Rewrite of Mock Essay

Social activism and shopping with a conscience has been the main topic of conversation in recent years. More and more people realize the importance of each and every individual to play their role and do their bid for the environment. However, there are several problems which hinder ethical products from entering the mainstream consumer market in Malaysia.

One of the main problems is the price of the environmentally-friendly products. Tan ( 2007 ) mentions that according to Mr. Vincent Ng, the product manager at Koh Motors, “Eco-friendliness is not cheap and not accessible to everybody. ” He also mentioned the fact that the act of “pay more to save later” is not a good consumer sense. This strongly supports the fact that consumers nowadays long for price-for-value products more than eco-friendliness, and so ethical products are not favoured as their costs are relatively higher compared to normal goods. This problem can be solved through raising the consumers’ awareness towards our environment. Besides that, government can also reduce taxes or even provide incentives for ethical product. This might at least enlighten the situation even though no guarantee of success for the solution.

Failure of supermarket giants to improve sourcing methods and cut waste pollution is another problem that is faced in Malaysia. Most food in Malaysia is exported to other countries to be processed. Then, they import back the processed food to be sold in the supermarkets. This causes pollution towards the environment as the transporting process is using flights which greatly damage the environment. One possible solution is to urge supermarkets like Giant and Tesco to channel more local-sourced and seasonal organic food product. This might enhance the purchase of organic food.

One more problem is that supermarkets provide insufficient reusable shopping bags and organic products. Unlike Ikea in Singapore, Tesco, Jusco and other supermarket giants in Malaysia does not provide the urge for customers to minimize the use of plastic bags and choose paper bags instead, which are reusable. This again contributes to waste of non-biodegradable plastic bags and causes a major threat to the environment. Ikea in Singapore came up with an excellent idea where they does not provide plastic bags for customers and sell plastic bags instead. This indirectly encourages customers to use other materials like paper bags or even carry the goods themselves home without any carrier. This solution is a good way to reduce the usage of plastic bags and raise the awareness of the consumers.

In conclusion, there are a few problems which hinder ethical products from entering the mainstream consumer market in Malaysia. However, these problems can be solved through effort from government, supermarkets and most importantly, consumers. Let’s save out world together!