Influx Insights Tag Feed: green

can green new zealand export green?

Influx Insights — 2008-08-14T13:48:07Z

New Zealand is rapidly emerging as the the country that's doing most to brand itself "Green" and "Eco-Aware". The government has lots of smart policies, it promotes itself as a "pure" tourist destination, people seem to be moving there in droves to find the ecological lifestyle they desire, etc..

Then there's also the export business. Selling that New Zealand "purity" in packages to the rest of the world. I was thinking about this when our Media Director showed me a bottle of water she was drinking, Antipodes was its name. (see below).

While the design is stunning, it did raise a big question.

It struck me that New Zealand's green exporters have a massive challenge on their hands when they are trying to convince consumers that they are truly green, with the massive carbon footprints they generate with shipping and transportation.

Of course, according to its website, Antipodes appears to have anticipated the questions, but is far from transparent with its answers.

Clearly, there's a big communication challenge here and while striking design will win you lots of fans, you've got to have some decent answers to those relevant environmental questions, especially if you are using New Zealand as your "origin" to promote purity.

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx's evening with dawn danby of autodesk

Influx Insights — 2008-07-10T05:30:30Z

Many thanks to all who attended this evening's event, to Eric, Hillary and Josh of Method who helped make it happen and of course, to Dawn for being the star of the show.

Dawn brought to life some of the challenges of pushing sustainability in a world that doesn't quite yet understand what it is or means.

She also shared with us a fascinating project she worked on years ago in Windsor, Ontario (the gateway town to Detroit) where she empowered citizens to think about sustainable city architecture and space.

Her presentation also explored some of the perils of so called "Green Design" where designers often end up creating more clutter, rather than identifying real solutions.

She suggested designers get to know where the impacts are located and find a way to hack them. As an example- she highlighted work done by designers to help reduce the pollution from motorcycle rickshaws in urban centers in the developing world.

Thankfully, the "crowd" engaged in some interesting discussion about consumer cynicism, corporate honesty, "Greenwashing", the real need for standards and consumer incentives.

Posted by Ed Cotton

how do you measure ethical performance?

Influx Insights — 2008-01-06T04:43:03Z

It's now a given that most multinationals are paying at least some attention to their ethical performance.

With the environment becoming such a big issue, the area of corporate responsibility is going to be under the microscope even more than in the past.

The problem is that there's very little performance measurement and comparative auditing between companies.

There are surveys and polls, but it's hard to find anything else that challenges and compares company standards.

It was therefore interesting to be send a press release from Covalence in Switzerland, who have been measuring and ranking companies on the their ethical performance for the past 3 years.

The company tracks performance by examining a variety of sources including the companies themselves, news media and non-profit organizations.

Covalence has just released its performance data for 2007 and there are some interesting findings.

The company provides three rankings.

1. Best Ethical Quote Score (positive minus negative news)

2. Best Ethical Progress

3. Best Reported Performance (How the company presents itself)

It's interesting and something of a challenge for US companies to see the foreigners, Unilever, Toyota and HSBC leading the way, with HP, Alcoa and Starbucks trailing in their wake.

On a cynical note, the US companies do a rather good job at talking up their own performance with Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola emerging as the leaders in that category.

Covalence also found that in 07, the environmental impact of production, eco product innovation and anti-corruption policy were the leading areas of ethical responsibility.

In addition to the annual report, Covalence provides real-time tracking of ethical peformance.

Useful if you manage an ethical funds or work in the CSR or PR department.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, audits and quality standards are going to emerge as an important issue for the environment and corporate ethics this and its good to see someone attempting to provide some comparative data.

Posted by Ed Cotton

green at the la auto show

Influx Insights — 2007-11-22T02:02:38Z

At last week's LA Auto Show, "Green' was the dominant message, it was almost a case of being too much.

Green slogans plastered everywhere, big press conferences where 68mpg fuel cell cars were being launched (but only 3 units would be available and there are no refuelling stations) and then there was the Escalade Hybrid.

Enough..

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Posted by Ed Cotton

wal mart's green gift to its suppliers

Influx Insights — 2007-09-27T15:11:37Z

Wal-Mart has launched a number of green initiatives in the last 24 months, but all of them have been internally focused.

A couple of days back, the company went further than it's even done by bringing its suppliers into the mix. It's picked some categories and is asking suppliers in DVDs, toothpaste, soap, milk, beer, vacuum cleaners, and soda to look at their greenhouse gas emissions. It looks more of a carrot, than a stick, allowing suppliers to benefit from its own learning, rather than an accounting system to punish those that don't achieve targets. In fact, there are no targets for individual suppliers, Wal-Mart only has its own goal.

