By Bernard Hellen, R.G.D., FSC Xpert
President + Creative Director, traffic marketing + design inc.
Last year Corporate Canada jumped on the green bandwagon, and for good reason. According to a poll by Decima Research, two-thirds of Canadian consumers said that concern for the environment was impacting the way that they shop. Green was the new black - officially the hottest marketing trend of 2008. So is this still true, or has the economic unpleasantness of 2009 put the breaks on the eco-bandwagon?
According to a number of recent articles1 in the business press, TrendReports and consumer surveys2, conducted in the first few months of 2009, sustainability initiatives 'are proving to be surprisingly slump-resistant.' This makes a lot of sense when you consider that in most cases going green is good for the bottom line.
So how do you green your communications and launch a sustainable marketing campaign? Here are five steps to follow so that your campaign has a greater chance of communicating your good green intentions:
Think.
In most cases the biggest challenge is getting clients to think about the environment when designing their sales and marketing collateral. It’s not that they don’t want to explore the idea; it’s usually just that they simply were not thinking about the environment. The job then becomes what questions to ask when thinking about producing a marketing campaign and associated print and electronic collateral.
The first step is to filter every project through a sustainable design brief that asks the right questions. Are we designing a deliverable or a solution? Do we really need to create this marketing piece? Does it need to be produced in this form? And how do we minimize the impact, waste and footprint of the pieces that we are producing? In many cases, asking these questions at the outset of a project results both in a more sustainable deliverable, as well as a less costly and more effective solution for clients.
The website www.re-nourish.com has a wonderful checklist of the principles of sustainability that you can use to filter the work that you do. Ask yourself: “Does the deliverable…”
- Respect and care for the community
- Improve the quality of life
- Conserve Earth’s vitality and diversity
- Minimize the depletion of non-renewable resources
- Change personal attitudes and practices to keep within the planet’s carrying capacity
Measure.
After thinking and asking the right questions, the next step is to measure the impact of the proposed marketing campaign. This can be done in a number of ways and usually one of the simplest and most effective ways is looking at the type and the amount of paper that is being used. A number of paper calculators3 are available online that allow you to calculate the environmental impact of the print materials you are producing.
And you can have a big effect. The pulp and paper industry is the single largest consumer of water used in industrial activities in OECD countries and it is the third greatest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, after the chemical and steel industries.4 More than 70% of the paper in the world is made from wood taken from forests in regions with ecologically valuable and biologically diverse habitats.5 It’s important to look at where the pulp comes from when choosing the paper we consume and that’s why sourcing Forest Stewardship Council6 (FSC) certified stock is the best practice. Under FSC certification, forests are certified against a set of strict environmental and social standards, and fibre from certified forests is tracked all the way to the consumer through a chain of custody certification system. Purchasing FSC-certified paper ensures that forests are healthy, waterways are protected, wildlife habitat is conserved, and the rights of local communities and First Nations are respected.
It is not just paper. One of the most common refrains that we hear is why not just ‘go paperless,’ take the paper completely of the equation, and put the marketing campaign online saving the need to cut down trees. But, putting something online doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no carbon footprint. The problem is that worldwide electrical usage is increasing as a result of the growth of the Internet. One of the prime contributors is server farms; large data centres that consume a great deal of power. In some cases, the environmental impact of an online campaign can be quite heavy. A recent report7 says a typical Google search on a desktop computer generates from 1-10 grams of carbon dioxide. Thus, performing a couple of searches is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil, according to the report in The Sunday Times of London. While this may not sound like a lot of power, note that Google handles about 200 million searches daily.
Reduce.
Once something is measured, decisions can be made about how to reduce the impact. Paper is a renewable resource and can be recycled back into new paper on average seven times. You can dramatically reduce the environmental impact of the paper that you use by looking at the paper that you choose. For example, specifying FSC-certified paper with a higher percentage of Post-Consumer Waste (PCW) can make a big difference. If you were to specify stock containing 100% PCW, in effect no net new trees would be cut down to produce your printed piece. Producing a ton of paper using 100% Post-Consumer Waste paper rather than virgin pulp saves the equivalent of 24 trees forty feet in height and 6-8 inches in diameter; 4,100-kilowatt hours of electricity and 60 pounds of air pollution; and 7,000 gallons of water used in the manufacturing processes.8
Offset.
At the end of the day, after rethinking and reducing your footprint there will always be some impact of your marketing and communications. Carbon offsetting allows you to purchase a credit that cancels out the negative carbon output of your production. While still a new and sometimes controversial topic, the role of carbon offsetting should be considered in any green communications strategy. Although, complicated to go into great detail, a carbon offset is simply defined as ‘an emission reduction credit from another organization’s project that results in less carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than would otherwise occur.’9 The criticism most commonly leveled is that if the carbon offsetters persuade you that it's (easily and cheaply) possible to offset your emissions, you'll carry on emitting excess carbon throughout your life rather than thinking about reducing your emissions. For a satirical look at some of the issues surrounding carbon offsetting, visit the hilarious website CheatNeutral10. Even given the criticism that carbon offsetting tries to make it acceptable to carry on emitting excess carbon, if used as part of an overall strategy of waste reduction, a carbon offsetting plan can make good sense.
Communicate.
So often there are disconnects in the way that a company positions itself. Most of the time it is the little and unintentional items that fall through the cracks. But sometimes companies just plain get it wrong. At last year’s Canadian Marketing Association Tradeshow there were a number of premium and incentive companies hawking their ‘eco’, but very plastic trinkets, and trash wrapped in the veil of green respectability.
Problem was that most of this was opportunistic marketing at best. Thinking 'green' in your marketing means avoiding any criticisms relating to unethical marketing that seems simply opportunistic. This is called ‘Greenwashing’ and is a very real concern for business. There is even a website, the Green Washing Index11 that will 'out' companies that try to deceive.
Effective communication of your sustainability initiatives must include honesty, transparency and a genuine desire to involve your customers. A great example of a company that is communicating its steps to lighten the footprint of its business activities is the outdoor clothing retailer, Patagonia. Their website The Footprint Chronicles12 allows you to track the impact of specific Patagonia products and provide feedback on the company.
Customers recognize that sustainability is an ongoing journey that begins with an initial step and that most companies have to start somewhere. As the old Chinese proverb says, ‘The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.’
Talking and walking green
Now you can proudly proclaim that you are ‘talking the talk’ and ‘walking the walk,’ having done your best to think about the impacts of your communications activities and where appropriate lessen your impact on the environment. This is even more important if you are positioning yourself as a ‘green’ company that markets a product or service that plays off the consumer’s desire to do the right thing for the environment. Remember to think, measure, reduce, offset and communicate sustainably.
Notes and Links
- http://www.financialpost.com/magazine/archive/story.html?id=1419566
- http://erg.environics.net/media_room/default.asp?aID=692
- http://www.edf.org/papercalculator/
- OECD Environmental Outlook, p. 218
http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/woodwise/consumers/stats/index.cfm - Source: woodwise.org
- http://www.fsccanada.org
- http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
- http://www.conservatree.org/
- David Suzuki's Science Matters: The Truth About Carbon Offsets
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly02250801.asp - http://www.cheatneutral.com
- http://www.greenwashingindex.com/
- http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/footprint/index.jsp
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