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  • Recession or not, consumers still buying green

    by Linda Chipperfield on April 20, 2009
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    Has the worst recession since World War II dampened consumer demand for green products? Not according to a study* commissioned by my organization, Green Seal, and our research partner, EnviroMedia Social Marketing, in January of this year.

    We discovered that four of five consumers are still buying sustainable products despite the recession. That’s great news for manufacturers who have made the commitment to include sustainability in their cost-benefit analysis when planning new products. It’s proof that as a nation, our growing commitment to living more sustainably runs deeper than economic fears.

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    Half of the 1,000 people we surveyed said that they are buying just as many green products now as before the economic downturn, while 19 percent claimed to be buying more green products. Fourteen percent say they are buying fewer environmentally green products -- but are still buying green.

    Now for the not-so-great news. Roughly one in three of the consumers surveyed said that they don’t know how to tell if green product claims are true. One in 10 consumers blindly trusts green product claims. 24% are verifying green claims by reading the packaging, but only 17% are going online to read studies and conduct their own investigations.

    These results suggest the importance of third-party verification organizations like Green Seal. Green Seal, a nonprofit, has been certifying Green products for 20 years.

    Here’s what our President and CEO Arthur Weissman had to say about the study: "This research suggests that consumers are buying green products second only to participating in recycling. This increased consumer demand sends a signal to manufacturers to produce products that are truly green.”

    Additional survey results are available by contacting Kelli Johnson at EnviroMedia or Barbara Hodgson with Green Seal.

    * -- The study was commissioned by Green Seal Inc. and EnviroMedia Social Marketing and was conducted by Opinion Research. Methodology: the telephone survey consisted of a national probability sample of 1,001 adults (500 men, 501 women), and was conducted in January of 2009. It was released in early February at the first Greenwashing Forum at the University of Oregon.
     

  • When an artist approaches sustainability, all the lights turn green.

    by Sandy Skees on April 13, 2009
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     It might be presumptuous for me to talk about great design when my area of expertise is public relations and branding. But I can assure you that launching any product into the marketplace successfully has two basic requirements – a deep understanding of the market and its customer needs, and a beautifully intuitive response to those needs. Right now, I am working with a new company that perfectly demonstrates the value of great design for a shifting market. It began with a little known fact about electricity usage: 22 percent of all electrical power generated in the world is used for lighting. A quarter of that power is used for exterior lighting, which costs $3.2 billion per year in the U.S. alone.

    There’s a market need that can be met with beautiful design. Enter world-renowned sculptor Tom Joyce, and Qnuru is born. Tom Joyce is an artist, designer and blacksmith who forges sculpture, architectural ironwork and public art for projects throughout the United States. For over 30 years he has freely shared his design concepts and working knowledge in lectures presented in Europe, Africa, the US and Canada. His work is in many public collections and has been exhibited in numerous museums internationally including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Detroit and Minneapolis Institutes of Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Museum for Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt, the Museum of Applied Arts in Moscow, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

    He founded Qnuru with venture accelerator Noribachi because, “we all see that we have a problem in our world and in some ways we’re all implicated. As the creator of functional objects, I have a unique opportunity to express a new realm, to showcase solar technology in a more aesthetically compelling way. This is about toolmakers’ problem-solving.”

    Qnuru is a revolutionary solar lighting firm that integrates sophisticated, contemporary lighting design with advanced solar technologies and control systems to create lighting for commercial and residential installations. What Joyce has done is design solar landscape lighting with natural materials, utilizes proprietary, custom-designed power control system, so that the resulting products are completely untethered to the power grid.

    When developing the launch strategy for Qnuru, we looked at the various influencers that would be interested in such a solution. The breadth of the horizon became quite significant because we had a great design that would illicit a broad human response to its beauty and would tap into the universal need for lighting at night. Environmental, green, electrical power, design, landscape, architecture, sculpture, lighting, homes, public spaces -- these myriad concerns and industries will be affected by Joyce’s innovation and will define how untethered lighting can be deployed to meet the market’s growing need for illumination.

    Image credit: Nick Merrick-Hedrick Blessing

  • Earth Hour 2009: inspiring example, or pointless flop?

    by Guest contributors on April 3, 2009
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    Submitted by Keith Lehman

    On March 28, Earth Hour was celebrated by the turning off of lights in more than four thousand cities and hundreds of thousands of households around the world. It's a major symbolic event intended to focus attention on the need to change our energy production and consumption habits. I celebrate it every year, and I'm proud to do so.

    But there are those who believe that it's a wasted effort, or worse. Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com, whom we know and respect, weighed in with the viewpoint that Earth Hour is a “media event in search of a meaning,” is pointless because it’s merely symbolic, and sends the wrong message: that energy conservation means sitting around in the dark. Read his commentary on Earth Hour here.

    I disagree, and here's why:

    Although Joel’s right that Earth Hour is mostly a symbolic, feel-good gesture designed to raise awareness, I don't think that’s necessarily a bad thing, and I don’t find his article useful. Quite simply, Joel is missing the point.

    Earth Hour is not about teaching people what they can do directly about global warming. Its purpose is to sound a collective call to action. It is a statement from ‘the masses’ to our ‘leaders’ that we all want change. That is what all protests are about – a way for a large number of individuals to non-violently gather together and prove to the political and corporate leaders that we are ready for and, indeed, demand a significant change. By Joel’s logic, Martin Luther King's March on Washington and Gandhi's non co-operation movement were also little more than feel-good gestures.

    While Joel is technically correct that the Earth Hour page does not contain any direct information about “how to address climate change the other 8,759 hours of the year,” I think he's splitting hairs. The following links on that page take you fairly quickly to sites where you can find out what to do with the other 8,759 hours:

    Granted, residential energy use accounts for only 25% of the total energy consumed by humans on this planet. As a way of slowing global warming, reducing your personal energy footprint is not particularly effective. However, group protest acts as a very loud counterpoint to the standard bromides that “no one really wants change.” The point is to influence those who are responsible for the other 75%.

    The reality is that, as individuals, switching over to compact florescent lights or turning your lights off at night is an equally hollow gesture. Yes, doing so saves an individual a very small amount of money, but each individual contribution is lost in the noise. The actual energy saved is essentially 0, since the utility has to produce the energy that you would have used just in case you turn the lights back on or screw in an incandescent.

    It is only when thousands of people switch over or turn out their lights simultaneously that the combined contribution becomes a large enough blip for utilities, corporations, and governments to notice and begin to change habits, laws, and policy. This year, that one hour ‘blip’ ranged in size from 2% in Ireland to 15% in Toronto.

    Rather than throwing stones, Joel's article might have pointed more directly to steps that individuals, corporations, and governments can take to address the other 8,759 hours in the year. So that I don't make the same mistake, here are a few links:

    A) For individuals:

    B) For corporations:

    I welcome Joel’s ideas. He has been a fearless and thoughtful advocate for changing the way we think about, and act on, our place on earth. I’ll continue to read his insightful work on GreenBiz.com with interest and enjoyment.

    But pardon me, Joel, if I continue to celebrate Earth Hour by turning off my electric lights, encourage my friends to do so, and in the intervening year, follow some of the advice from the links above. Join me?