The current economic crisis has caused some in the sustainable marketing field to wonder if companies are going to shift their focus away from environmental responsibility as money gets tight. Of course those of us in the field know that when done right, sustainable marketing can actually SAVE MONEY.

Here are some ways to make lean, green initiatives part of your company’s belt-tightening efforts:

Cut Waste
It almost goes without saying, but now is a better time than ever to go after the proverbial low-hanging fruit. Simple waste reduction strategies can free up badly needed cash while generating measurable environmental benefits.

Moving from paper to electronic communications is another tried and true source of savings for the earth and the bottom line. Verizon has not only saved more than $8 million in paper and administrative costs by getting more than 3 million customers to sign up for paperless billing, it also saved another $2.7 million by moving its payroll, training, and HR systems online. You can find more examples of such initiatives here.

Invest in Efficiency
While the financial crisis has led us all to rethink the risk profile of our investments, it is important to remember that energy efficiency projects are still relatively safe ways to deploy capital. Oil prices may have fallen from their highs this summer, but the price is still far above what it was only few years ago (the price was under $30 per barrel in 2003), and the price of electricity is still rising. Even if energy prices remain where they are, many energy efficiency investments will be worthwhile.

The McKinsey Global Institute just published a report stating that economic uncertainty can drive more investment in energy efficiency, particularly in the developed world, because efficiency costs less than meeting demand through new energy supplies.

What’s more, investing in energy efficiency now puts your business in a better position to examine clean energy choices later. Lower energy needs will mean you will need smaller, less capital-intensive renewable energy systems to provide green power.

Tunnel Through the Cost Barrier
Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, and Pawl Hawken introduced this concept in Natural Capitalism. In short, tunneling through the cost barrier means designing highly efficient products and processes so that they require less capital than traditional systems. Rather than waiting for five-, three-, or even one-year paybacks on equipment, you can be in the black on day one. How? By designing whole systems to be so efficient that they require smaller energy sources. For example: A well-insulated building requires a smaller HVAC system. Better-designed piping requires smaller pumps.

Spend Time Rather Than Money
The approaches above shouldn’t be capital-intensive, but they can be information-intensive and communication-intensive; they require plenty of thinking and cooperation to implement effectively. In a white-hot economy, it can be difficult to take the time for this level of planning. But during a slowdown, you may have the luxury to think things through more. One best practice is to convene design charrettes - meetings of designers, builders, and those impacted by design decisions - long before a project gets off the ground. By including participants all along the value chain in the process, you can avoid the hang-ups and do-overs that cause costs to escalate, while creating a greener, better outcome.

Sustainable thinking makes perfect sense in a slowing economy. Whether your priority is efficiency, re-engineering, or deepening trust with customers, employees, and other stakeholders, there’s a lean, green strategy that’s right for you.

Learn more by visiting my website for Harvest Design & Marketing.

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source: Harvard Business Publishing

(Greenbiz.com) Businesses are becoming greener, not just because it’s right but because it makes sense.

Paul Marerro didn’t consciously try and start an environmentally conscious company. It happened naturally. Working out of a home office in Tampa, Fla., Marerro provides database and application enterprise architecting, report writing and project management services.

As his company grew, he hired a full-time employee in Iowa and added contractors in Cincinnati and Florida. All had worked for Marerro before in traditional offices. But the time for traditional offices has passed, both for Marrero and for a growing number of companies.

“It’s all telecommuting,” Marerro said.If he had more full-time employees, he’d consider a virtual office, which would allow facilities like a conference room and phone-answering service. But for now, he’s happy, he said.

Marerro doesn’t have much waste and while he can’t go totally paperless, waste paper is shredded and recycled. His business cards are made from recycled paper and all invoices are e-mailed. When he visits his largest client in Philadelphia, he walks or takes public transportation around the city.

“The green has worked its way in,” Marerro said. “We consume electricity but nowhere near the amount of an office building. It’s a room in your house.

