Does it pay to be environmentally friendly during an economic slowdown?

Shippers are looking to adopt more environmentally friendly policies to “clean-up” their supply chains may soon find that consumers are unwilling to cover the costs that such actions may incur, especially in such economically-tight times.

The real challenge for the Walmart's of the world is to find ways to be environmentally-friendly, while cutting the end-cost of the product, or at least increasing the end cost for the consumer by as little as possible.

Global trade growth, as forecasted by the World Bank, is expected to fall to 4.5 per cent in 2008, down from the 7.5 per cent growth witnessed in 2007. This fall off in trade growth is due to the serious reduction in consumer spending in the consumer powerhouses of Europe and the US, as a result of the economic downturns there.

Source: Container Shipping Manager, the publisher HKSG Group Media is one of the world's largest providers of shipping information.