Green Options

When I look at my email inbox, it seems that double-digit percentages of incoming emails now have something to do with green. Manufacturers, retailers, service providers — they are all finding green angles to their company announcements. Even opening a Twitter account is an excuse to say marketing is going green by reducing the amount spent on print.

As I was participating in an online discussion as part of an industry discussion group, I was pleased to see that a regional lettershop, St. John Associates, was also promoting its sustainability efforts. At the bottom of its posts, as part of its company signature, it included the following:

We are an EPA Certified Green Power Partner!

We buy enough monthly Wind Power RECs to offset 50% of our electricity usage and enough monthly Carbon Offset credits to cover 100% of our direct emissions!

Want to know more about our environmental efforts? Visit our website at . . .

You could be excused for thinking that Australia is on top of its environmental problems based on the amount of talk that business directs towards the issue. But our regulator’s recent swoop on tyre-manufacturer Goodyear’s inflated sales pitch shows that as green issues become mainstream, you have to be more wary of manufactures’ claims, not less.

It would be nice to think that as the world collectively wakes up to its immense environmental challenge that business could be relied on to direct its muscle and intelligence towards addressing these problems, authentically.