“Ideally, Marerro said he’d like to grow the business while expanding his green practices to include solar panels for his home and office. “But it’s also nice to have several large clients, stay focused, give quality and there shouldn’t be a lot of waste,” he said.

Real estate executives and facility managers at medium to large companies are sometimes way off when it comes to occupancy rates, says John Anderson. Most think their facilities are being used 80 or 90 percent of the time. Upon tracking the data, they are often surprised to learn that they are using their space less than 50 percent of the time.

Anderson’s PeopleCube office hoteling software allows employees to schedule activities to secure a work space or room or office as needed.

The office and employer of the future invite employee participation and collaboration, which is key, Anderson said.

“You input your own carbon footprint. For example, you don’t own a cubicle so you rent one for a day. You set the air conditioning and lighting as you like, contributing to the carbon offset.”

Facilities represent the second highest expense for large businesses and the No. 1 manufacturer of emissions, according Anderson. Many employers are paying too much to heat and cool conference rooms that are hardly used and to illuminate cubicles too often left empty. Allowing employees to telecommute from home at least part of the week could cut costs significantly.

Traditionally, tracking and analyzing data from workflow patterns involves looking backward. Anderson suggests a mind shift that would require companies to establish baselines before demonstrating and measuring savings going forward.

Using the data more efficiently can help lower carbon footprint by reducing real estate costs and increasing energy efficiency up to 30 percent, he said.”You need to establish what your baselines are before you can demonstrate and measure savings going forward,” Anderson said. “Companies are just starting to do that today.”

John Larson remembers when a U.S. Interstate Highway collapsed three blocks from where he worked in Minneapolis-St Paul in 2007. There was an immediate reaction by politicians and transportation officials who needed to reroute hundreds of thousands of vehicles every day. If these commuters’ companies had put a telecommuting plan in place, that problem could potentially have been solved almost instantly.

Larson is a spokesperson for Results-Only Working Environment, or ROWE, a new way of managing people developed by two women who worked in human resources at Best Buy. The idea of ROWE is to allow flexible schedules, forcing managers to concentrate on outcomes rather than hours.

Best Buy adopted the ROWE plan at its headquarters, staggering arrival times for employees throughout the work day and cutting down on commute times.

“Those 4,000 people in Best Buy — 2,500 to 3,000 still go to work each day but not all at the same time,” Larson said. “People go at all hours so you don’t have a giant crush of cars stalled in traffic.”

Only a handful of companies have adopted the results-only philosophy. “But if ROWE became the status quo, it would have a tremendous impact on the environment,” Larson said.

Anderson’s 65 employees book conference space and cubicles on an as-needed basis, telecommuting when they don’t need to be in the office.

Telecommuting is a huge incentive, PeopleCube’s John Anderson said. It helps employees balance work and home life. Not having to drive an hour or more each way sometimes results in employees spending that saved commute-time working.

“After the salary, the number-one attraction is telecommuting,” he said. “You’re now dealing with millennial kids exiting college and they’re very environmentally conscious. Employees want to know that their company is driving in those directions. It’s a recruiting strategy too.”

Employee participation can sound like a scary proposition for the traditional office scenario.  There are two schools of thought regarding control, according to Anderson: One is that employees aren’t going to help, so bosses have to force them to do what bosses want. The other is that the more employees are included in decision-making, the more they will help.

Educating employees about green office practices is vital, Anderson said.

“You’d be surprised what the employee population is willing to do,” he said. “People are more willing to pitch in if you incent them to participate.”

Incentives include funding transportation if employees leave their cars at home, bringing a homey feel into the office by having living-room type set-ups or having a Starbucks in the building.

Some of the more radical changes in green offices of the future have to do with amenities-based interiors and designs based around increased productivity. Think laundry room at the office so you don’t have to send out.

Some banks, insurance and technology companies are creating positions for sustainability officers dedicated to reducing carbon footprint. Others resist, saying they want to be environmentally conscious but have to have a return on their investment in everything they do. Whether they’re in stocks, paper recycling or can recycling, there’s a prevailing mentality in the executive suite that if you’re not in the office today, you’re not really working.

