Green Options » green media

The New Green Media: Print

Heidi Tolliver-Nigro — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:27:06 +0000

I know I’ve been a bit like a dog on a bone about the fact that print is not necessarily the enemy, but I think it’s important. Marketers are being hit like a locomotive with the idea that e-mail and other electronic media are green because they don’t use paper, but there is a lot more to environmental friendliness than cutting tree. Like . . . energy use.

This week, the print industry will gather in Chicago at Print 09 (September 11 - 16), one of its largest annual trade shows. There, the The Print Council will promote a new position paper titled, “Why Print Is Green.”

“Our industry is a leader in recycling, sustainability and pollution control,” says Ben Cooper, executive director of The Print Council. “In fact, we pioneered putting those concepts into widespread practice over the past three decades. But we did so quietly, to the extent that there is a lack of awareness regarding the environmentally responsible nature of print.

“Why Print Is Green” describes ten specific ways in which print is green, from the responsible products used, renewable energy sourced, increased recycling rates, to improved design and delivery methods. The report is intended to demonstrate why print media is the environmentally sound choice for communicating with the audiences they want to reach.

Among the facts the white paper documents:
In 2008, more than 57% of paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling, more than any material.
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30 Best Green Newsletters

Tom Savage — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:36:41 +0000

Image credit: KYZ at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

In the “green” space, credibility is crucial, and things are changing rapidly as investment washes in and out of the sector, companies make big eco-commitments, or they slink away from their environmental goals. A great way to stay up to date is to sign yourself up for a few newsletters in the space you’re interested in moving into. Being well-read is also a networking tool — you can know who’s growing, who’s been bought out, who’s making headlines. Use these developments as opportunities to reach out to the companies or people involved and start a meaningful dialogue.

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Greening Print Marketing: Green Media Conference Helps You Map Your Communications Footprint

Heidi Tolliver-Nigro — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:20:37 +0000

Looking to take your printing, marketing, and packaging carbon-neutral? Consider attending the 2009 Green Media Conference held at Columbia College, Chicago, on June 9. The theme of the conference is “What’s Your Communication Footprint?”

The conference will look at issues such as how sustainability can save you money, what sustainable products and services are available now, and why sustainability gets you new business and helps you retain current customers.

A variety of workshops will offer experts in sustainable media, networking opportunities with sustainability leaders, tools and advice you can put to use right away, and best practices.

The conference will cover a variety of media, including:

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Top 10 in Green You Should Follow on Twitter

mcmilker — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:08:48 +0000

The idea for this story actually came to me from our writer, Jennifer Kaplan, but since I’ve written on this topic before, she asked if I might want to tackle it – Sure. A few months back, Darren Rowse challenged his readers to create a top ten to follow list to Twitip. As you can see, 192 of us responded with out top ten list folks who Twitter on a wide variety of topics. My list was green.

But, I’ve had a chance to think about it some more.

Trying to determine how to best build your list of followers can be a challenge and a raging argument is going on right now with the Twitterati on quality versus quantity. Is it better to follow lots of people and have lots of followers or does the quality of the follower matter?

As a marketing guru, I lean toward quality. I tweet almost everyday and I’ve set up Twitter accounts for several clients and have carefully managed which people we follow; at what rate we gain followers and how closely they match the target market we are attempting to reach.

Why?

The reason quality matters is your ability to reach out to your target audience is limited by how many of their tweets you see. If you follow random people, those tweets to which you might want to respond get lost in the masses of tweets you receive. (In some ways the 2000 followers limit on Twitter is a good thing.)

So, if you’re looking for green folks to follow on Twitter, take a minute and consider, what sort of green people should I be following?

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Calling All Youth Media Makers And Green Teens!

Amy Jussel — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:09:38 +0000

Kids can earn some green by doing what they love, creating thought-provoking media on climate change!

For the first time ever, kids are ‘burnin’ down the house’ with ideas and innovation to pitch renowned PBS hub WGHB for 3 to 5 minute youth videos on how climate change affects kids’ own community environs, vying for $2000 production grants and potential PBS airing.

