Why Greenwashing Hurts Even the Most Eco-Friendly Businesses
Posted by Joshua Saunders | Filed under Sustainability
Your business has been designing more environmentally friendly products for the past 15 years. Your marketing team is trained to make accurate and truthful environmental claims about your products. Your company wholeheartedly believes in its sustainability efforts. Think you’re immune to the effects of greenwashing? Guess again.
Momentum Builds for .eco Web Domains
Posted by Environmental Leader | Filed under Sustainability
If an advocacy group is successful, companies and individuals may one day be able to promote their environmental and sustainability initiatives on the Web with a .eco domain name.
Dot Eco LLC is petitioning ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, for the top-level domain segment.
Dot Eco also has a partnership with former [...]
Heidelberg USA Launches Green Printing Web Portal – Printing News
Posted by SustainableMarketingNews | Filed under Sustainability
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Heidelberg USA Launches Green Printing Web Portal
Printing News, Fort Atkinson … chain-of-custody certifications like SFI and FSC, government resources and information on green design. A special subsection on “Making Green Claims” offers guidelines for distinguishing legitimate green marketing claims from spurious competing … |
All Is Not Lost: Corporate Sustainability Is Soaring
Posted by Andrea Nocito | Filed under Sustainability
The American Marketing Association (AMA) in coordination with public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, has been studying the state of sustainability during the down economy from a communications perspective and found that things are not dire. In fact, discussions about sustainability are soaring at America’s corporations.
According to their research, “nearly 60 percent of corporate communicators and marketers see an increased focus on resources on sustainability," says Katherine L. Eller of Fleishman-Hillard. AMA and Fleishman-Hillard discovered that sustainability goals are at the top of corporate to-do lists regardless of whether being sustainable is directly related to a product or service sold by the corporation.
The results of their research is summarized in the joint document, Marketers’ Views Remain Bright on the Topic of Sustainability, Despite Gloomy Economy.
Being sustainable can lead to saving money and often positively impact profit margins in corporations. Through activities like increased recycling and reducing waste streams, and saving water and energy, operational costs are reduced and both employee and consumer satisfaction is increased.
Changing the operations of corporations into sustainable methods of conducting business is THE key to a better national and global relationship with the environment. Corporations have the purchasing power, the capital and have to answer to stakeholders and shareholders if they do not accept environmental responsibility. Because of their influence, they can have greater impact than today’s financially and time stressed individuals and families.
Dare to Do Sustainable Marketing (GreenBiz)
Posted by SustainableMarketingNews | Filed under Sustainability
PURCHASE, N.Y. — PepsiCo plans to use 50 percent less plastic in its half-liter Aquafina water bottles in a move that will save the company an estimated 75 million pounds of plastic each year.
Green:Net: The Green Web Effect
Posted by Liz Gannes | Filed under Sustainability
The green movement is bigger than your crunchy granola friends from college. And the web is a tool to meet, inform and motivate people who want to make the world a better place. At our afternoon web panel at Green:Net, participants shared captivating observations about how their audiences and members are taking green action online.
Moderator Alexis Madrigal of Wired.com started the panel on a rich vein: “The Internet can spread knowledge, but can it get people to do something?” The panelists replied that that they’ve found different emerging interest groups that can be motivated in different ways.
Moms seem to be one of the largest and most actionable groups on the web from a green perspective, said panelists from startups Carbonrally, GoodGuide and Zerofootprint. They care deeply about health risks for their kids. The best way to resonate with moms is to talk in terms of toxics, not environmental impact, especially considering widespread greenwashed marketing, said GoodGuide CEO Dara O’Rourke, whose company offers information on products’ health and social impact.
Erin Carlson, the director of Yahoo for Good, had more nuance to offer after looking at what green content attracts an audience on Yahoo properties like its main page and portals for cars and jobs. She split out three main profiles within that audience:
- Deep green: 23 percent of audience. Skewed female, metropolitan, in it for the long term
- Trendy: 24 percent. Green to look cool. Skews younger and multicultural. Responds to messages about “everybody’s doing it.”
- Practical: 13 percent. Older, in more rural areas. Doing more, saving time.
