Lack of full cost accounting of consumer products

The "polluter pays" principle states that the cost of measures decided by authorities to ensure that the environment is in an acceptable state should be reflected in the cost of goods and services which cause pollution in production and/or consumption.

So called "environmental products" or "environmentally-friendly products" may actually harmful when hidden environmental costs are factored in. A German study calculated that a theoretical fully-laden 34-tonne food truck travels about 1 kilometre to transport the items in an average supermarket trolley. One container of a particular strawberry yoghurt required the equivalent truck to travel around 10 metres. This hidden environmental impact of such a healthy food product is measured in terms of transport fuel used, effects of transport systems on health, air pollution, noise, potential accidents, road congestion and so on.