Why do environmentally friendly products cost more than toxic harmful products?
The answer to this is in five parts: 1) supply and demand 2) economies of scale 3) Education and advertising 4) Research and 5) Externalized costs and legislation 1) The market works on the principle of supply and demand. The more people who buy environmentally friendlier products (demand) the more those manufacturing and retailing those products will make (supply). The more companies making a product because their is a high demand for it, the more competition there is, which again reduces the price to the customer. 2) Economies of Scale. The cost of each unit produced goes down with the number of units produced. For example the overheads such as the cost of the manufacturing equipment, the council tax, the cost of running and maintaining the buildings, the cost of storage space etc are spread over the number of units made so the more units there are to spread the costs over the lower the price. So the more demand there is for a product the greater the economies of scale. 3) Some envir