“Our employees that telecommute are probably more productive than those that come in,” Anderson said. “As long as I’m getting a day’s work out of you I don’t really care. Telecommuting has a high degree of success.”

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Content from Dana Sanchez as posted on Greeenbiz.com.

(Harvard Business Publishing) If we have any doubt about the prevalence - and cost - of “short-termism” in global capital markets, the current economic meltdown is an obvious reminder. But, beyond the $700 billion bailout and other financial band-aids to stop the bleeding, the bigger debate is how to fix the regulatory and corporate governance systems to avoid future calamities — whether financial or environmental.

A critical question is to whom companies should be most beholden to — shareholders or society.

The question popped into my head last week viewing a short preview of a PBS Frontline documentary “Heat” about the challenges of reversing global warming. Among the film’s most poignant moments was an exchange between the film’s producer and a Chinese energy company executive who was asked if he felt any obligation to reduce CO2 emissions from his company’s fast-growing fleet of new coal plants.

The CEO’s immediate answer was an unequivocal, ‘no.’ “We must create money, not lose the money,” Shenhua Energy CEO Ling Wen said. “It’s my responsibility as a CEO of this company.”

When pressed whether he should make climate change a higher priority, Wen said that he would if his shareholders asked him. But, he added, “I’m afraid maybe all the shareholders, they cannot accept that concept.” In the meantime, China continues to build two new coal-fired power plants every week.

I wasn’t surprised by Wen’s answer, but it was a chilling reminder about the extent to which global capitalism — and the investors and companies that drive the global economy — has lost its way in terms of its overriding purpose.

While I’m all in favor of wealth creation and rewarding success, how we define corporate success is out of whack. Shareholders — an increasingly vague term with the growth of hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds — should not be the preeminent rulers of companies and quarterly earnings should not be the only gauge for measuring CEO performance. We need to broaden our definition of success so that long-term corporate sustainability and long-term global sustainability get the attention they deserve. Failing to do so will mean more global calamities, both financial and environmental, as the grow-at-all-costs global economy races ahead with little regard for social and environmental consequences.

I do not have all the answers on this, but many other smart people have been pondering these issues the past few years since the Enron debacle — and their ideas deserve close attention.

In June 2007, a broad coalition of leading companies, investors, and other stakeholders released the Aspen Principles for Long-Term Value Creation as a call to action to reverse the capital market’s bias toward short-term thinking. Among the key corporate actions it identified:

• Setting long-term metrics that de-emphasize earnings per share and quarterly profits as the metric of choice

• Incentive systems and compensation schemes that reward long-term focus and success

More recently, Corporation 20/20 came out with its own set of policies for fostering corporate long-termism. Among the group’s key principles is that the corporation shall accrue “fair returns for shareholders, but not at the expense of the legitimate interests of other stakeholders,” such as employees, communities, the environment and future generations. One suggestion the group makes for achieving this is reducing the clout of short-term investors (hint: hedge funds) inclined to quick fixes to boost short-term profits. One lever the group suggests is requiring investors to hold shares for a year before before gaining voting rights or increasing capital gains taxes on short-term trades. Similarly, compensation incentives might be changed to modify or even outlaw stock options, or make bonuses contingent on achieving social and environmental performance targets.

While these ideas may seem radical, they are worthy of attention once the dust settles on Wall Street and the focus shifts to addressing the fundamental market drivers that contributed to the collapse.

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Content from Mindy S. Lubber as posted on Harvard Business Publishing.

Most people in business, community, and government are focusing on tactical and survival-based responses in order to deal with the current financial crisis. I would suggest that sustainability initiatives are an essential element for everyone to consider in order to minimize financial imbalances and limit overhead.

This is a time when it is important for pay very close attention to what you spend. That doesn’t always mean that spending needs to be frozen, but it does mean that value is a more important consideration than ever.