WGBH has made it even hotter for green teens by hosting ongoing webinars starting Feb. 3rd to help kids conceptualize, remix, pitch ideas and amass public opinion…(accessible via archive too, so don’t sweat the date)

Popular pioneer vloggers Ryanne Hodson (who I can attest is very generous with her knowledge, as I’ve attended her Media Center how-tos and checked out her book) and Jay Dedman (her partner, former CNN journalist/co-founder of Yahoo’s videoblogging group) will contribute their skill sets to get kids started. Partner org Teachers Domain makes it a cinch for students to get up to speed with factoids and resources too. The inspiration for the contest? The Frontline documentary, “Heat” all about global warming and businesses’ reactions in the court of public opinion contributing to make or break success. Deadline for entries at WBGH is March 15, 2009. Next up on the eco-competitions…

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Top 10 Ecopreneurs of 2008

Reenita Malhotra — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 07:46:50 +0000

2008 has been a year signifying economic depression culminating in the worst holiday retail season in years. However it has also been a year of entrepreneurs burgeoning a variety of exciting new green businesses. Ecopreneurist has covered many of them over the course of the year. Here is a review of our favorite Ecopreneurs of 2008.

1. Van Jones - Pioneer of the Green Collar Economy

Van Jones is undoubtedly the Ecopreneur of the Year. He has spoken out against our unsustainable economic model that is based on consumption not production, run on debt vs. savings and thrift, and environmental destruction vs. preservation. But he has also shifted the rhetoric to one of hope by building a new economy with clean energy power centers and a clean enemy corps.

Read Jennifer’s post Van Jones’ Ecopreneurial Vision for the full story.

2. Derek McLeish - Transforming Carbon Emissions into Fuel

Carbon Sciences’s CEO Derek McLeish tells us that his company is the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform CO2 into the basic fuel building blocks required to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other portable fuels.

Reenita gives you the full story in her post A Breakthrough Technology to Transform CO2 into Fuel

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Green Media In “Spy Kids” Style: Environmental Intelligence Unit

Amy Jussel — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:30:50 +0000

BBC Scotland is leveraging kids’ pension for codes, clues, missions and 007-style in a fun little interactive for young kids 7-9 called The Environmental Intelligence Unit.

In classic “the world needs your help” secret agent mode, the game puts the child in ‘action-hero’ context to take on traffic, pollution and rubbish aligned with the three R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle.

It’s a pretty basic primer to seed core concepts in sustainability, but definitely age appropriate, incorporating factoids and video clips as kids become environmental agents on a mission to ‘find the missing R.’ (spoiler alert: the teacher’s page will fill you in on what that “R” is!)

There are four island missions (house, clear out, school, beach) and if kids engage in all four to obtain the right code words they can receive a final Eco Certificate. (hmnn…I know this is geared more for ‘reach and teach’ tactics, but I could think of some more creative/green awards that might be a better fit than a printout! So ping me, BBC, the idea hamster here will give you some freebie creative director ideas!)

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ECP Interview With Dizzywood’s Scott Arpajian, Part Two

Amy Jussel — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:50:20 +0000

From action steps to green your child’s school to kids actions inspired by green media games and eco-focus, today we’ll continue where we left off in Part One of our Eco Child’s Play Green Media Mini-Series, honoring kids’ green media that embeds positive cues and meaningful play, and turning that inspiration into action.

At left is Dizzywood’s celebration of Wildwood Glen’s reforestation, where kids planted 15,000 trees in online to offline eco-parity, partnering with The Arbor Day Foundation. I’ve added a slew of other tree-planting ideas and sites at the end of this piece to get ready for 9-22-08, worldwide Tree Planting Day coming up in the next couple weeks. In keeping with the green media theme of hope, promise and eco-renewal…here’s more from my interview with Scott Arpajian, Co-Founder of preteen virtual world, Dizzywood…

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