Las Páginas Verdes: Catalyzing Responsible Consumerism in Mexico

Last week, our New Ventures Mexico team announced the creation of Las Páginas Verdes (“Green Pages”), the country’s first sustainable products and services guide aimed at helping consumers make sustainable decisions about their purchases.

Key features will include:

• A free listing of hundreds of companies that provide sustainable substitutes for common products
  
• An online version with search capability

• Formatted to be as easy to use as the Yellow Pages

Sample EntryLas Páginas Verdes is a major milestone in Mexico’s nascent responsible consumer movement. The original concept for this guide arose from a realization by our New Ventures Mexico team that the sustainable enterprise development services we offer could not by themselves bring about the kind of paradigm shift that could mainstream triple-bottom-line business.

Las Páginas Verdes was created with the idea that a demand for sustainable products and services existed in Mexico, but that this demand was untapped because of the difficulty for consumers in knowing what sustainable alternatives exist for different products and how to obtain them.

The result is a new guide intended to be a user-friendly tool that essentially does the research for the consumer, thereby connecting the kind of sustainable businesses mentored by New Ventures Mexico with the national marketplace. This connection breaks through the bottleneck caused by low consumer awareness and could help drive a new culture of sustainable consumption in Mexico.

Mexico City is a good place to start this push for responsible consumerism, where New Ventures expects the guide to reach an estimated 600,000 people within the first year. Subsequent releases will follow in Guadalajara and Monterrey.

Of course responsible consumerism is no panacea for the major environmental challenges we face, and should not be sold as a feel-good substitute for effective regulation or conservation efforts. It is just one crucial component of a larger change in the way we think about Earth’s limited resources and the well-being of people who use those resources; whether they are next door or 5,000 miles away.

More than anything, Las Páginas Verdes is intended to help catalyze this overdue mentality by giving consumers in Mexico a chance to start choosing a more sustainable lifestyle.