I have found that the sustainable marketing message is becoming increasingly attractive to my clients. At Harvest we show clients how to reduce resource use, reduce environmental impact, and reduce overall expense. Cumulatively these benefits help their companies be more socially responsible which is a critical response to the current environmental crisis. But responsible spending is absolutely essential in this atmosphere of economic crisis.

So many people focus exclusively on the environmental aspects of sustainable business. But there is an opportunity to drive home the message that this practice is a very practical solution to tightening budgets with a continued demand to increase sales.

If you are looking for more information for your home or business, make sure you look through the links listed on the right of this page. There are some excellent resources for learning more. Or feel free to contact me if you are in the Omaha area and I can share what I know.

Pizza is my biggest food vice (ice cream isn’t considered food…more medication). And it is always such a bummer when we finish the pizza and have to scrap the box.

A company called Green Box has turned the formerly single-purpose pizza box into a cross-functional delivery, dining, and long-term storage solution.

Their design is simple. They take the standard box, perforate the top into quarters, and they can turn into plates. Perforate the edges of the bottom of the box, then once down the middle, and you can fold that into a leftover box that’s half the size of the original. Less than that, actually, since the box is wedge shaped.

The company has clearly added value to the pizza box, but they have also used a simple business solution that yield meaningful environmental benefits. Think about all the other things that would have been used with a normal box: Plates plus the time/water/detergent used washing them. Disposable plates if you’re out, likely tossed. Paper towels standing in for plates. Plastic wrap or foil used to cover or wrap the leftovers in a smaller package then that mammoth box.

This may not sound like a lot in terms of one meal, but it adds up when you consider that American’s consume 4.8 billion pizza’s each year.

The makers of the box didn’t stray much from standard construction materials, believing that would have likely raised the price. They felt that most pizza shops are quantity focused businesses that will only make a move towards sustainability if it doesn’t raise the cost of doing business. Instead, they took the industry standard box, modified nothing but how it’s cut, and made it out of recycled paper, an increasingly cost competitive option.

This sort of creative decision making that focuses on solving conventional problems in a more sustainable way is the future of sustainable business. Sustainable businesses cannot live on the fringe if they hope to succeed in a competitive marketplace. The folks at Green Box clearly took the time to evaluate the factors involved in the decisions of everyone through their distribution chain and made decisions that benefitted each one of them. The end result is a simple product that will hopefully make me feel better about ordering my next gourmet pie from my favorite pizza shop.

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Source: Triple Pundit

The Pollution Prevention Regional Information Center (P2RIC) strives to improve resource sharing for waste reduction between the programs, businesses, and agencies of EPA Region 7 (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska). P2RIC shares success stories in Region 7 as a way to increase dialogue for businesses wishing to implement sustainable practices.

Recently, the P2RIC contacted me to speak with them about the differences between Greenwashing and Sustainable Marketing. Greenwashing is not a complementary term, it is ‘the practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology or company practice.’

In the recent rush to go green, greenwashing has oftentimes become synonymous with green  marketing - which makes the job of marketing a company’s genuine green efforts all the more difficult. It can be easy, if not even tempting, for a company to slip into the unsavory realm of greenwashing. According to local marketing specialist Ryan Atkinson, “the current environmental movement has been used as a marketing tool to try and attract new customers.”

Atkinson is President of Harvest Design and Marketing, an Omaha-based company that began in 2007 as a firm dedicated not to green marketing,  but rather, to sustainable marketing. So, what’s the difference? According to Atkinson, it’s not merely to attract customers with greenness, but to build a green ethic into a company’s overall marketing strategy. “If they have a sincere desire as a company to reduce their environmental impact, that’s where sustainable marketing as I see it comes into play.”

To learn more, click the link below to listen to the audio file.

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Listen to Interview

Audio file requires Quicktime Player, free download here.

Reuters had an interesting piece recently on Bangladesh’s thriving Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) recycling industry. The small South Asian country exported more than 20,000 tons of PET flakes, the shredded version of plastic bottles, last year sorted from the 3,000 factories across the country dedicated to recycling. The industry generated about $10 million in 2007 and has grown annually at a rate of 20 percent.

