This Truth Is Not Inconvenient: Girlfriend, Use Your Purse, Your Peers, & Your Posts To Co-create A Happier Sustainable, World
Mary Hunt, author of In Women We Trust and Ecolutionary Selling and blogger at In Women We Trust and Smart Solutions for Sustainable Business has written the definitive piece on how we can really (REALLY) change the world just by directing the power women already have towards a “happier, sustainable world.”
#1 “the majority of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is made up of consumer goods and over 80% of them are purchased or influenced by women.”
#2 Women form groups; group of influencers: Big Green Purse author Diane MacEachern launched a one million women site.
EcoMom Alliance is organizing and educating the 82 million mothers in the US into a change agents.
The EcoMom Challenge: “making small changes in the way we shop, eat, drive and even clean, we can help stop global warming. ”
#3 Women are online, voicing their opinions, positive and negatice, on blogs, social network and online groups all over the web. In fact, according to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Survey on Content Creation, girls and young women are the most prolific online content creators.
So make your way over to In Women We Trust and see what Mary has to say about Changing Products, Changing Services and Changing the World and download Purse, Peers, Posts and the Power to Move Markets purses_peers_posts_and_the_power_to_move_green_markets_32508.pdf and send it to your girlfriends!
And catch Mary at Blogher Business in NYC next week along with other awesome women to trust, Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita, Susan Getgood, Connie Reece and many others.
Proof O’ The Green: Standards
As the conversation has shifted from “Is Global Warming for real?” to “I need to make changes in my purchase decisions” consumers are being offered an array of products from food to housing that have labels that claim they are energy efficient, biodegradable, organic, eco-friendly or otherwise claim to be green choice we should be making when we buy that new car, new house, or new blouse.
So, how do consumers (i.e. all of us) make informed decisions? Well to paraphrase what mother always said: we need to maintain our standards. And the standard in this case is sustainable. Wearing o’ the green label is nothing but greenwash if it is not backed up with a guarantee that the product meets the standards of sustainability:
The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS) is a 501 (c) of leading environmental groups, governments, and companies working to achieve 90% sustainable products market penetration and stop irreversible climate change, by 2015.
MTS has developed certification standards aptly named SMaRT (sustainable materials rating technology) that cover 24 criteria of pollution reduction minimums, reporting and labeling requirements, and the certification process.
You can download a pdf written by Mary Hunt, SMaRT Sustainable Standards 101, which is exactly what the title suggests: a virtual introductory course about SMaRT Sustainable Standards. Its also available on slideshare. I guarantee you will be a whole lot smarter after you read it.
As I have mentioned previously, MTS has recently launched a blog, Smart Solutions for Sustainable Business and there are many contributors such as Randy Moorhead from Philips Electronics, Bob Bailey from Fireman’s Fund and Denny Darragh of Forbo Flooring Systems writing about the way their respective company’s have incorporated SMaRT standards into their products and services. When they say “green” they mean it and can prove it!
Visit MTS and/or the MTS blog . They are leading the way to a greener world. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Coca Cola’s Sustainability and a Smile (They MUST Be Kidding)
As Mary Hunt noted in a post few weeks ago, the most effective way for companies to get their green message across is to keep the message simple, personal and viable. Show {one’s} green side in a distinctive way and be ready to back it up.According to Ad Age Coca-Cola has launched a new $10 million green campaign that “broadens the definition beyond environmentalism, centering on the concept of “sustainable well-being.”
Ad Age states that the initial executions present Coke as a corporate concerned citizen who tries to meet consumer needs and support local education and sports. An unnamed Coca Cola spokesperson is quoted as saying, “We’re thinking of well being from a mental, physical community and environmental perspective that encompasses every part of our North American business. We’re using this to talk to all of our stakeholders and show our desire to be a better partner to all of them.”
Well the message IS simple and personal enough; but when you start talking viable and prove it, the new campaign as described in Ad Age seems to fall as flat as last night’s forgotten Coke can. Now Coke is on the 2008 Global100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.
But Coke’s Dasani along with Pepsi’s Aquafina have had their hands slapped for promoting their respective bottles waters as something far beyond the tap water (or purified water sourced from the public water supply) that it turned out was their source. In fact both companies were forced into voluntarily labeling. A recent description of Dasani Plus described it as a vitamin enhanced flavored water beverage. Water beverage? Oh, like cheese food.
