Green Options

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It’s encouraging to see the increasingly wide assortment and availability of products made from recycled materials, but there’s a problem on the other end: A lot of things aren’t accepted for recycling by curbside collection services, at least not in the US.

As this recent article in Fast Company details, it’s not currently profitable for recyclers to take much beyond the most common, high volume items, like aluminum, paper, and a select few types of plastic. You can forget about candy and snack wrappers. Too many comingled materials, too difficult to create a consistent, usable result on the other end.

But, thanks to Terracycle and companies like mega food producer Kraft Foods teaming up, that’s changing, on a potentially huge scale.

Last week I had the chance to hear Pete Blackshaw talk about his book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends. Angry Customers Tell 3,000″. His message is particularly important for eco-entrepreneurs, so I’m summarizing some of his talk for you green business entrepreneurs.

Green businesses are particularly well-suited for consumer advocacy. Customers who shop from your company due to a shared concern for the environment and/or a desire to avoid toxins are likely to tell their friends about the benefits of your product or service. The flip-side is that they are also likely to be particularly vocal and angry if they feel you have betrayed your green mission.

Social media, primarily blogs, have greatly lowered the barriers for consumers to voice their opinions. They can easily advocate on behalf of a brand or take a company to task for bad service, misleading advertising, products that do not work, and more. And the title of Blackshaw’s book rings true.

The question for green businesses is are you making it easier for 1000 people to advocate on behalf of your business, and are you reacting quickly and authentically when there is a mis-step and a customer is unhappy?

We marketers used to say that a brand is the sum total of all experiences with a company–not just the product or service but the employees, partners, website, collateral, ads, service centers, etc.

Your Google ranking is part of your brand

Well, now, customer service discussions on blogs are now part of your brand experience. Blackshaw says,

The U.S. retail sector represented 4.5 trillion dollars in 2007 and so when retailers talk about trends we should listen. A new study released by The Aberdeen Group shows where retailers are going when it comes to going green. The good news is that the opportunities for eco-entrepreneurs will continue to grow.

According to Environmental Leader, the new report titled “Getting From Green To Gold: Retail Success Factors and Outcomes” lists the six key focus areas for retailers:

• Adopt enterprise-wide policies for green sourcing/procurement (59%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates for waste management (54%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates around packaging (48%)
• Redesign the retail supply chain to align with green/responsible mandates (41%)
• Offer eco-friendly end-of-life product programs to customers (41%)
• Redesign store facilities and infrastructure around sustainability goals (35%)

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

From leather to leader is how Leed’s explains it on their website. How about from bottles to briefcases? That might be a better description for Leeds line of 100% recycled promotional items made from water bottles and other recycled everyday items.

Leed’s Owl line of bags and other items made from recycled water bottles has added a new product to their list of made from 100% post-consumer recycled material (product label affirms this claim).

Looking to add some credentials to your new venture? Consider joining a trade organization that provides education, technical assistance, credentials and a directory listing. In a competitive marketplace these kinds of third-party endorsements can provide you with a way to improve your qualifications, expand your offerings and differentiate yourself from the competition.

One of the first and best examples of a green credentialing organization is the Green Restaurant Association. GRA provides credentials, endorsements and technical assistance not only to restaurants, but also to manufacturers, vendors, organizations and media that serve them.

The construction trades industry, largely in response to the need for green-trained trades people on LEED-certified projects, has a number of good credentialing programs. There are programs led by the US Green Building Council such as the LEED Accredited Professionals (AP) program for individuals and USGBC Membership for organizations. The National Association of Home Builders’ Certified Green Professional™ designation “certifies builders, remodelers and other industry professionals who incorporate green building principles into homes” and also includes manufacturers, vendors and service providers among their ranks. Green Advantage, a non-profit with a mission to certify building-related practitioners, has an excellent accreditation program. Although designed primarily for contractors, subcontractors and trades people, Green Advantage’s certified building practitioners include educators, consultants, manufacturers and vendors.

