Archive for April, 2008

Ever wonder about the potential fall-out if green marketing claims backfire as greenwashing? The FTC is currently reviewing its green marketing guidelines. And consumer boycotts could hit your firm if your claims are especially egregious.

But what about getting sued by one of your competitors? Dr. Bronner, maker of that magic peppermint soap, is suing big brands like Estee Lauder, Jason, and Stella McCartnery’s CARE over “misleading consumers with false organic labeling.”

“We have been deeply disapponted and frustrated by companies in the ‘natural’ personal care space who have been screwing over organic consumers, engaging in misleasing organic branding and label call-outs, on products that were not natural in the first place, let alone organic,” David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, said in a statement on Greenbiz.com.

We will keep you posted.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

It is getting easier to go green but harder to find original green-themed product names. According to a new report by the Dechert law firm, in 2007 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office dealt with double the applications for green brands and trademarks over 2006.

As a Greenbiz summary shows, applications with the word “green” more than doubled from 2006 to 2007, from 1,100 to 2,400; there were some 900 applications each filed with “clean” and “eco” (up from 800 for “clean” and around 450 for “eco”), and trademarks with “environment” or “enviro” went up from 325 to 450. Applications for marks incorporating the word EARTH showed a large increase, jumping about 60% from 550 to over 900. PLANET was a popular alternative, up 50% from 275 to over 400. GLOBE/GLOBAL also showed a significant jump, up 36%. Even the two-syllable prefix ECO was hot in 2007, more than doubling in popularity to nearly 900 new applications. Over 100 firms simultaneously tried to snag the phrase GO GREEN.

So sorry, marketers of America. Simply tacking “eco” onto your new “green” product won’t cut it in 2008. Even if there are polar bears on the packaging.
By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

Eco-chick hung out at the eco fashion show, snapped some photos, and showed to the world that going green and looking good aren’t mutually exclusive.

Treehugger has a post on a worst case scenario about Greenland.

This new VW Golf TDI hybrid would have been awesome, but alas, live by the market bie by the market.

I’ve long been in favor of getting rid of the penny, but here is a benefit of doing so that I hadn’t heard before.

I used to cut grass at my folks house growing up, The Green Workplace’s response to this new fancy mower is basically why my mother made me use a pushmower.

Have a green weekend,

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

Stateside, many Americans are tired of hearing how much greener the Continent is. A New York Times story, however, has just arrived to turn that conventional wisdom on its head. At least when the concern is coal.

European countries plan to build 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years. And those plants could stay in operation for the next 50 years. So if you do the math, that is a ton of potential carbon emissions.

Furthermore, suggests the Times article, Europe’s carbon trading scheme has failed by essentially giving away the permits to pollute. The additional cost to carbon is insignificant during these times of skyrocketing oil prices.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

As an article on Greenbiz.com reminds us, Earth Days of yesterday were more about creating the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency than promoting eco-friendly products and practices. Now that consumerism and environmentalism have joined forces, here are some of the Earth Day (and sometimes month, hey, everyday is Earth Day!) promotions for your consideration.

Aveda’s Earth Month showcases employee fundraising on an environmental cause; last year’s drive was around water, this year organic farming and product sourcing is encouraged.

Wal-Mart’s Earth Month involves Sam’s Club Fair Trade Coffee, reusable bag giveaway, and 1.2 million free Nickelodeon “Big Green Help Seed Cards.”

Macy’s has gone all out with an Earth Day webpage and eco-friendly giveaways galore.

And there is also Lexus’s Hybrid Living promotion to get your green shopping in gear.

Wells Fargo has used Earth Day to lure new green customers; the bank will help pay for green home improvements, including a $250 solar panel rebate for Bank Home Equity Customers.

Of course, if you are looking for a more political way to spend your day, you can always donate your time or money to one of the ENGOs working hard for a greener planet. For example, the New York League of Conservation Voters (an Element client) is trying to raise an additional $2,925 by midnight tonight to reach their Earth Day fundraising goal.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

By Gregg McLachlan of WorkCabin.ca, today’s guest blogger

For decades, investors have jumped on the bandwagon about how consumers can use their dollars responsibly. It’s called investing in Ethical Funds (ie. ensuring your money is invested only in socially responsible and Earth-friendly companies). Ethical investing is consumerism at a niche level, meaning that not everyone is playing the investment game. Regardless, ethical investing has played a pioneering role — arguably, long before green was trendy — in raising awareness about how we use our dollars to better our communities and our planet.

