Green Options

After announcing its intentions to sell solar products last year, IKEA has come through with its promise. The furniture superstore will soon stock solar-powered LED lights for outdoor use. The lights, which should be released in the next 2 weeks, range from globes and chains to posts and work lamps.

Ecobrain, a green publishing company offers ebooks, the ideal green reading choice. Ebooks can be instantly downloaded to your desktop. Ecobrain has a series of ebooks that make ideal reading for Ecopreneurs.

EcoBrain.com offers thousands of other titles about or relating to the environment. Their genres include environment, sustainable living, cookbooks, biographies, kids’ books, how-to guides, green architecture titles, organic gardening, composting, fiction and more.

Brandweek just came out with its roundup of the best alternative and unconventional marketing ploys of the year and there are some terrific lessons to be learned.  With consumers distracted by everything from the economy to their smartphones, its a real feat to get people’s attention.  Thinking outside the box can apparently be a winner even in these times.

Here are some guerrilla words of wisdom:

Go virtual: BMW created a faux promotion about the worlds largest car ramp that was going to “launch” its new 1 series sedan to the US.  No ramp, no town of Oberpfaffelbachen, no anything… except a You Tube video.  It is estimated that based on Web hits and blog mentions 10 million people have “seen” the ramp. As the say in the Brandweek article: “A decent return, considering they didn’t spent a buck on timber.”

Ikea is going plastic bagless. Last year the Swedish king of oh-so-cool home economy — by various definitions — committed to cut from 70 million bags to 35 million. It passed its goal, reaching a current 92 percent reduction. Now the goal is to use no plastic bags.

Source: Greenbang

I’m in a foul mood today, people. The government is in talks to give away 700 billion dollars to companies who have proven to be irresponsible with money. The entire blogosphere is whining about Senator McCain being in Washington trying to do a job he was elected to do instead of being at a debate that could easily be pushed back a week. I would expect every official who the people have elected to do a job to be on that job in a crisis of this magnitude. I’m usually pretty easy going, but this has just set me off.

And so today when I read about Wal-Mart saying it will “potentially” cut its plastic bag usage by 1/3 by the year 2013, where I might normally say “good for them,” I’m saying, “big deal.” You might cut your plastic bag usage by 1/3 in five years. Big whoop.

According to a recent news release, Ikea will be investing up to 50 million Euros over the next five years into cleantech. Their plan is to focus on solar panels; alternative light sources; product materials; energy efficiency; and water saving and purification.