The net impact of the initiative will be to raise the profile of green measurement across a broad range of categories in consumer products. Obviously, the benefits for those that jump on board will be two-fold.

1. Cost savings- the accounting system will identify areas where companies can save money- as well as greenhouse gases

2. PR- There's the potential to publicize your efforts, but tread very carefully here.

Overall, it looks like its a smart step in the right direction with obvious benefits for Wal-Mart and its supply chain.

However, it's toothless and without serious targets in the program, one has to question how much impact it's really going to have.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the greening of agencies

Influx Insights — 2007-09-14T13:29:55Z

Back in July, I wrote about the green initiative that French communication group Havas was launching. My prediction was that other agencies would leap on board to try and seize some kind of competitive advantage.

The first to bite in the US, interestingly, is Grey, who announced a big initiative a couple of days back.

What’s surprising about Grey’s move is the attempt to try and become the agency world’s Pied Piper of the green cause by inviting other agencies to work and learn together through Grey.

While it’s good to see Grey leading the green charge, I doubt others will be happy for Grey to take credit for helping them out.

I now expect the green statements to come flying out of most shops before the holidays and for RFPs to ask prospective agencies about their green policies.

Via Adland

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx report- many shades of green- frog design- july 26th

Influx Insights — 2007-07-27T15:38:50Z

Last night, the fine people at frog design, San Francisco hosted an interesting discussion on “The Many Shades of Green”. They assembled three very interesting individuals who explored the issue from three different perspectives. Dr Charles Ehrhart of CARE who looked at the global impact, of Kirsten Ritchie of Gensler who examined the corporate impact and of Ashley Menger of frog who talked about her personal experiences with the issue.

Some interesting themes and ideas emerged:

Dr Charles Ehrhart, Coordinator of CARE International’s Poverty and Climate Change Initiative

“Climate change is happening, we’ve got to try and stop catastrophic climate change.”

All non-profits need to make sure they are minimizing their environmental impacts and carbon footprint. This has significant implications for an organization like CARE who are shipping food supplies to people in need.

The importance of political action to try and change decisions that are being made today that will negatively impact generations for years to come- such as the decision to build more coal fired plants.

Design for a climate changed future. Don’t consider today, understand the realities of tomorrow and design for it.

Help the developing countries to grow by allowing them to do it with minimal impact on the environment.

Kirsten Ritchie, Director of Sustainable Design, Gensler

“The issue of the environment has moved from a moral imperative to an economic one.”

Branding matters with green because it’s a category created by environmental engineers, not marketers.

“It’s hard to spell Sustainability, let alone pronounce it”

EnergyStar and Leed were examples of good green branding in action.

Standards are everything. You can’t be green without the proof, so certification and standards matter. Organic labeling is an example of a system failure, but Fairtrade and Leed had got it right

Ashley Menger, Design Analyst, frog design

Ashley’s motivation was drive by her desire to making the green issue a personal one, where her experience could inform design decisions.

To do this, Ashley developed “Trash Talk” a program where "frogs" get the chance to carry their trash around with them everywhere for two weeks. Ashley talked about how this experience informed her projects and the story of her first piece of trash; a home thermostat that she later discovered contains mercury.

Trash Talk has now become a global, company-wide initiative with dozens of frog employees wanting to participate by carrying around their trash for two weeks and blogging their experiences.

Overall, the evening added some perspective to the importance, complexity and communication challenges of the green issue.

Posted by Ed Cotton

Cola Wars Go Green

Influx Insights — 2007-06-14T20:08:05Z

Maybe you've recently tried to calculate your own carbon footbprint, or have been more in tune with the environment. It's hard not to be the way gasoline & CO2 have been glistening in the green spot light. We all know about the rapid depletion of this precious non-renewable resource, but while our attention has been focused on gas we’ve neglected other resources that are equally strained. Our perspective about being environmentally conscious is about to rapidly change again thanks to two main players in the beverage market.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are contenders again, but this time it's a race to quench our thirst for non-renewable resources. Both companies have jumped on the corporate social responsibility band wagon with a few of their own green initiatives.

