Green Marketing, Sustainable Branding, Environmentally Safe

Shell is preemptively suing 12 environmental organizations over drilling in the Arctic. Shell has attempted to bully its way through environmental concerns in the past, yet it has never produced the best results. This time is unlikely to be different.

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The Lorax has nearly 70 corporate and nonprofit sponsors, including HP, Comcast, DoubleTree by Hilton hotels, IHOP, and Mazda. These sponsorships promise that your chances to see this little furry creature outside the theatre are quite high these days, whether it is on Seventh Generation’s diapers, on IHOP’s menu (how about Truffula chip whole wheat pancakes?), or an ad to the Mazda CX-5, the “Truffula tree friendly car”. While some people believe these sponsorships would cause Dr. Seuss to roll in his grave, others believe this is a legitimate use of a great movie to promote green products. So who is right and who is wrong here?

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New Media and CSR: Communicating Corporate Good, moderated by TriplePundit’s very own Nick Aster, identified four major emerging trends in Corporate Social Responsibility in a free-wheeling discussion between Chris Miller, Christine Diamente, Mitch Baranowski, and Dale Hart. What were they? Read on.

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After getting tired of writing and characterizing the baby boomers and generation X, trend spotters and researchers have focused in the last years on the next in line – generation Y, or the Millennials. Who are you people and what you want from life are the questions everyone try to answer. The latest attempt was of 3 scholars whose prognosis was that the Millennials are the MacGyvers of business, on in other words “like MacGyver, the resilient DIY generation believes in doing more with less.”

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The concept of brand has rippled, or expanded, greatly with the rise of sustainability. Speaking with Robert ter Kuile, PepsiCo’s senior director of environmental sustainability, I learned that this ripple is now spreading beyond the consumer entirely, and into their community.

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A report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) entitled “Walmart’s Greenwash” examines the retail giant’s environmental impact and finds that the results are falling far short of the promises. According to senior researcher and author Stacy Mitchell, “Walmart’s sustainability campaign has done more to improve the company’s image than to help the environment.”

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NASCAR, best known for pushing the speed envelope, has launched a new traffic safety campaign with a sustainable twist. Rather than focusing narrowly on strategies to help drivers to look out for their own lives, the campaign deploys a broad message of taking responsibility for the safety of others.  According to a press release launch, [...]

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The consumer trend tracking firm Trendwatching.com is covering a new trend called “Flawsome” which shows why businesses who truly embrace their flaws will come out on top, and why those who don’t are likely to suffer from consumer indifference and maybe even disdain.

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When most people think of tourism, they probably don’t think about an industry that can contribute to global solutions for the difficult challenges facing the planet. But they should.

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Right now demand for the Volt is falling short of supply and as a result GM decided on Friday to suspend production of the Volt for five weeks, idling 1,300 workers at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. It seems like this is a sign GM needs to recalibrate its Volt strategy and value offering, not just manufacturing.

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The Philadelphia Eagles football team has already established a leadership position in the field of sports sustainability, and it is just about to one-up itself.

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As companies consider the steps in incorporating or re-incorporating as a benefit corporation, one unique aspect of the process continues to cause confusion. It is the idea that a company’s “material positive impact” will be determined by a third-party standard. This post reviews what that means and provides a list of third party standards available.

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Contrary to popular belief, humans have failed to address the earth’s worsening emergencies of climate change, species’ extinction and resource overconsumption not because of a lack of information, but because of a lack of imagination, social scientists and artists say.

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The key to a successful recycling program is not just starting one, but committing to it and following through.

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The scientific rigor of an ASTM standard combined with the credibility of the USDA raises the bar for the industry and makes the USDA Certified Biobased label a new source of competitive advantage within the consumer and government procurement markets for brand owners who make the effort to get their biobased products certified.

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Last week, I wrote about a recent, somewhat controversial collaboration between the Nature Conservancy and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. I would like to follow that story up with one describing another new Conservancy program focused on urban conservation. When combined, I think these two stories will put these recent efforts into the broader context of environmental organizations’ challenge of expanding their demographics, and in particular, focusing on younger, and increasingly urban audiences, in hopes of attracting tomorrow’s supporters.

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Chipotle’s anti factory commercial steals people’s hearts during the Grammy Awards, showing that the sustainable meat trend may be going mainstream and providing an opportunity for other fast food restaurants to get into the game.