Awhile back I wrote about Andy Keller and his company, Chico Bags. I ran across the bag monster videos recently and asked about them. In the words of Benn Davenport of Chico Bags…

Andy Keller had been using a huge ball of 500 plastic bags to show people at farmer’s market just how many plastic bags an average American uses in a year — and one day he decided to wear it. Thus was the spawning of the first Bag Monster (costume, that is).

It seems like the price of everything is going up lately, and so is the cost of doing business. One of the best pieces of business advice I’ve heard so far is to keep your overhead costs as low as possible. This can be tricky for a green business, since we often spend a little bit more on sustainable and organic materials and office supplies. But with a little green thinking it’s possible to lower your costs while making eco-conscious decisions. Here’s where our old friends reduce, reuse, and recycle come in.

The key to lowering your overhead while greening your business is simplicity. Keep your operations as simple as possible, and cut out the fluff you don’t need. For some this may mean working from home rather than renting office space. For others it may mean scaling your business down and working smarter with what you already have. Every choice you make has the potential to save (or cost) you money, as well as help (or harm) the environment.

What do you do if you’re a marine biologist with an entrepreneurial streak who wants to indulge it by opening a business, but you want it to be part of the solution, rather than adding to the problem? Open an online eco fashion site, of course.

That’s what Adrian Desbarats, up in Prince Edward Island, on the far east edge of Canada, decided to do. Far from being yet another boutique green fashion site in an obscure location, Desbarats is about to launch a site with high ambitions: To make the buying of sustainable fashions an affordable, quick, painless experience, at great prices.

It’s easy to find expensive green fashion like Natalie Portman’s vegan shoe line and other such boutique items, or on the other side, hippy skewed hempwear. But what if you want fashion for the more everyday, that looks good, wears well, and is reasonably priced? This is where Fashion & Earth aims to fit.

Now the question that came to my mind is, isn’t there other sites out there that do just that? Desbarats was on the case, with a well thought out response:

Looking for some exposure? Green Living Project, a media production, marketing and entertainment company, is looking for new sustainable business projects to document. Its all part of a new “sustainability platform [designed] to market and promote stories about successful sustainability projects around the globe.”

Using video, still photography and audio recordings, GLP creates case study documents which they then promote on their website and through “online content partners.” In 2008, GLP’s projects focused on sustainable businesses in Africa and included luxury safari lodges, a bicycle program for Rwandan coffee growers and the business practices of banana boat retailers. They have three international expeditions to Africa and South America planned and are then planning a domestic production schedule for the fall.

Awhile back I wrote a post about The Forbes Boost Your Business contest open to all entrepreneurs and offering $100,000 in prize money and, of course, lots of publicity. Last year the winner was Recycline, Inc, a manufacturer of eco friendly toothbrushes, razors and the like.

This year I predicted, with the high level of interest in green goods, ecopreneurs again had a great opportunity to take the prize. Even so I was a bit surprised to receive this e-mail from Tony Kvale at Kvalegames.

…our eco-friendly board game company’s (has advanced) in the annual Forbes contest to help young companies.

This is a story that will likely make you hungry, inspired, and hopefully thinking a little broader than you started. This is a story of passion and mystery, with a twist at the end. This is about an ice cream that uses no dairy, yet tastes as good as, if not better than its milk based counterparts. And you won’t want to choose it because you can’t have dairy, you’ll just like it because it’s good. Or so that’s what the folks behind Coconut Bliss are aiming for. Now I know, you’re saying, coconut based, that sounds (insert gushing or repulsed adjectives here)

Hang on.

Coconut Bliss makes all the standard flavors you’d expect and far beyond, from Vanilla Island to Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge, with some Strawberry Lemon Love thrown in for good measure. The flavor, when it hits your tongue, is distinctly focused on the flavor at hand. Coconut sits very much in the background, nearly undetected. It’s more the messenger rather than the flag bearer. They use very clean ingredients, all organic, and skip insulin spiking sugar for its more even keeled cousin, agave nectar.