Coca-Cola was originally green. No, it has always been brown; Snopes put an end to that myth. It may, however, have to amend its fact page now that Coke has become so environmentally responsible. Coke is taking some big strides. It recently released the Coca-Cola Water Conservation Plan in an attempt to conserve water by replacing the 75 billion gallons of water it uses in the production of its beverages. It is one part of an efficient water management plan that will help restore its image. This comes after Coke was slammed for depleting and polluting water supplies in China and India. Now it's seeking to create its beverages without destroying the surrounding environment or “de-hydrating the world.” It may not come as a surprise to some, but a recent article by Canadian experts warned that within 3 years Sydney’s water supply could be the first to be limited to drinking purposes only. Mexico and Bejiing are noted as the other two cities in a triad of countries that are most threatened by the global freshwater crisis. It seems Coke is leading the way in recognizing impactful ways they can approach the green arena and help resolve these issues. They are partnering with third party companies to recycle their bottle labels, produce bottle cap purses and are upgrading their headquarters to run more efficiently.

Pepsi upped the ante and is now leading a different, and possibly more powerful environmental front. They have attracted great attention with their recent announcement of their own green initiatives. They are purchasing 1 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy, enough to power 90,000 American homes for a year; an amount that offsets 100% of its electricity with renewable energy. This is a big deal. They are the first to take this sizable of a leap and it will be interesting to see how they leverage this expense as a marketing tool. Like Coke, Pepsi has also taken a creative approach with the release of aluminum can Green Label Art.

These two Cola companies have taken green to the next level and set a precedent for other companies to change the fundamentals of how they are running their business. As green initiatives become more of a standard practice, not adopting new practices and technologies is going to create image problems for companies who aren't on board the green train.

Posted by ken fisher

green is more than the color of currency

Influx Insights — 2007-06-14T18:19:45Z

Since "Who Killed the Electric Car" and "The Inconvenient Truth" green has been top of mind; so it's not surprising to see a recent trend of corporations following the money and jumping onto the green band wagon.

Recent commitments to green initiatives by the financial sector are creating talk that energy will be a bigger business revolution than the Internet. It’s easy to understand why with the kind of money we’ve recently seen flowing from big banks. MSNBC reported that Citibank pledged $50 billion to curb emissions and plans to invest $31 billion in clean energy and alternative energy over the next 10 years. This announcement was followed by a $20 billion commitment to support growth in environmentally friendly activities to reduce global warming by Bank of America. Clinton recently spoke about supporting initiatives with a plan for 5 major banks to fund green initiatives by creating financing solutions that will facilitate the construction of green buildings.

European initiatives include a recent commitment of 378 million Euros by a group of banks for the financing of the first ever offshore wind farm that will power 125,000 homes. These are the kind of projects that banks will start investing in in the future.

These programs are step one of a two-part initiative which also requires the weening off of dirty energy. What this means for financial institutions as well as investors is a careful balancing act that would eventually mean less financing of coal-fired power plants and other emissions emitting energy sources.

Financial institutions are looking to adopt new green programs that are becoming increasingly attractive to their consumers. Wells Fargo just added eco-friendly choices for it’s reward card holders and BAC and Citi plan to follow. This will let consumers accumulate green points that can be used to benefit clean energy projects.

These initiatives are important to consumers, a LOHAS poll revealed that:
- 68% state that knowing a company is mindful of its impact on the environment and society makes them more likely to buy their products and services,
- 52% state that it makes them more likely to buy stock.

Corporate boardrooms are taking note and the implications will be far reaching.

the center of the green conversation

Influx Insights — 2007-04-18T17:05:25Z

Pete Blackshaw in CGM writes today about the the new green conversation in response to the massive cover story by Tom Freidman in today's New York Times Magazine.

Pete shows, that there's a massive green conversation already happening, a finding contradiciting Freidman's belief, that green is still fringe.

The following chart is from a Nielsen Buzzmetrics analysis of green conversations. Terms at the center are of highest volume.

the problem with zero as the new black

Influx Insights — 2007-03-28T01:02:33Z

Influx agrees with Seth Godin that conscientious consumption is the new black, but that’s the problem.

Its become the “thing” to do and there’s are huge forces behind it, Wal-Mart, GE, HSBC, Bank of America, Al Gore and Fortune Magazine with its latest “Green Issue”, which, by the way, isn’t printed on recycled paper and features a road test of the new Lamborghini.

Our problem is “new blacks” are always the domain of intellectual and fashion elites, unless these ideas can break through to mass consciousness, there will only be limited benefits.

The other problem is the metaphor, “new black”, suggests a fad and that’s the last thing this movement needs.

Don’t confuse the fact that people are talking about “green” with the idea that people are doing something about it.

A poll released today by Yale, found that 83% of Americans now acknowledge that global warming is a serious problem, but how many of them are prepared to take personal action, remains to be seen.

There is still much work to be done.