Take a simple paradigm: plastic bottles. The cheapest way to make a plastic bottle is to use 100 percent virgin plastic (the worst thing for the environment). If you want a "greener" bottle, you can integrate some recycled content, but with every extra gram of recycled plastic, you will be increasing the price of that bottle (and decreasing its strength). If you wanted to go "uber green," you might use biodegradable plastic -- like Ethos water, which is available at your local Starbucks. That move would result in the most expensive way to make a plastic bottle today.