[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 64min]

Date: Nov. 8, 2008
Organizer: Opportunity Green

Tom Szaky Outline:
The story of Terracycle is a playful one marked with continuous experimentation and rethinking about waste. How can it be repurposed to make a new product that is economical from a manufacturing perspective and valuable to a customer? Tom talks about these subjects and more in this 15min presentation that begins with their humble beginnings and progresses into the company they are today, building out their product portfolio through partnerships with retailers and manufacturers to make what some may call “repurposed branded waste”.

Josh Dorfman Outline:
As the Lazy Environmentalist blogger and author, Josh has worked hard in trying to make “green” easy for the masses. In this 48min presentation, he tells us of his beginnings from working in China, doing a radio show, and other adventures in being a proponent for the movement. But of particular interest to marketers is his series of case studies on “green” products and companies, highlighting how personal emotions of desire, status, and group affiliation among others, have become the unique attractor factors for early adopters and eventual customers.

Many of his beliefs on green marketing ring true with my own and those of John Grant. To make greener products, services and even lifestyles more acceptable and desirable to the larger public, one has to make green “invisible”. If one is explicitly promoting green attributes as the reason to adopt or buy, the potential audience size will be vastly limited.

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[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 27min]

Date: Nov. 8, 2008
Organizer: Opportunity Green

Outline:
Patagonia is an outdoor apparel company with a long tradition of mindfulness toward environmental and social impact in its operations. Rick describes the company’s history and various initiatives in this half hour presentation.

Of particular interest to marketers is the Footprint Chronicles, which with multimedia and video provide an expansive look into the production of some of its clothing items. All in the name of transparency. No other clothing company has taken nearly as significant steps in enlightening the public about the nature of its business. Let’s face it - everyone knows that most all clothes are made in Asia, some being from Latin America. So why not show who you are as a company? Should one be secretive of the fact that outsourcing is the norm?

There are two ways to consider a similar type of initiative: Marketing and Reporting. It’d be great if more large manufacturers took the proactive steps to document their foreign operations through pictures and video instead of just bare-bones text reports as part of social/environmental responsibility obligations. If one is comfortable enough with the results, one can include such messaging within your marketing communications. A logical concern is that “We’re just not good enough. People may consider us greenwashing if too little is said”. That’s true to a degree, but there’s a variety of areas to talk about your company and channels to use as well (public relations, packaging, advertising, social media, internal).

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The points of the book worth mentioning are as follows:

• Foreign oil dependence supports petro-dictatorships and thus the suppression of democracy, particularly when prices are high.
• The rise of the middle class in developing nations will dramatically increase world energy demands. The continued combustion of non-renewable resources like coal and oil for electricity and transportation is very bad for air quality and its contribution to global warming.
• Deforestation is responsible for 20-25% of total carbon emissions. This is more than the combined emissions of all the world’s cars, trucks, trains and planes.
• America needs a Manhattan project for clean energy. The ability of our country to industrially transform itself during World War II is testament to our potential.
• Cap-and-Trade mechanisms are very helpful. Carbon taxes and floor prices on imported oil will provide funding for R&D and capital investment.
• We as individual citizens and even SMBs cannot affect global climate change. Period. No matter how good we feel driving/flying less, biking/walking more, buying carbon offsets or RECs (renewable energy credits). The problem is systemic, macroeconomic, and political.
• The business model of electricity in America is severely flawed.
• There is no green revolution currently taking place, only small-scale projects and improvements. Revolution implies suffering, overthrow, and radical change. What we’re experiencing is a Party invoked by marketing and mass media, where being ‘green’ is easy and fun. Flowers bloom, butterflies flutter about, and everybody is a winner. Water bottles and recycled PET shopping bags for everyone.

While I enjoyed Friedman’s multiple rounds of investigative and expository journalism bound together in chapters to form a book, I must say that the book dragged on and on. This book would have been a pleasant voyage for me, had Tom decided to cut the book in half by limiting personal reflections, cutting out unnecessary details to support arguments, and moving ALL normative statements into one concise chapter at the very end. 150 pages would have done the trick. Recommendation: If you pick up the book, prepare to skim.

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[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 12min]

Françoise Serralta is seen here speaking at the “Digging Deeper” Event hosted by the IDSA in SF last summer (graciously captured for us by the folks at Lunar Design). She is the strategic research and planning director with PeclersParis.

Finished with ideologies and utopian warrior visions on ecology and a perfect world, Françoise is preaching one thing:

Pragmatism!

In her presentation she gives us five main messages on sustainability:

1. Shift from negative to positive semantics in our vocabulary
2. Bioperformance -Applying renewable, natural, and biomimicked processes to our consumer world
3. Pared-down and simplified design
4. Collaborative design for local solutions
5. Assistive design to make sustainable solutions easy to adopt.

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[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 40min]

Date: June 3, 2008

Location: Sustainable Brands 08 - Monterey, California
Organizer: Sustainable Life Media, Business & Industry News for Sustainability

Speakers:
Priya Haji - CEO & Co-founder, World of Good, Inc.
Robert Chatwani - General Manager of WorldofGood.com, eBay, Inc.

Summary:
Two socially conscious visionaries have figured out a way to leverage the strengths of two very different brands to create the world’s largest online marketplace of people- and planet-positive products to engage people in compassionate commerce. Robert Chatwani and Priya Haji discuss their creative business model, how WorldofGood.com got its name, how people can connect more directly to the producers and cultures where unique products are made, and how these vastly different organizations are working so closely together to make commerce a force for good.

Review:
What I particularly like is the design of the website with its earthy feel, the stories of the producers, and how the items meet certain performance criteria. Additionally, proceeds from sales go into further supporting the artisans and social/economic development programs. I truly wish them much luck. There have been a variety of online stores that distribute foreign products, but the credibility of the importers must be questioned. A big part of the experience in buying these products is KNOWING that they’re fairly unique (not being mass produced in a Chinese factory for customers worldwide) and that your purchase is positively contributing to someone’s welfare (without all the middlemen continuously taking cuts).

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Check out Sustainable Brands International, the next conference series to be held Dec. 9-11, 2008.
Having been to their last event in June I must say that the speakers, topics, and experience is above any other I’ve been to. See their schedule to get an idea what you’d be in for.

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[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 10min]

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