Once the PET bottles have been sorted and crushed, the flakes are exported to China, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. Importing countries use the flakes to make Polyester Staple Fiber (PSF), which are used in spinning mills as a base material for clothing, pillows, carpets and polyester sheets.

There are several criticisms of PET as a material, but as long as it is in use it is good to have a recycling outlet. As a marketer, I’ve been impressed with the output. I wear recycled PET lanyards when I represent Harvest at events, and have ordered custom versions for clients as well. I’ve been really impressed with the comfort, graphic clarity, and durability of the material.

Around the world, about 1.5 million tons of PET are collected per year, the majority of it in Europe. Petcore, the European non-profit organization that champions PET recycling, predicts that in Europe alone, collection will exceed one million ton by 2010. In Bangladesh, the sector is also creating much needed jobs for thousands of poor children and women who survive by collecting at least 100 tons of PET bottles per day.

Source :: Treehugger

Among the early-adopter segment of eco-conscious consumers, The Intelligence Group has observed a new trend called “precycling” and believes it will grow.

Consumers who precycle aren’t just content with throwing cans and bottles in the recycle bin and letting waste management sort it out. With increasing consumer interest in sustainable living, those engaged in precycling aim to avoid products that create more superfluous stuff. This could mean everything from buying bulk in order to avoid excess packaging to reusing everything from water bottles to shopping bags (the latter of which has caught on with retailers and the public at large).

In its May Cassandra Report, The Intelligence Group found that 45% of trendsetters and 14% of mainstream consumers have “cut down on bottled water purchases” in the past six months, while 49% and 16% respectively have “cut down on use of plastic bags” during the same period.

Precycling evolved out of a trend the market research and consulting firm spotted in 2007, which it called “wasted.” This is when it noticed excess was emerging as a dirty word. People were looking for ways to pare down packaging and/or repurpose it, for starters. As examples, think Pom Wonderful’s reusable bottles and Chaco footwear’s program that offers customers a 20% discount when they send in used but clean shoes, which are donated to developing countries.

It is becoming a more popular viewpoint that recycling cans, bottles, paper and such is an antiquated misuse of energy, so precyclers remove themselves from junk mail lists, read paper-based media online and even carry around “precycling kits” consisting of cloth napkins and silverware—anything to reduce waste and not contribute to the recycling bin.

“It’s not just about how you dispose of [products and packaging] anymore,”  said Melissa Lavigne, director of marketing for The Intelligence Group, which is a division of CAA. “It’s about being conscious about products you buy in the first place. That’s the idea behind precycling.”

Of course, precycling isn’t replacing recycling completely, especially in its more abstract forms. Consumers are all for donating or reselling their electronic gadgets, for instance, thanks to eBay and other Web resources. Lavigne said, “We asked people how many think of the resale value when they purchase a product, and 49% said they do.”

Source: Brandweek

Business ideas are all around us, and sustainable entrepreneurs are using these ideas to create a world they want to live in.

Rugula Appenzeller is owner of the green business Hank&Cheef. Using organic cotton ethically sourced from Turkey, Hank&Cheef has brought back the handkerchief, finally. Kudos to them for reinventing an indispensable but forgotten product. I hope they are successful.

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Source Future of Business

It’s pretty clear that the business world is facing dramatic change driven by environmental concerns. Over the coming years and decades, we’re going to change the entire energy system and find new ways to design, make, ship, sell, and consume things. While it’s uncertain if quality of life will suffer (and I hope not), the quantity of resources used will change dramatically - e.g., using a lot less energy, or at least carbon-driven energy, to power our lives.

