 2010 there were 6,132, up 250%.
- In 1992, 935,000 acres of U.S. farmland were planted with organics, rising to 4,800,000 acres in 2008, up 413%.
- In Europe sales of Fair Trade–certified products grew from €220 million in 2000 to €3.4 billion in 2010, up 1,400%.
- The U.S. LOHAS market (lifestyle of health and sustainability) of products is estimated at more than $200 billion.
That’s impressive growth – and it wouldn’t have happened without consumers making a choice.
Major corporations have watched this growth closely:
- Toyota Prius sales rose from 3,000 cars in 1997 to more than 400,000 in 2010.
- Whole Foods sales grew from $90 million across ten stores in 1991 to $9 billion across 300 stores in 2010.
- Kashi cereal, owned by Kellogg grew from $25 million in 2000 to almost $1 billion in 2011.
- Global alternative energy deals climbed 40% from 2010 to 2011 to $53.5 billion.
Is this growth reason to be hopeful? What do you think? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
It appears that Hope is plentiful but my concern comes with integrity. Companies all see this trend and want to jump on the bandwagon, but do they want to DO the right thing? Advertisements still hold half truths and customers are seemingly not willing to read the fine print. They still buy into half truths. Hoe can we make advertisers and by extension, companies- more honest, more accountable?
This IS hopeful, because we are still in a world where the markets rule. Initially I didn’t think the consumer route would be fast enough, given the complexities of making the right choices for a sustainable world, but in fact consumers are starting with sustainable human development – looking after their families, their health, what they put on their bodies and ingest. Those concerns alone can go a long way to to indirectly cause financial services to take notice and the ripple effect can be very impactful.
Thank-u for posting this data..going to be useful in my ‘how to build sustainability awareness at the Bank’ project! ..Val