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With the launch of a first-of-its-kind High Performance Sustainability Index for publicly listed US utilities, Target Rock Advisors has identified and ranked the top 5 and 15 US utilities across the three pillars of sustainable, Triple Bottom Line business practices and operations: environment, economy and society. Sure to spur interest among investors, Target Rock found that their shares, as a group, have outperformed the DJIA and S&P 500 over the past ten years.

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My three-year old daughter is one of the newest participants in Bicycle Benefits, a national program that rewards people for biking to participating businesses. Bikers pay $5 for a sticker that adheres to their helmet, which they present at participating businesses for a discount that is determined by each business. My daughter can now save 5 [...]

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The Nature Conservancy may have just raised a few eyebrows, some in dismay, others from a more voyeuristic perspective at their recent decision to partner with the Sports Illustrated magazine and luxury retailer Gilt, in a new fundraising campaign. A special sales event coinciding with the launch of this year’s SI swimsuit issue, will feature swimsuits, photographs, surfboards and tickets (starting at $1000) to launch parties where the highly exposed models will be in attendance. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Nature Conservancy who will use them to protect the very beaches on which the pictures were taken.

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Hong Kong’s Upsolar in mid-January became the first Chinese silicon PV supplier to complete an initial Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of its two best-selling solar PV modules. Now, it’s using Facebook to crowdsource a public contest to create its 2012 advertising campaign.

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Walmart announced this week that it will start putting a new label on food products to help consumers make healthier food choices at its stores. A logo with the phrase “Great For You” will be used to indicate to consumers that a certain product has gotten Walmart’s nutritional seal of approval.

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Jeffrey Hollender’s talk on Tuesday at NYU wasn’t probably listed on Time Out NY, but nevertheless it was one of the best shows the city provided that night. Hollender, an almost impossible combination of a CEO and a rebel, is never boring no matter how many times you get to hear him. Combining gloomy economic and social observations with funny anecdotes, he managed to charm the dozens of students that packed the room, sending them home afterwards with his innovative ideas (some would say ‘European’) on how to get the U.S. economy back on the track towards a sustainable future.

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Monsanto likes to think of itself as a sustainable agriculture company. They proudly trumpet their commitment to improving crop yields in the face of an ever-increasing human population, which they put forth as the very essence of sustainability. In truth, they are pursuing a sustainable objective in an unsustainable fashion. UCS senior scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman claims that Monsanto, “is producing more engineered seeds and herbicide and improving its bottom line, but at the expense of conservation and long-term sustainability.”

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Consumer boycotts and pocketbook pressure has been effective in the past in changing corporate behavior. How do we keep the pressure on to keep companies incentivized to do the right thing?

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Across the digital universe, brands are asking consumers to click for the good of the planet. Many social media-driven initiatives are naturally intended to build greater awareness of the brand’s own social responsibility positioning. But in asking consumers to create, vote, like, pledge and share online, can these tactics actually foster a change in attitude or even behaviour? Can social media help build a more sustainable society, one campaign at a time?

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By Amadou M. Cissé, EMBA 12, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland A few days ago, on my way home I was listening to NPR and I heard about yet another chemical spill in a river in China.  It turns out that seven people had been detained in connection with the toxic [...]

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Are people who care about CSR all only focused on environmental issues? It is important to investigate further what are the values that people care most about in corporate performance.

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Flyerzone is an online printing company that offers design agency quality services without charging design agency prices. Drawing on the talent of our international network of artists, we add new designs and templates to the site every day, offering our customers a huge range of choices all in one place, at a price they can afford.

We do this by integrating our environmental philosophy with our commercial model: by reducing waste, recycling and using vegetable-based inks, Flyerzone uses as few resources as possible without compromising on the quality of its work. By sourcing 99 per cent of our paper from Forest Stewardship Council-certified forests, we ensure our business is sustainable in both the commercial and the environmental sense.

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The first month of 2012 is almost over, but it’s still difficult to envision how this year will look like, especially when it comes to the interaction between consumption and sustainability. One of the people who came for our help is Raphael Bemporad, the founding partner and Chief Strategy Officer of BBMG. He offered on Sustainable Brands a list of five trends that he believes will shape sustainable brands in 2012. This is a great list and we’d like to share it with you, adding our point of view as well as two more trends to watch for.

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