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That's the most toxic possible approach
Oh, I could get much more toxic if I wanted to 🙂
My point, using the common rhetorical device of hyperbole, was simply that buying another short-lived consumer product just because it has a thin coat of greenwash isn't actually making any kind of contribution to the supposed target of reducing resource consumption. You need to cast a sceptical eye over any of these palliatives to see if they even deliver on the claims. Since purchase price is a decent proxy for resource consumption, my 3 year old £35 Alcatel Pixi is already nearly 10 times greener than the Teracube, and we haven't even had to get radical and dispense with Kindle and VLC. The selling proposition is that you need a big high end phone, but you can assuage a little bit of your self-indulgent guilt by getting one which might last an extra year, if we stay in business that long. That just strikes me as the worst kind of tokenism. Of course, since 90% of eco-worriers are as desperate to make a token gesture as they are to avoid making any uncomfortable changes to their lifestyles, it will sell like hot cakes.
gbj_tester-
Ok, that's a much more differentiated take on it. Though I'd still be wary of labeling people as 'eco warriors' just because they are interested in products that are supposed to be more 'eco' than others. It can easily end up just being abused for narrow-minded bashing of anything meant as an incremental improvement.
SwissChap
Sorry, no. That's the most toxic possible approach to this - "you participate in society hence your concern for the environment is by default invalid".