Today, we’re seeing the emergence of the Green Consumer. For years, consumers have read food labels at the grocery store. Now, consumers are reading the ‘environmental’ label on products. They’re looking for terms like recyclable, phosphate free, organic, paper not derived from ancient forests, etc.

The Green Consumer represents one of the largest economic revolutions of our time: It is forcing change. While its strength in consumerism may be larger in some corners of the globe, its power to influence change extends worldwide, especially in the global economy where a green-friendly product manufactured in the east is in demand by consumers in the west. The more that is bought, the more that must be made. Thus, the net effect is more enviro-friendly products usurping old standbys, and job creation to meet the demand for new green products. Good is slowly pushing the bad off store shelves.

Unlike the political arena, it’s always election time in the new green era. Green consumers are voting every time they make a purchase. It’s a steadily growing campaign, perhaps still shy of a majority win. But the momentum is clearly in the green consumers’ favour, if money dictates change.

So what does it mean for companies? The savvy responsible ones are racing to capture the votes, er, we mean spending dollars, of green consumers. The reward for companies could be years of winning votes, er, we mean consumer loyalty.

If your company hasn’t entirely embraced the movement toward green just yet, it’s not too late. Fortunately for you, the Green Consumer is still a growing force. But, day by day, label by label, it’s becoming more and more educated about the choices that are available and shifting their loyalties.

Editors note: Gregg McLachlan is president of WorkCabin.ca, Canada’s Outpost for Green Jobs, bullfrogpowered with 100% green electricity

The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent The Element Agency. If you are interested in penning guest posts for My Green Element, please email Stefan Deeran via stefan@theelementagency.com.

Ecogeek has a new post about a possible new abundance of silicon which could lower the price of solar panels.

Cindy Crawford is taking on a pet peeve of mine: Bottled Water. Thanks to the Daily Green for tracking this.

The ex-chic company Nalgene has dumped the toxic (see below) chemical Bisphenol-A from its products, it claims not to do this for safety but because of consumer demand. Who knows? Perhaps it will become cool again.

Speaking of Bisphenol-A, Canada has become the first country to declare the chemical toxic so I am allowed to do so as well, without fear of legal reprisal.

This is from yesterday on treehugger, but I am sucker for space-age artist rederations.

Going Green has some green living tips for upcoming Earth Day.

Running cars on compressed air is here now. Thanks to Ecological Economics.

Have a good weekend.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

A new poll released today in Australia shows that global warming is more important than the economy or terrorism.

From The Sidney Morning Herald:

“A poll by the Australian National University found people have retained their “no worries” attitude, except when it comes to the environment, which is now the most burning issue in the country.”

The environment as grown increasingly more important to Aussies as they battle drought and wildfires and as global media attention grows.

One can’t help but see similar things happening in California.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

To the relief of our friends in the solar and wind industry, the US Senate has finally approved a bill to extend the renewable energy tax credit for another year. The bill is essential to the health of the renewable energy industry by making investments in cleaner technologies more affordable.

Specifically, the Production Tax Credit provides 2 cents for every kilowatt hour of electricity generated from renewables, according to Greenbiz.com. With oil costs hitting records highs, theoretically, renewable energy will eventually be able to compete on price. And when investors have an extra government tax break as an incentive to buy solar or wind, industry advocates argue that economies of scale will bring down the costs of renewable production even further.

The bill still needs to pass the House vote, probably occuring next week. We will keep you posted.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

By Sara Hammes of EISolutions

2007 saw the perfect storm of influences for the U.S. solar industry- potent economic incentives and a rise in social consciousness that reached all the way to legislatures and corporate boardrooms. California launched the California Solar Incentive (CSI) as part of the Governor’s million solar roofs initiative and saw 7000 applications for 185 MW of solar in its first year. The Power Purchase Agreement enjoyed popular support and became a major force in the deployment of solar for commercial entities. However, the failure of the Federal government to renew the investment tax credit (ITC) for solar has given the U.S. industry pause.

