The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide

By Michael Jessen

Accurate, reliable information can help consumers turn the "power of the purse" into a significant force for environmental change.

Such information is now available in a new book entitled The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide by John F. Wasik, a $6.99 Warner Books paperback.

Wasik, the managing director of the New Consumer Institute, also publishes a quarterly newsletter evaluating and criticizing green/socially responsible products and marketing. (Write to PO Box 51, Wauconda, IL 60084.)

His book can help you decode confusing environmental claims on labels and in product advertising, tell you which products have earned the environmental "seals of approval", and which companies put their money where their mouths are by helping the environment in their operations, manufacturing and products.

Some product marketers view the consumer as ignorant and uninterested in the facts. This attitude has led to the kind of hype and distortion that have made so many consumers skeptical of environmental claims.

We are far better off knowing the full environmental costs of our options before we choose.

This is the consumer's fundamental right to know. It is also the consumer's responsibility.

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