“People do not respond to doom and gloom,” said Carlson. “They do not respond to celebrities talking about green.” She described Yahoo’s strategy of grabbing people with a sexy headline — say, a world naked bikeride — that leads to an article about alternative transportation.
Carbonrally founder and president Jason Karas described an emerging demographic to his site’s highly interactive personal impact competitions — young people. After a promotion from Seventeen magazine, some 6,000 young girls have taken to the site to start a social movement. They are rabid users of social web tools, with far more messages and interactions on the site than their older counterparts.
There are plenty of opportunities to put understanding green-leaning users to work. Carlson used her observations of the relatively passive audience at Yahoo to suggest that more interactive products like Zerofootprint and Carbonrally might benefit from not using the term “carbon” quite so prominently. She said, for example, that as a rock climber she’d personally be more motivated by information that was described in terms of impact on rock climbing destinations rather than pounds of carbon.
Looking for Green Product Innovators to Present at 'Greener by Design'
Posted by Joel Makower | Filed under Sustainability
Greener World Media is accepting inquiries for innovators from both small and large companies to do lightning-fast (6-8 minute) presentations at Greener by Design, May 19-20 in San Francisco.
Green Consumer Market Affected by Economic Downturn – PR-USA.net (press release)
Posted by SustainableMarketingNews | Filed under Sustainability
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Green Consumer Market Affected by Economic Downturn
PR-USA.net (press release), Bulgaria Key points Consumers have faith in the power of shopping, but not in green marketing claims Figure 34: Attitudes toward the effectiveness of green shopping, by race/Hispanic origin, December 2007 and October 2008 Verification of green claims is … |
Study: Green Packaging Wins Out for Most Shoppers
Posted by Environmental Leader | Filed under Sustainability
Brand marketers are focusing more attention on environmentally friendly packaging, but environmental considerations for shoppers generally are secondary to overall package appearance and functional concerns, says Scott Young, president, Perception Research Services (PRS), in an article written for Packworld.com.
Young says environmental claims about packaging are a tiebreaker for most shoppers when they decide which product [...]
NEWS: Good Housekeeping Adds Green Seal Of Approval
Posted by Stancie Wilson | Filed under Sustainability
For the last 100 years consumers have trusted the Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval when making purchases and now they’re following consumer demand by introducing a new Green Seal of Approval to help clear up rampant confusion. GH has partnered with Santa Barbara, California-based consultancy firm Brown & Wilmanns Environmental to develop its green criteria. “Determining what products get the green thumbs-up will include evaluating its health value and toxicity”, said Michael Brown, of Brown and Wilmanns.
“We want people to be able to see how we arrived at the decisions. Not every green advocate will be happy, but we’ve bent over backward,” Ellis said. Jordana Gustafson, Editor at SustainLane.com says “no matter the timing, the Good Housekeeping brand name alone will give consumers confidence to trust that what they’re buying is environmentally friendly”.
Tomorrow when the April issue hits newsstands Editor-In-Chief Rosemary Ellis will announce the additional of their Green Seal to the already trusted standard Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval found on 5000 products to date. “Marketers were slapping a lot of words on products sometimes legitimately, no doubt, sometimes not so legitimately,” Ellis said, ticking off labels like “natural” and “organic.” “It just became clear consumers were confused and frustrated,” she said.
“None of them, I would say, has been able to cut a wide swath,” Ellis said. “That’s one reason we think Good Housekeeping is an ideal entity to do this. I think a lot of readers will say, ‘What took you so long?’” ”From a business point of view we have a lot on the line and from a trust point of view we have even more on the line,” Ellis said. “But if something has the Good Housekeeping seal, whether it’s an expensive or inexpensive product, you know you’re getting your money’s worth.”
Products already granted the standard Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval can now ask to be evaluated for the Green Seal. The green seal has the same sleek look as the original Good Housekeeping Seal, but is a dark green color and has leaves on either side. Determining what products get the green thumbs-up will include evaluating its health value and toxicity, said Michael Brown, of Brown and Wilmanns.
“It’s a combination of looking at the materials that go into the product, aspects of waste, energy use, water use and certainly the potential health impacts associated with the product,” said Brown, whose firm will train Good Housekeeping researchers to test products against the decided green criteria.
Image credit: www.GoodHousekeeping.com
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