And while we are thinking about well being, do you think Diet Coke Plus with five essential vitamins and minerals and the great taste of Diet Coke is leveraging the concept of “sustainable well being” or is it just simply passive aggressive. Is this how we show our desire to be a better partner?
Coke also states in Ad Age that they were motivated to do this campaign because their customers were asking them where they stood on sustainability. Well, Coke is not alone. Consumer demand is driving both the introduction of sustainable products based upon sustainable standards as highlighted on this blog as well as a he introduction and re-labeling of many not so really sustainable products.
What I think is noteworthy about this campaign in addition to the $10mm price tag is the fact that Coke’s definition of sustainable which “broadens the definition beyond environmentalism, centering on the concept of “sustainable well-being’ is not all that different than for instance the Brundtland Commission.
Bob Bailey , Chief Fund Underwriting Officer for Commericial Business at Fireman’s Fund refers to SMaRT Standards for Sustainability as being the holistic benchmark that speaks to areas of control and concern beyond the environmental impact of the product itself. Coke has a holisitc approach in a sense but the emphasis is not on the environment at all.
What is different is that Coke is highlighting their “good deeds” which are not necessarily environmental good deeds which leaves the impression that they are trying to wrap themselves in green yet divert attention from what they are really doing. They may have committed to recycle 100% of their aluminum cans but they are still filling those cans with such oxymorons as vitamin enhanced Diet Coke.
So, Coke’s green message in a way is everything but green.
(Aside, I am such a committed Coke drinker myself that when it was announced that Coke was going to be replaced by New Coke I began hording the old stuff….just to say I am not biased against them; love the stuff, no vitamins necessary but wish they would spend the $10mm walking instead of talking.)
How I Got SMaRT
And if you want to get SMaRT* too, please take a look:
Last week I wrote that I was re-committing to blogging. This week I am sustaining the effort, pun intended.
A few months ago Mary Hunt, noted authority on marketing to women and author of In Women We Trust and a blog with the same name, asked Toby Bloomberg and me to join her in launching a new blog, Smart Solutions for Sustainable Businesses and help enlist the power of social media to amplify the blog’s message: Standards is smart; no standards is not smart…..
“The marketplace is moving from “Green” to “Sustainable” to “Prove it” - this is a greenwash-free world where Product Life Cycle Assessments and Third Party Audits are the norm. Smart Solutions is about who is doing the best job, what standards do investors care about and what will consumers trust?
Everything will be openly discussed in this blog. We’ve reached out to market developers, operational experts, business leaders and consumer advocates - all working to create a sustainable planet as well as a sustainable new, global economy.”
Please take a moment to visit Smart Solutions for Sustainable Business . Mary Hunt is the editor and the contributing editors, Denny Darragh , Ginny Dyson , Mike Italiano , Diane MacEachern, Doug Pierce, Coral Rose , Leanne Tobias are discussing the relevant issues, sustainable mortgage based securities, sustainable marketing, sustainability in the corporate culture at new standards of excellence.
To say Mary is passionate about this would be an understatement…..check out her site, Ecolutionary Selling e-book on Ecolutionary Selling.
Also you can catch her speaking at Blogher Busines 08 , NYC in April. Toby will be presenting at Blogher Business also as will Yvonne Divita, Susie Gardner (check out her new book!) and lots of other really smart women.
Mary’s passion is contagious and thanks to her expertise (and patience) I have gone from, “Well yes I care about green” to understanding what it is I need to care about and importantly how to tell green from greenwash.
So, Toby and I will be adding our marketing focused voices to the Sustainable Products Blog soon.
C’mon over and join the conversation!
*The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS) is a non-profit public charity of leading environmental groups, governments, and companies working to achieve 90% sustainable products market penetration and stop irreversible climate change, by 2015.
In response to the need for quantifiable and verifiable Sustainable Standards, MTS developed SMaRT (Sustainable Materials Rating Technology). The standard is based on product Life Cycle Assessment across the product’s entire supply chain. Once documentation is gathered, Third Party Auditors review it for accuracy before certification is issued. For more on MTS go here.
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