Word on the street is that Congress will figure out a solution and pass an extension to the ITC. In the meantime the rush is on to complete solar projects before the end of the year. Even with this deadline and uncertainty over Federal action, the solar industry shows no signs of slowing down. Enthusiasm for solar in companies across the U.S. is evident with continued analysis of its potential and economic benefits in the face of increasing utility costs and impending carbon mitigation legislation; and cities and states are increasingly filling the funding and incentive gap with innovative solar programs.

The manufacturing sector, spurred by worldwide demand for solar, is expanding at a rapid pace thus providing the future backbone for continued deployment. Global growth of capacity, according to the Prometheus Institute, was up 50% in 2007 and is expected to grow to 12-15 GW by 2010. The silicon supply, a problem in previous years, is being sorted out and is expected to meet the growing demand. The wealth of VC funding for new solar technologies seems to be continuing, and First Solar’s highly successful IPO remains a benchmark for the industry.

As the industry evolves here in the U.S., sorting out how to integrate solar into an overall energy management strategy will continue. Today we see solar being deployed as both a central station and distributed generation resource.

• • +Solar generation plants (solar thermal and PV farms
  • +Individually owned distributed generation
  • +Third party owned distributed generation

As we have seen recently the challenges of building the infrastructure to transmit the power from central station solar generation has caused some utilities to avail themselves of empty rooftops within their territory, effectively deploying the solar farm model on a distributed basis. The infrastructure challenge also provides a strong case for the feed-in tariff, which would accelerate the deployment of large-scale non-utility owned solar systems at the substation level within the grid.

Further, if we look at the path of Energy Efficiency, it took over 20 years for EE to become a mainstream energy management practice and an operational competency within the business community. Today, EE is almost a standard way of managing operations. Solar is still finding its way into the energy management equation for businesses.

Solar energy has captured the hearts of people for centuries as a potent, reliable and clean source of energy. That sentiment remains today and fuels our enthusiasm as we move forward to find reliable alternative energy solutions for our planet.

Editors note: Sara Hammes is Vice President of marketing at EI Solutions, a solar company for commercial, college and government buildings. Learn more about EI Solutions by visiting their website.

The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent The Element Agency. If you are interested in penning guest posts for My Green Element, please email Stefan Deeran via stefan@theelementagency.com.

The Daily Green has a few posts about the economy effect on the green business community. One upside, one downside.

The 1Sky Blog has a good post about why we need to act now.

Treehugger has good news for takeout food crowd.

From The Good Human comes this 007 inspired piece of green gadgetry.

Careful Vanity Fair the Ecorazzi are on your tail…

Curious about green textiles and what kind of fashion is the greenist? Ecostreet has the scoop.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

An amazing new channel is being launched by cable behemoth Discovery Channel in the United States called Planet Green TV. Proving going green isn’t a partisan or even political issues Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav is quoted in USA Today saying:

“It used to be that green was granola and left…We’re not going to be ‘The ice is melting,’ [the audience already gets that message.] We want to engage people in a fun way and in the spirit of what we can all do together.”

The aim is to use celebrities, like Entourage star Adrian Grenier (Vinnie Chase) and entertaining programming to win over ‘armchair environmentalists’.

The channel is giving every indication that it will do just that. One show I won’t be missing pits rapper Ludacris against rocker Tommy Lee in a eco battle featuring such challenges as Bamboo house building and solar powered racing. As well the website is slick and full of great info.

It is so good to see something devoted to how people can start living in an eco-friendly fashion that isn’t being preachy, condescending or dull. Now with ‘Luda the polluta’ and ‘toxic Tommy’ you’ll get a high dose of entertainment with a higher dose of living well.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver

The bottled water company, which has endured some bad environmental press in the last few years has released an extensive carbon footprint report, the CSR wire reports.

According to Fiji Water’s wikipedia page the company had come under fire for its high energy use in production. Running their plant on diesel 24 hours a day, using nearly 7 litres of water to manufacture a 1 litre bottle and producing .25kg of carbon per 1 litre of water sold.

Well, Fiji took it to heart and not only cleaning up its image but its act by becoming the first bottled water company to release its carbon footprint. In a nice move the company has launched a website, fijigreen.com to allow customers to view the company’s emissions data. Much like in other areas of life, with going green admitting you have a problem is the first step. Full disclosure of your problem is the next step. It is nice to see a former laggard now leading the way. Let’s hope they keep it up.

By Robert Anton at The Element Agency in Vancouver