Are you green when nobody is looking?

I had to paint the hallway of one of my tenant’s apartments.

So I’m in the paint isle and I have a dilemma. Normal paint is cheap. Low VOC or non VOC paint is almost twice the price. Which one do I buy?

They don’t care if the paint is low VOC…
I’m not sure they know what VOC means…
They don’t have kids (I have a soft spot for children’s health).
Nobody will know what paint I buy…
nobody except me really cares…
nobody will think I’m cool or not…
this isn’t my home…
the rental is a business and as a business I want to keep costs low and profit high…
I’m not rolling in money right now…
It’s just a hallway anyway…

Despite my intense involvement in green I was strongly tempted to go with the cheap paint. I got a good insight into the reason people don’t buy green when it is more expensive.

But I compromised. I bought the low VOC instead of non VOC. It was only a couple dollars more than the cheap paint and many dollars less than the non VOC.

But it was quite an insight. Like always I came away knowing that whatever choice I made I had to be sure I was ok with it. I’m not sure anything else really matters as much.