And this change is becoming a business imperative regardless of whether you buy the climate change argument. Just looking at the high price of everything from metals to food to fuels, the case for being radically more resource efficient is getting clearer every day. What’s also clear is that the world can’t currently provide for what will be nine or ten billion people who all want our lifestyle (the government of China has set a goal of moving half its population into the middle class by 2020 - that’s 600 million people; if they all use oil at our rate, China alone will need more than the world produces by 2030 or so). At current technologies and modes of production, there isn’t enough stuff. So there’s a business need and a system overload requirement that we innovate and do more with less.

But don’t just take my word for it.

The Wall Street Journal ran a stunning article recently titled, “New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears.” The shocking part of this article was the fact that it didn’t malign the idea that we may run out of things, which Milton Friedman-esque business people have been laughing at for 200 years (since Thomas Malthus first drew an exponential population chart plotted against a geometric resource growth chart and said we’d all starve). Yes, those doomsayers have been very wrong in critical ways, mainly related to our ability to innovate and substitute out of products when we found new options (like from whale oil to kerosene to oil).

But the Journal was deadly serious, talking about resources like water that we can’t substitute our way out of. The related point was that there’s really nothing left to substitute to — we know where pretty much everything is. Two quotes were fascinating: “Record highs in the prices for oil, wheat, copper…are signs of a lasting shift in demand as yet unmatched by supply”. The “as yet” is a big qualifier, but it feels a bit like wishful thinking, especially given the second quote from ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva: “I don’t think we are going to see the [oil] supply going over 100 million barrels a day, and the reason is: Where is all that going to come from?” So even the oil CEOs are telling us there’s not enough stuff.

So what does this mean for business and how is it connected to the green movement? First, rising prices for nearly everything mean we’re entering the big leagues. Whether you call it “green” or “eco-efficiency” doesn’t matter; either way, all the efficiency tools we have - such as total quality, lean manufacturing, six sigma - are going to be put to the test. If your company has a knack for cutting out waste and reducing resource use, it will survive and thrive. If you can’t reduce your reliance on fossil fuels in your whole value chain - from sourcing to manufacturing to distribution - you may be in trouble.

Second, if you can offer a new “supply” to help bolster that side of the Econ 101 curves, you will have a giant market to satisfy (those billions of consumers). And I’m talking about smart supply growth, not the corn ethanol kind that actually exacerbates all of our problems. I’m talking new low-carbon energy, water saving technologies and processes, good design principles, building efficiency, and on and on.

The mad race for renewable energy technologies and the dramatic shift in car offerings are good examples. The venture capital money flowing to new technologies easily recalls the Internet boom. But is this one a bubble? It might be, but these entrepreneurs are working to satisfy existing multi-trillion dollar energy and resource markets, not trying to create new markets or needs. So money from the biggest, smartest names in Silicon Valley is flowing freely. This is a very good thing. There will be a shakeout, but some winners will win big.

As demand for resources outstrips supply, the Journal worried, what if countries just try to grab what’s left in a big resource fight? Companies might go down a biggest is best path as well. But won’t the best companies profit much more if they just find a way to need less? And won’t the competitors that help their customers use less do extremely well?

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Source Andrew Winston

A new national study titled Green AMPlified was released today that attempts to unearth a solid understanding of the current state of ‘Green’, its meaning and impact on consumer’s lifestyle and purchasing behaviors.

The survey found that close to all American consumers (90%) believe that acting in an environmentally responsible way is important, but feel corporations hold most of the responsibility to implement change over their own personal efforts and are increasingly implementing eco-friendly evaluation into their product purchasing decisions.

The survey went on to state that over half (53%) of consumers factor a company’s social and environmental activities into their purchasing decisions and while overall, consumer’s personal actions to protect the environment show minimal sacrifice in terms of changing one’s lifestyle, consumers are ready to reward those companies that prove their commitment to the cause.

In fact, after learning a company is environmentally friendly, the study found that 57% are likely to trust the company, 60% are likely to purchase its products, and 58% are likely to recommend the company or its products to others.

