Blogs & Ecology

The second part of our Interview with Ian Yolles, head of marketing head at the newly resuscitated Nau, a green outdoor clothing maker, which just re-opened it website. Yesterday, in the first part, we delved deeper in to the business side of matters at the new Nau. For this half our investigation looks more at the product itself.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Branding for Sustainability conference at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. This was the real deal—not some day long seminar on “How to Greenwash Successfully.” The seminar focused on how companies can most effectively tell their sustainability stories, and how they can ramp up their sustainability efforts in order to improve brand image. How can you beat that?

We might like to think that the shift to digital photography is less wasteful that the film medium from days of yore. And whilst there may be an element of truth in this assumption, the photoigraphic industry is still prone to issues of packaging waste. So it was pleasing the hear that Olympus Imaging America is setting out to reduce their impact in this regard.

So you're involved in green marketing or in greening up your company´s marketing efforts. Online advice is all at hand. But where to go if you want to meet like minded buddies face to face? Check out this top five green business marketing events.

When it comes to online advertising these days, it’s all about targeting. As technology has allowed marketers to focus their campaigns more efficiently on those that they want to attract, niche ad networks have become a zeitgeist in the advertising world.

Baacode is the very clever moniker that outdoor sports apparel company, Icebreaker, have given their superfine merino garment traceability program. Much touted over the past few months, Baacode was officially launched this week. For as of this month new garments will sport a barcode number on their labelling. Customers can type this code into a website search engine and it will take them on a tour of the New Zealand high country sheep station (ranch) where the merino wool came from.

The time has come for companies to think differently about their environmental efforts. To be sure, it’s refreshing to see more and more companies stepping up to the plate and making significant changes to their operations and investing in infrastructure in an effort to gain environmental benefits. These are extremely important steps, and by no means do I want to discourage any company from taking them.

With an abundance of companies going green, and a corresponding explosion of green themed conferences sprouting up, this is to be applauded. And yet, there's a remnant of the old paradigm that sticks up like a weed out of the smooth green path: Swag. You know, those little things that companies give away at conferences with the hope they'll stay in your mind. Those little things add up to a lot. Multiply each attendee with a bag full of knick knacks, many of which are made from non renewable materials, are not recyclable, and you've got the potential for an enormous amount of waste, and resources used.

While Britain's Energy Saving Trust has a positive vision for reducing carbon, laid out in a new report with the questionable title Emission Impossible? (they have a penchant for bad puns, their last report was The Ampere Strikes Back) their CEO Philip Sellwood made the mistake of releasing a survey on the same day that is getting a lot more press coverage. He writes:

"Well, according to a survey we carried out recently it appears that people in the UK have a somewhat Orwellian view of what life might be like in 2050! More than fou...