It's a world of contradictions

When striving to be green, it often seems that no matter what you do, there's always a counter argument which people are more than happy to pass your way. Here are some contradictions by way of examples...

What's better - new or old...?
It’s better to restore, reuse and recycle, rather than build new, because of the manufacturing and distribution impact of making new things and the disposal costs of the old things. However, technology often exists to make new more energy efficient. E.g. cars... old cars are nowhere near as fuel efficient as modern cars e.g. hybrids. However - is it really better to buy new?

Local or developing world?
We are all encouraged to buy locally produced goods to cut down transport costs. The term 'Food miles' is becoming widely known and judging by the output from the advertising industry they seem to believe that it is people are increasingly demanding locality. Fairtrade exists to support disadvantaged producers in the developing world. Inevitably this means there are high transportation costs for distribution. How do we, as consumers, align these two?
IDEA: Perhaps they are mutually exclusive product ranges or perhaps there's a natural order... 1. buy local 2. buy fairtrade 3. buy elsewhere.

Reuse vs. recycle?
We are conscientiously recycling and manufactureres are increasingly selling goods in recyclable packaging – but sometimes it’s better to simply reuse and remove the impact of the recycling process. This can be reuse for the consumer (E.g. reusing plastic carrier bags, ) or reuse for the manufacturer (E.g. milk bottles, oil bottles, shampoo bottles, beer and wine).
IDEA: Recycling companies might find there's a market for returning packaging to a set of regular manufacturers - perhaps after sterilisation or cleaning.

Personal vs. environmental agenda?
The marketing message surrounding many goods and services in this space are based around personal payback periods. These are usualy focused entirely on energy use and therefore do not indicate the total environmental payback because the manufacturing, distribution and disposal costs have to be factored in. In addition, those prepared to commit to ecologically friendly goods are often trail blazing - and that usually means they pay a premium.
IDEA: We need a currency or a non technical language in which to describe total environmental cost / impact so that we can comprehend impact beyond our own pockets.

Half the information is dangerous
Manufacturers will make and sell what the consumers demand - that's a simple economic truth. Therefore if you want to effect the way products / services are designed you need to change public attitudes. In the rush to change public attitudes it's easy to pass on incomplete information and unknowingly cause more problems. E.g. We are told that PVC is a bad material because of its inpact during manufacturing (toxic), use (offgassing) and disposal (not biodegradable and often not recyclable because it can't be isolated). This has caused houses with PVC windows to command lower prices than those with wooden windows... so homeowners are now ripping out PVC windows which then need to be disposed of. This causes a real environmental problem. It also puts people off buying recycled PVC goods - because they often don't realize the goods are recycled. This is turn impacts the market for recycling PVC and so on...

I'm worried that this whole space will become as faddy as food has, and people will lose confidence in the 'expert' opinion. Unlike food - the choices we make in this space are for the benefit of all which makes uninformed fads a dangerous thing.