Since the Federal Trade Commission filed three complaints against retailers in early June, manufacturers have certainly taken notice and are re-evaluating the way they introduce environmental claims.

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.

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 … ]]> http://www.ivanenviroman.com/heidelberg-usa-launches-green-printing-web-portal-printing-news/feed/ 0 http://www.ivanenviroman.com/all-is-not-lost-corporate-sustainability-is-soaring/ http://www.ivanenviroman.com/all-is-not-lost-corporate-sustainability-is-soaring/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:38:00 +0000 Andrea Nocito http://www.matternetwork.com/2009/4/all-lost-sustainability-souring.cfm 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. 

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. 

 

 

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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.

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), 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 … ]]> http://www.ivanenviroman.com/green-consumer-market-affected-by-economic-downturn-pr-usa-net-press-release/feed/ 0