It’s Not Always Easy Being Green
When it comes to purchasing green products over traditional ones, consumers put high demand on marketers with cost acting as the primary factor. When asked how much more (if any) consumers were willing to spend on green products, the results are significant, with over 75% of consumers stating that they were not willing to spend more than 10% to purchase a green product over a traditional choice in almost all of the categories offered.

Product performance also factors into purchase decisions and most consumers are not giving green products a break. In fact, for consumers who consider performance important, it makes all the difference. In all product categories discussed, almost all consumers (90%) stated that a green product must work just as well as or better than a traditional product in order to make the switch.

Green It, But Mean It
Consumers are demanding that corporations be part of the movement to protect the environment, but with green marketing messages flooding store shelves, they are also getting savvier or perhaps, more skeptical of the myriad of claims. Overall, consumers are expressing they don’t expect companies to be perfect, but they need to know that they care as much as they do and are making efforts to improve the state of the world - and can show it.

So, where are consumers getting their cues? At the top, 40% of consumers stated that they learned that a company is environmentally friendly because of its packaging. However, 44% stated that they sometimes, but not often, believe the environmentally friendly claims on product packages. Based on follow up interviews, consumers shared their reasons for feeling skeptical of a company’s environmental claims, stating they think they are often unverifiable, overly generalized, or contradictory to other behaviors of the company.

On the other hand, it appears consumers want to trust the companies behind the products and are simply asking them to be more explicit and transparent about their policies and to help educate the public on the benefits of their products and claims and how to participate in eco-friendly practices.

Green Evangelists
The study identified a robust group of consumers who are not looking to cast blame, but rather band together to make a difference.

Green Evangelists are twice as likely as the general market to purchase products from companies who state they support the environment, with close to half (49%) reporting doing so, and 63% are more likely to choose a green product over others. More than half of these passionate consumers are displaying eco-friendly actions such as buying organic (51%), unplugging appliances (53%), forgoing air conditioning (55%) and recycling (78%).

These passionate consumers show they can be a brands best advocate should they succeed in grasping their attention and ultimately, their loyalty. 73% are encouraging others to act green and close to all (91%), agree that when they discover a new product that they like, they immediately tell their friends, compared to 82% of the total.

I’m Guilty!
The mindset of younger consumers surveyed appears to differ from their older counterparts when it comes to their decision to act earth-friendly. Whereas boomers responses were more tied to economical reasons, millennials actions were tied to environmental impact.

Interestingly, this environmentally aware generation seems to carry more weight of the future of our world on their shoulders. Almost half (47%) report feeling guilty when they don’t take actions they feel are important and 50% state they feel irresponsible, a measurable disparity from the 33% of boomers who feel guilty when they don’t take action and the 34% who reported feeling irresponsible.

Conclusion
This national survey of more than 3,000 consumers between the ages 18-49 provides an interesting ‘moment-in-time’ snapshot of consumer attitudes today. It shows that environmental concerns are certainly playing a significant role in the marketplace.

Among the younger and more environmentally aware generation, consumers are willing to exercise environmental accountability in their actions/purchases. That is good news for marketers with a long-term horizon. The question for the planet as a whole is whether consumerism is a bad habit that needs to be broken.

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Note: I loathe the word ‘consumer’, but for convenience I didn’t manipulate the text (which largely came directly from the press release).

Deloitte has just released a whitepaper on developing corporate responsibility and sustainability strategies. The paper offers information on the risks and rewards of such strategies.

As a consulting firm, Deloitte offers a variety of services. It has relatively recently began advising clients on the benefits of sustainability.

With business practices under increasing scrutiny by regulators, analysts, media and stakeholders, corporate responsibility and sustainability (CR&S) is fast becoming a critical issue for companies. Yet confusion exists over CR&S and the best approaches to it. Is CR&S mainly about charity? ‘Green’ business? Human rights? Pro bono work? All of the above?

This paper offers insight into why a strategically driven CR&S program is critical to a company’s survival — beyond the ‘feel good’ factor of charity — and outlines a suggested CR&S approach.

