William Coverley has nine cars, including four Porsches, a pickup and a Ferrari. Last week, he bought a 10th—a 2008 GMC Yukon XL—because he needs something to tow his boat. The three-quarter-ton SUV gets a dismal 14 miles per gallon in traffic.

As consumers flee gigantic trucks for environmentally friendly small cars and hybrids, Coverley is an increasingly rare beast: He wants one of the biggest gas-guzzlers that $40,000 can buy. "Do I care that I'm wasting gas? No, I really don't," the Hudson, Ohio, resident said.

Coverley is part of a small but persistent new consumer demographic: The "Never Greens"— people who either don't care or are not interested in America's new passion for sustainable, green products.

It's a demo that's been overlooked by marketers as they rush to tout their carbon offsets, recycled content and eco-friendly manufacturing.

About 10% of the population are Never Greens, according to a survey by Mintel International in Chicago, a research firm.

The Never Greens don't buy green products, don't remember green advertising when they see it and are irritated by it even if they do, according to Mintel.

Never Greens also showed up in a survey by Shelton Group, an ad agency for BP Solar, the oil giant's renewable unit. About 26% of Americans are hardcore skeptics, according to Suzanne Shelton, the CEO of the Knoxville, Tenn., firm. They tend to be upper-income, middle-aged, conservative males, she said.

Coverley, a retired investment banker, fits the profile almost perfectly. He lives in the middle of the country, is highly educated, has lots of disposal income, and is a man who is not shy with his opinions about the economy and the price of oil.

"I don't care about the environmental reasons and I'll tell you why," Coverley said. "All this stuff about carbon emissions, no one really knows about the output of the sun and yet it's the single most important input behind global warming . . . Are the Chinese going to be environmentalists? Are the Indians going to be environmentalists? Are the Russians? I don't think so."

Although Never Greens are outliers—most Americans are raising their expectations of companies' green efforts—marketers would do well to pay attention to these naysayers. Why? Because several companies have stumbled as consumers have rejected green products even while ostensibly clamoring for more.

For instance, Biota, a bottled water company, went bankrupt after launching its biodegradable bottle. It ran into problems when recyclers said the corn-based plastic couldn't be recycled, only composted.

Wal-Mart and Costco both earned negative press for square milk jugs, which consumers dislike because they spill milk when poured.

In fact, marketers quietly fail to launch green products as often as they succeed.





"We've been involved with a few clients who have looked at green products but chosen not to do them," said Paul Worthington, senior strategist at Wolff Olins in New York. "They couldn't really find a demand." (He declined to identify the companies.)

Valera Global, a New York-based limousine company, is one example. Valera has a fleet of 215 Lincoln Town Cars and annual revenues of $30 million. CEO Robert Mackasek was dissuaded from converting the fleet to hybrids when he learned that Toyota was "nervous" about the Prius being used as a taxi because its batteries only recharge during highway driving. "It's not quite ready for prime time," Mackasek said.

So Mackasek looked into converting his fleet to compressed gas, but found that he could only lease the cars from a single company, and that company charged $14,000 per car for a conversion (compressed gas engines have yet to make it into commercial production).

"As our clients become more conscious of reducing their carbon footprint it's only a matter of time before they concern themselves with their transportation," he said. Now his company is offsetting all its gas use on a carbon exchange in Chicago, which costs $35,000-45,000 a year, a solution he thinks is inadequate.

In part, consumers find that their desire to be green goes only about as far as their desire not to be inconvenienced. When consumers are asked, "Given a choice between your comfort, your convenience or the environment, which do you most often choose?" Forty-six percent choose comfort, Shelton said. That's about the same portion who feel guilty, skeptical, irritated or unaffected by green issues, according to her survey.

Among them is Sally Herigstad, an accountant from Kent, Wash., who writes books about personal finance. She noted that supermarket chain Fred Meyer mixes its organic and nonorganic produce together. "This led me to inadvertently buying organic broccoli the other day. My husband, Gary, and I were enjoying our fresh steamed broccoli when I spotted a funny leaf—a two-inch caterpillar, actually. My husband, who was raised a farm boy, was nonplussed and ate the rest of his dinner with a cooked caterpillar on the side of his plate. I, a child of the suburbs, was suddenly done eating."

Herigstad said she will never buy organic broccoli again.