5 ms·
That's weird. In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without (with the exception of aluminum, whi
by Zarel 7y ago
That's weird. In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without (with the exception of aluminum, which tends not to be advertised as recycled at all). Are there costs missing from your efficiency numbers?
- coldtea 7y ago>In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without That's not necessarily because of their higher cost to produce. It's often because they target higher end "environmentally conscious" customers, and use the "made with recycled materials" as a price differentiation / market segmentation strategy (working class Joe? get our $1 notebook. Latte-sipping hipster? Here's our $5 recycled notebook)...
- barrkel 7y agoYou'd still expect recycled material to be used in preference to virgin materials for cheap products, if recycled material is actually more efficient.
- C4stor 7y agoThis doesn't forbid using recycled materials for cheaps products, you just don't advertise it.
- tomstoms 7y agoIn an economic system, a product will be sold at the highest price possible, so if advertising it as using recycled materials nets you higher profit, than you will do that. So even if non-recycled is more expensive to produce, it will be cheaper if people are not willing to pay as much for it.
- C4stor 7y agoThere a lot of cases of the exact same product being sold at different price tags under different names/brands. In an economic system, a product tries to be sold at the highest price possible _for each potential buyer_, not as a whole.
- tomstoms 7y agoI should have added “all else being equal”. In context of the question I was trying to answer this still holds.
- coldtea 7y agoAnd it happens all the time. But no need to brand it especially, and kill the lucrative recycled lines by associating recycled with el-cheapo...