Among the questions addressed in the paper:

• Where should companies focus their CR&S initiative?
• What activities should they be reporting on?
• What impact will CR&S have on their bottom line?
• What are the major risks?

The whitepaper is available for free as a PDF you can download from Deloitte’s website.

Marriott hotel has just introduced a series of eco-friendly meeting products to help reduce environmental impact of the company and its guests.

According to a company press release, the average three-day meeting at a Marriott hotel attended by 1,000 people produces more than 12 tons of trash, uses 200,000 kilowatts of power and consumes 100,000 gallons of water.

Beginning this summer, Marriott will introduce a series of meeting products that are eco-friendly and will help guests and meeting planners reduce their environmental impact.  Marriott is building on an aggressive environmental strategy by adding new elements to green its meetings.

Products and Services include:

• 100% post-consumer fiber writing pads
• Bic Ecolutions pens made from recycled content and biodegradable (Marriott purchases 47 million pens per year)
• Access to recycling containers in or near meeting rooms in many of the hotels
• Meeting rooms set with water service in pitchers or coolers rather than plastic bottles
• Boxed lunch containers made of recycled content, including biodegradable cutlery kits and napkins
• Organic, sustainable and natural food and beverage options in many hotels to include Fair-Trade teas and meeting room chocolate options
• Organic flower options
• Linen-less banquet buffet tables made of 49%-recycled aluminum and are 99% recyclable at many hotels
• Safe-to-donate food given to America’s Second Harvest’s network of food banks

According to Bruno Lunghi, CMP, Marriott’s vice president for event management, “Our customers have been demanding greener meetings and we feel we can make a difference in the world by taking steps to reduce our footprint on the environment.  This is just the beginning of an evolving program that continue to add ‘green’ products and services as they become available.”

Marriott has a comprehensive environmental preservation program, which you can learn more about at the company website. If you are using a hotel convention space in the Marriott family, make sure you ask about these options. And be sure to save this page, because several of these ideas you can implement in your own meetings.

I got turned on to LinkedIn when I started Harvest. This site is an online social network for professionals in over 150 industries. I immediately connected with people that I had worked with in my previous career, especially people from the bike industry. But then, as my business started to grow, I connected with more and more local professionals.

Social networks are an important resource for any professional tasked with promoting their business in a sustainable way.

The network has helped my business grow quickly, and I recommend that you check it out to learn more. Watch this video for a quick overview. And if you are already LinkedIn, let me know if you want to connect.

Over half of Americans ages 15-34 are actively using online social networks (e.g., Facebook, MySpace), spending on average more than seven hours per week on such websites and driving the growth of overall time spent online.

For those 35 and over, the percentage of social network users drops, but is still tens of millions of people. Participation in social networks continues to grow, though more slowly than in prior years, as more people seek to connect, share and collaborate with sometimes far-flung family, friends, business colleagues and other likeminded individuals online.

Today, hundreds of millions of online users have already joined at least one social network, with an increasing number belonging to more than one. About 40% of all social networkers say they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products they like, with 28% saying that a friend has recommended a brand or product to them.

For marketers, social networks represent a unique and potentially more personable way to communicate with customers in a environmentally responsible way. Those users can be found across a wide variety of social networks, including both general interest and vertically focused networks that connect people interested in environmental and social responsibility.

In addition to the list of over 50 notable green social networks we’ve identified, there are hundreds more that pop up with the term ‘green’ in their names that use platforms, like Ning, that allow anyone to create their own social networks. Probably hundreds more with terms like environmental, sustainable, eco, etc.

There are a number of ways marketers can integrate social networks into their marketing mix. Among them are to (1) create profiles or pages, and start groups on existing social networks; (2) integrate marketing campaigns with social profiles and tools (e.g., video, podcast, fanbase); (3) start their own social network; and (4) advertise on social networks.

With any of these tactics, some real effort and/or budget are required for success. That’s why rather than a scatter shot approach, it’s important to choose the right social networks for your organization, brand and objectives, and then commit the time to give your efforts a chance to work.

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Source: SRB Marketing