Green questions to ask when buying

Blimey, I wasn't intending to stir quite such a hornet's nest! All sorts of motives are being imputed to my OP,  apparently I'm hypocritically trying to force people to change their habits against their wills. That was not my intention. Maybe I was being naive. I regret that this post ends up being quite long.

  Climate change is accepted by something like 97% of independent scientists to be occurring, from NASA to observers of what's happening in the natural world, likewise they state that it's affected by human activity.

  As Brue pointed out, many manufacturers are taking this on board, and moving towards making improvements. Whether they're doing this from Green motives, or because they realise that this direction is where the money moves, is almost immaterial, it results in more efficient vehicles and less waste. That seems like something worth having.

 Caravans and motor homes are not particularly Green, but then, as we've said, very little we now do is, and given the platform of technology we've been born into, ditching it all is an impractical suggestion, we couldn't undo everything since the Industrial Revolution if we wanted to. But 'vans can be made to be less inefficient, and with better materials.

 So I'm not aiming to take a high moral ground, I'm suggesting that it's a useful thing if more manufacturers make less damaging new products, so we can continue to enjoy what we're doing while limiting the ill effects. Rather like the National Trust accepting that loads of people are going to walk up whichever mountain, and putting a stone path in place. It's not an improvement in itself and annoys some people no end, but it limits the damage to the environment and still allows more people to get their fix of hill walking.

  It's equally apparent that there are those here who prefer not to believe that such climate change is happening, or if it is, it's not affected by what humans do. There's little I or anyone can do to change their minds here, so I'm not seriously trying.

 For the others here who accept that it is, to those I made the suggestion that if they are buying new vehicles, then posing questions about the Green-ness of the product might be worth considering. I chose my language carefully, aiming it at "if you think it's a good idea please  consider" rather than "you should".
If sales staff don't pass feedback to their companies, that seems to me like a poor sales team from the company's point of view.

On the issue of cheap or not - in this household we do sometimes deliberately buy more expensive if we think it'll be a better product and less environmentally damaging. And no, we don't have a vast income. That's our choice. I'd suggest that sometimes cheap for its own sake is more costly in the long run - aren't there posts after posts here about poor build quality of new vans, ascribed to cost cutting in production?

I hope this helps, though I have a dreadful suspicion that whatever I say will annoy some. It's not meant to.

 It's seriously tempting to comment on the school strike, but that's going OT, so I'll not

Yes, I spotted that and thought what a great idea it would be.