Seems a pity to rake over last week’s green theme once more, but passing a branch of surf-cum-outdoorwear retailer Howies it was hard not to stare at the eco-message that it was putting out.

The store in question was on London’s Carnaby Street and it has for neighbours such branded luminaries as Puma, Hugo Boss and Fornarina; all of which boast pretty sophisticated fit-outs.

Howies, by contrast, has at its centre a stack of bits of wood on which a slatted wooden crate had been placed. This was brimful of plastic water bottles and on its front was the handwritten message: “Tap water is cool”.

The implication, presumably, must be that bottled water is not and that if you want to care for the environment you’re better off sampling the product provided by your local utility company, than heading for the supermarket shelves and then ditching the plastic later on.

The trouble is that these things have to be set in context. The Howies store looks green and seem to be using green messaging as a piece of self-consciously low-budget retail theatre. As such this is as much a piece of artifice as any other marketing promotion and could be accused of being the kind of self-serving abduction of a fashionable agenda as, say, a Katherine Hamnett message t-shirt in the 1980s, for those with long memories.

Yes, the Howies’ message will serve to stop the guilty in their tracks and yes this retailer is known for its ethical stance. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that profits are still being made, sufficient, one assumes, to pay the rent for a unit on Carnaby Street, on the back of green marketing. This many not be what Howies intended, but the effect is hard to ignore.

All of which is the complete opposite of what many larger retailers are doing and here, as last week, reference has to be made to M&S, where green is part of what it does, but it no longer makes a song and dance about it – at least not like this.

So what’s a retailer to do? Take a unit on Carnaby Street, highlight a green issue and you’re in danger of being shot down for greenwashing.

Howies is a very good retailer and has been green for as long as it has been in existence. And if this store were somewhere less high profile, the message might be better understood. But it’s not and cyncism is almost bound to be the outcome.

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