Green Options

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.

OK, the name is a little cheesy but these signs are a great idea for businesses that need eco-friendly signage which still shows a professional edge.

Primarily constructed of bamboo, the Panda Stand is an environmentally friendly retractable banner stand for the exhibit, display and graphics markets. The unit is made from 90% renewable resources (bamboo casing and pole) and designed to maximize visual impact.

The Panda Stand’s eco-friendly style helps to emphasize your message while contributing to a greener planet for us all. In fact I would say the stand itself contributes to your message.

The manufacturer - Megagraphix - is working on using a 100% recycled solution for the banner itself as well as printing the unit using 100% vegetable based dyes.

This sturdy and premium portable display unit offers the same high performance attributes as other retractable displays. Its precision-engineered retraction system makes it easy and quick to set up virtually anywhere - simply unwind the graphic stored in the bamboo base and insert the support pole.

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.

The Verve line of organic cotton promotional t-shirts from Vantage Apparel seems to be going for the title of most green t-shirt available.

Like many other organic shirts in the promotional items industry Vantage starts with a non-bleached t-shirt made from organic cotton (i.e. no pesticides or petroleum fertilizers used to grow the cotton). At this point the shirt is similar to other organic shirts, like the AnvilOrganic line from Anvil Knit Wear (which by the way does come in different colors than just “natural”).

Advertising. It’s a part of the scenery, just about anywhere you go these days. Like it or lump it, it’s here to stay. But what if it could do something more, or different then sell you things, end of story? What if it educated about the environment, and eco friendly behaviors? What if it went further than that and 50% of proceeds from advertising went to local community greening efforts, the use of which was advised by diverse, knowledgeable green organizations?

It can, and it does, via EcoMedia. The NY based company originally started by an LA surfer turned environmentalist to protect local watersheds from pollution has now expanded to find ways to improve and protect the air, energy, and green space of places across the US. This happens via partnerships with CBS and Worldwide Pants.  Between the three of them, they cover national and local markets, online, and also produce original green oriented content such as the Daisy Fuentes hosted TV show The EcoZone Project.

It comes down to this -

I’ve been spending a lot of my time these days checking out the wide variety of social networking tools available for growing green business. In particular tools for the B2B market have been springing up and taking hold across the web.
I found this interesting slide show about greenwashing and was struck by the slide above. This says it all in my mind. As green becomes the [...]

Simran Sethi and Sarah Smarsh are writing a series on the impacts of everyday things.They will be posting previews on Green Options before launching the posts on Huffington Post. Here’s the low-down on how we’re quenching our thirst.

We’ve been seduced by the beverage industry into believing only they can quench our thirst with colored, caffeinated, vitaminized, electrolyted water. We have become so parched that we can’t walk down the street without toting a single-use plastic bottle touting the magical effects of its water source.

Apparently, Kabbalah Water will heal us and Bling Water will define us. At the Bling H20 website, Bling Water “creator” Kevin Boyd describes noticing on Hollywood studio lots that “you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water they carried.” First of all, didn’t god create water? Secondly, the water is bottled in Dandridge, Tennessee - since when is Southern Tennessee a spring of L.A. status? Yes, Dandrige’s water ranks very highly on EPA’s water quality index, but why are we spending so much money ($40 for Bling’s “Go Green” 750ml bottle) on cross-continental water instead of cleaning up our local waterways? Tinseltown’s water is so polluted with run-off and industrial contamination that perhaps water by way of Tennessee does make sense.

Here’s what the less blingy among us do:

You probably have a mission statement. At a minimum you probably needed one in order write a business plan. But, too often the websites of company’s that sell green products and services bury their mission statement in the deep recesses of their content. It seems standard to prominently display green-themed graphics and customer testimonials about how services surpass expectations and yield cost savings or LEED certification points. What often does not happen, however, is the public sharing of the green mission statement.

It is a missed opportunity not to put it at the forefront of your corporate communications.  What should you do with your mission statement? Lots.

It’s important for growing companies to keep an eye on the overall market. While much of what makes entrepreneurs great is their ability to think out of the box, it’s what’s happening overall and how they fit into the general scheme of things that determines whether they succeed or fail.

So, I like to highlight some of the greater market trends in this blog. One of those of particular interest, one might say overwhelming interest, to green entrepreneurs is the looming scare of “eco fatigue”.

Is it real?

Will it impact green businesses?

Are you seeing it impact your business?

Here’s some tips from AdAge designed for large established companies but equally relevant for ecopreneurs. What do you think?

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.

Leed’s is teaming up with AmericanForests.org. “Leed’s makes a donation to American Forest’s Global ReLeaf program for every EcoSmart imprint order we produce”.

The thing I like about this new deal is that you don’t have to do anything extra. If the client purchases Leed’s EcoSmart promotional items the donation is automatically made.

Simple. But….

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.

There has been a growing conversation in the promotional items market about items made from corn plastic.

For us this conversation normally comes up when clients debate the pros and cons of corn plastic mugs like those offered by the manufacturer QuickPoint.

The argument normally goes like this.

Pro: Corn plastic mugs are safe and sturdy. They cost less than mugs of similar weight made from petroleum plastic. The QuickPoint products and others are union-made in the U.S.A from U.S. corn, therefore they are not shipped from overseas, which reduces their footprint, and are made by workers making U.S. wages. They are biodegradable.

Con: Using corn for plastic is believed to reduce the amount of corn in the global food chain. Contributing to a variety of social ills including food shortages and when combined with the increasing use of corn for ethanol, driving up the price of all sorts of goods. of

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,

First off, I want to say that, as someone who has been an analyst in the commercial printing industry for fifteen years, I’m thrilled to be part of The Inspired Economist. For years, printing has been seen as part of the problem, so the ability to get in on the ground floor of a blog on environmental sustainability and talk about how printing can become part of the “greening” of corporate culture is quite a thrill.

Using print—a medium that contributes to solid waste and may appear to be part of the problem—to “green” a company’s document management and marketing culture seems nonintuitive. It is perhaps for this very reason that I hope readers will find my posts enjoyable.

There are two points that I want to open with.

First, in marketing, electronic alternatives are often framed as the green alternative to print because they don’t require paper, ink, packaging, and physical transportation. However, there is a lot more to one’s environmental footprint than this. Take, for example, one’s carbon footprint. On this issue, electronic alternatives with their massive, 24-hour energy drain start to look less appealing.