The Business Ethics Blog

OK, this is entirely hypothetical, though I imagine there are real choices to be made that fit this same pattern.

If you had to choose between safety and reduced environmental impact, which would you choose? What if the safety involved is the safety of your children?

This question, though entirely hypothetical, came to mind as I read the following story about a new “green” method for making rubber for tires, to replace the old petroleum-intensive method:

Goodyear, Genencor Partner on True Green Tire Project

Researchers at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Genencor are working to create “renewable feedstocks” that would replace petroleum in tires, effectively resulting in a completely “green” tire. And that could happen within five years, they said.

The new tires will be an advance toward greener, more sustainable transportation in a quite literal sense, according to Dr. Joseph McAuliffe, who reported on the technology. The process can use sugars derived from sugar cane, corn, corn cobs, switchgrass or other biomass to produce the ingredient, a biochemical called isoprene, derived from renewable raw materials….

Now, to be perfectly clear, I’m not at all suggesting that there’s anything second-rate about this new “green” rubber. I’m sure they’re working hard to make this new product just as tough and durable and suitable-for-making-tires as regular petroleum-based rubber. But it is of course an obvious question. Rubber quality matters a lot for tires, and so any new form of rubber is going to have to prove that it can perform in prolonged use under harsh conditions.

So, let’s take this new technology and ask a hypothetical question. If “green” tires were to hit the market, and if they a) really were substantially more environmentally friendly but b) were only “nearly” as safe (say, 98% as safe) as old-fashioned rubber tires, would you buy them? Should you?