Mother Jones political blogger Kevin Drum writes:

So here's the deal.  Phosphates really are a danger, creating runoff that kills fish and plants.  And Spokane has a uniquely bad problem with phosphates.  And apparently it's entirely possible to create phosphate-free detergents.  The industry just didn't feel like doing it.

But now their hands are being forced.  And guess what?  It turns out they can do it after all.  Imagine that.

Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week.  They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice.  And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp.    They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag.  Etc.

In fact, when I look back at almost every "environmentally friendly" alternative product I've seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held back only by the indecent vermin at "industry" who don't care about the environment, I notice a common theme: the replacement good has really really sucked compared to the old, inefficient version.  In some cases, the problem could be overcome by buying a top-of-the-line model that costs, at the very least, several times what the basic models do.  In other cases, as with my asthma inhalers, we were just stuck.

That is not necessarily an argument against the switch--if the costs are high enough (and maybe, in the case of phosphates, they are), then we should go ahead and use the more annoying product.  But it's well to remember that there are tradeoffs--that indeed, "industry's" reluctance is probably because they are well aware of what those tradeoffs are.