Green Options

Is it fair or ethical for a cigarette company to promote eco-friendly improvements to its packaging?

Terri Bly discusses her concerns about Sephora’s Natural Standards, giving examples of several products that contain numerous synthetic chemicals, despite being advertised otherwise.

We paid a visit recently to one of my favourite toy stores in the whole world, Hot Toads.  The physical store itself isn’t all that impressive — it’s a small, concrete-floored basement room in a medical building, with sparsely-stocked wooden shelves, draped with puppets and stuffed toys hanging by clothespins from simple lines strung across the room.  The back wall features a working 10-foot long model train table made entirely out of Lego.

But it’s not about the decor — it’s what they carry that makes this place special.  Plan Toys.  HaPe.  Schylling.  Plastic toys made from recycled milk jugs.  Non-toxic wooden toys.  Toys intended to enrich the mind and body of your children, not just feed into consumerism and branding.

And for me, it is a local store, within driving distance, right here in Atlantic Canada.  Unfortunately for my American friends reading this, while they do take online orders, Hot Toads only delivers within Canada.  Sorry, eh?

One of the many cool items they have is a line of large toy cars called E-Racers, from HaPe’s Bamboo Collection.  I had a nice chat with the fellow working there, and learned that apparently these were the first toys to be made from bamboo.  I was surprised that, while bamboo has been used for clothes, cutlery and dinnerware, flooring and even wallpaper for some time, the idea of bamboo toys was still relatively new.

He also filled me in on a fact I had previously been unaware of.  Of course, bamboo is the new golden child of the eco movement: it grows easily and quickly without pesticides, and is therefore a readily renewable resource with low environmental impact.  Bamboo wood is attractive and sturdy, and bamboo cloth is soft and has natural antibacterial properties.  As worldwide consumer demand for bamboo has increased dramatically in recent years, some companies have taken to clear-cutting hardwood forests in order to make room for bamboo plantations.  And despite bamboo’s rapid growth, difficulty in seed propagation combined with over-harvesting has even threatened some species to near-extinction.

Ugh.

A Green Printer interview with Deb Ozarko, Director, Creative Services of Clearly Green Design.

1. If a client comes to you saying that they want to market themselves as a green company, what kinds of advice would you give them in terms of identity and design?
Before I would give them any advice, I would accurately determine their motives. As both a visual communicator and a social/environmental activist, I have a very large responsibility to the public and the planet - as well as my own personal ethics. Clearly Green Design takes our commitment to the environment, animals and social justice causes very seriously so its critical that we understand the motivating factors for a company before we go any further. A green claim or green identity no longer has the same validity that they used to because of excessive greenwashing. Greenwash is rampant because so many companies have simply jumped on the green bandwagon in order to keep up with the trend. Personally, I find this really sad because there is alot at stake here - namely, planetary survival. A glaring example of greenwash are the green claims made by the Walmart corporation. I honestly don’t know how the folks at the communications agency who market Walmart can sleep at night.

Last year the amount of waste that San Francisco sent landfills was the same as it did in 1977 and a mandatory recycling plan for construction sites played a large part.

Terri Bly, founder of Natureofbeauty.com, conducts an investigation into just how “eco-friendly” Josie Maran’s cosmetics line actually is. Her results will surprise you. They certainly surprised Ms. Bly.

Editor’s Note: Lyndon Rive is the co-founder and CEO of SolarCity, a national leader in solar power. This is the first in a series of posts from the CEOs of major solar companies.

Is it May already? Maybe it’s just me, but the media didn’t seem to make as big a deal over Earth Day as it has the last few years. I noticed that Vanity Fair didn’t do a “green issue” this year, and according to John McCaslin on Town Hall, Outside, Discover, Mother Jones, Newsweek and Time cut back on their Earth Day green issues too.

Treehugger reported that Vanity Fair is going to spread its environmental articles throughout the year, and this section of the magazine’s Web site seems to support that. But McCaslin calls it “green fatigue.” I think they’re both right.

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By contributing guest author Ida Cheinman, Principal and Creative Director of Substance 151, a strategic design agency for Green Printer’s “Design Goes Green” series.

We live in a time when “sustainability” is topping the buzzword charts and a wave of greenwashing is flooding the mainstream. We live in a time of intense competition, gloomy economic forecasts and rapidly disappearing marketing budgets, but also in a time when more and more companies and organizations strive to uphold higher environmental and social values, making the shift to the triple bottom line economic model. Sustainability and social responsibility are the forces that drive many of today’s business decisions; they also change the way organizations re-think their branding and marketing strategies. As marketers and business leaders, we are faced with the challenge of finding differentiation by creating empowering and memorable brand experiences for our audiences in the increasingly crowded sustainable marketplace.

So, What are the rules?

Earth Day brings out the best (or worst) examples of greenwashing.

I simply ignored most of the PR pitches I got in the last couple of weeks, but one stood out to me as an absolutely ridiculous spin on a product.

I’m going to take a chance and give it more publicity than it’s worth. Here’s the pitch I got:

“Monopoly®: Planet Earth Edition gives fans the chance to buy, sell and trade the earth’s most natural resources, landscapes, and animals Monopoly® style.”

Earlier this month, one of Peru’s major newspapers reported that Disney might open a park about an hour south of Lima on Peru’s coast. Would a Disney theme park be good or bad for Peru?

That’s the question that is now on many peoples’ minds. Comment threads on popular Peruvian and expatriate websites show a diversity of opinions. Some people think a Disney theme park would be great for providing jobs in a country that needs them, while others think it would amount to exploitation.

A new report claims that the increasing number of ‘all-natural’ and ‘organic’ products on the market may be guilty of “the seven sins of greenwashing”.

TerraChoice Environmental Marketing released its report The Seven Sins of Greenwashing today. The report defines greenwashing as “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.”