by Diane MacEachern, www.biggreenpurse.com, and author: Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World

Even though April 22 this year marks the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, just for a moment, forget the planet. Don’t worry about climate change. Ignore endangered species. Disregard air and water pollution and the toxic chemicals unexpectedly showing up in food and personal care products.

For a moment, just think about yourself. Your kids. Your friends. Your colleagues. Your money.

Whoaa!!! Your money?

That’s right. Your money. In fact, reach down right now and pull out a dollar. Or ten dollars. Or your check book. And take a good, long look.

Why? Because what you’re holding in your hands is not just the equivalent of one hundred or a thousand pennies. What you’re holding amounts to one of the fastest, easiest ways to protect yourself and your family – as well as the earth.

If you stop and think about it, this should come as no surprise. After all, “he who pays the piper, picks the tune,” and that’s as true in the marketplace as it is on the dance floor. Though most manufacturers oppose environmental legislation and regulation with the force of Hurricane Katrina, they embrace what happens at the cash register. They have to. Consumer dollars are their lifeblood.  When you spend your money, you’re telling a company you prefer either its products or services, or the competitor’s. You’re either “picking the tune” and telling them to play more, or paying a different piper.

Ask Harry Potter.

Well, ask Scholastic, his publisher.

In 2007, 12 million copies of the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were about to be printed for U.S. readers on virgin paper stock. Conservationists, kids, parents, and many other citizens were so outraged they threatened to purchase Harry from overseas printers who had already committed to producing the book on recycled material.  The result? All 12 million copies were printed on almost 11,000 tons of “post-consumer waste fiber.” http://blog.biggreenpurse.com/biggreenpurse/2007/07/consumer-demand.html No law required Harry’s finale to be bound in a socially and ecologically responsible way. The magic came from consumer demand for books printed on paper that protects forests, saves energy, and keeps water cleaner.

CEOs and company purchasing officers can have the same impact at work that consumers have at the mall. Environmentally-friendly options now exist for fleet vehicles, office furniture, lighting, computers, cell phones, even the lowly pencil. But it doesn’t matter how ‘green’ they are if no one buys them. You only make a difference if you shift your spending.

Some options will save you money. Some may cost a little more, at least right now. When they do, remember the basic law of supply and demand that we all learned in our high school economics classes: As demand increases, so does supply, bringing prices down. The first energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulb I bought – in 1984 – cost me $25. I became the only person I knew whose living room lamps were powered by CFLs. Today, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have at least a couple of CFLs in their home, at a cost per bulb of only a couple of bucks.

There’s no denying that we’ve made tremendous progress since the first Earth Day was celebrated 4 decades ago. But we still have a long way to go. Only 3.5% of food sold in grocery stores is organic. Less than 5% of cars are highly fuel efficient. There are over 80,000 chemicals circulating in the environment, but less than 10% of them have been evaluated for health and safety impacts. If we wait for government mandates and federal regulations to boost these numbers, we’ll be waiting a very long time. Why not pay the piper now,  and pick the tunes you really want to hear?