The Green Perspective

Defining Sustainale Agriculture...

2009-07-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

original link: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/defining-sustainable-agriculture/

July 7, 2009, 9:12 am

Defining ‘Sustainable Agriculture’

Bloomberg News Agreeing on a definition of “sustainable agriculture” is easier said than done.

Conventional farmers, organic farmers, giant agribusiness companies, environmentalists — all have varying views on what “sustainable agriculture” really means.

Perhaps not for long.

The Leonardo Academy, an environmental think tank in Madison, Wis., is busy refereeing a debate over a new “National Sustainable Agriculture Standard,” under the guidelines of the American National Standards Institute.

One outcome of this effort could be a new “sustainable agriculture” label stamped on food — similar to the way some food is now marketed as organic. It could also create a system that rewards farmers for doing things like reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer they use.

In late May, members of the 58-member standards committee met in St. Charles, Ill., to make the first decisions about the scope of the voluntary standards they hope to create. The committee includes a variety of stakeholders like the National Corn Growers Association, General Mills, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and American Farmland Trust.

One early point of contention has been genetically modified crops.

A preliminary “draft standard” from 2007 used organic agriculture as a starting point for sustainability, and it prohibited crops that had been genetically modified.

But groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation and the United States Department of Agriculture balked at the draft, which was ultimately scrapped. The new goal is to find a standard that makes room for “any technology that increases agricultural sustainability,” according to a statement from the Leonardo Academy earlier this month.

“Organic is basically four percent of the domestic market,” said Russell Williams, director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau, in an interview. “So if you’re going to talk about ’sustainable organic agriculture,’ that’s fine. But if you’re going for ’sustainable agriculture,’ then the standard needs to be much more broad.”

Many organic advocates don’t agree — though they believe developing sustainability standards for use by all farmers could be valuable to their cause.

“I’m of the opinion that it’s going to be difficult to get the average farmer in this country to move in one big step from where they are to a certified organic operation,” said Jeff Moyer, farm director at the Rodale Institute, which promotes organic agriculture. “But if we had a set of standards like a sustainability standard that would enable farmers to be rewarded for moving in the right direction, then I’m inclined to think that’s very positive.”

Among the more general points on which the committee has agreed so far: Any initial standard should cover only crop production (with livestock to come later), and it should only apply to practices on the farm, rather than the entire supply chain. The parties also agreed that the new standard should be performance-based, meaning that all farmers would be rewarded for improving sustainability practices, rather than just those who follow specific practices.

A final standard, if it makes it through the process with enough agreement from all parties, is expected to be completed by 2012.

Interested in Local Manufacturing? Come to This Event!

2009-05-06T14:27:00.001-07:00

Mother Earth - a green Mother's Day gift!

2009-04-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

Please visit www.thegreenperspective.com for more information!

below is a tasty drawing Matt Gribben did for some of our online ads!

Trashing our beaches, way too much

2009-03-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Trashing our beaches, way too much

Everybody knows there’s trash on the world’s beaches. But just how much?

Ocean Conservancy has a pretty good idea. Last year, during the group's international coastal cleanup, nearly 400,000 volunteers removed seven million pounds of trash from the planet’s oceans, lakes, rivers and waterways.

The most ubiquitous item: cigarette butts, to the tune of 3,216,991, or 28 percent of the items they found.
Next in line were plastic bags: 1,377,141, or 12 percent.

The rest in the top ten: food wrappers/containers, caps and lids, plastic beverage bottles, paper bags, straws, utensils, glass beverage bottles and beverage cans. Another oft-found item: diapers. Used.

Earlier today, the conservancy released a report about the findings: A Rising Tide of Ocean Debris and What We Can Do About It. The document makes for grim reading.

The report focuses a lot on the effects to wildlife, which can become entangled in plastic or eat it and choke or suffer other harm, the conservancy said. During last year’s clean-up, volunters found 443 animals entangled or trapped; of those, 268 were still alive and were released.

Another thing: The conservancy emphasized that trash is a problem caused by humans, and one that can be stopped by humans. “Trash doesn’t fall from the sky; it falls from our hands,” said Vikki Spruill, the group’s president and CEO, in a prepared statement.

The report lists statistics by country and, in the U.S., by state.

Media Agnostic

2009-03-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

find this article here, read it below

The Wexley Way

In the advertising racket, the future is coming up fast. Or maybe it's already here, at an obstreperous little agency called Wexley School for Girls

From: Inc. Magazine, March 2009 | By: Josh Dean

If you run an advertising agency, there are different ways to pitch a potential client. You can submit a proposal, all neat and workshopped and PowerPoint-y. You can create a mock campaign that dazzles with its vision and insight and originality. Or you can pretend that one of the client's products has poked your eye out. That would be the Wexley way.

Brian Marr, managing director of the Seattle-based Wexley School for Girls -- which is not a school -- has received a tip that a certain office-supply juggernaut is looking for help with a new campaign. So he and Ian Cohen, one of Wexley's two founders, have concocted an idea.

Cohen begins untwisting the wire from a spiral notebook until a nice tangle of gnarly metal protrudes from the spine. He holds it up to his eye and pinches his eye shut, then contorts his face into a painful grimace. Then he howls, not entirely convincingly.

"I like it," says Marr. "We'll e-mail that clip to them with an ultimatum: Your dangerous spiral-bound notebook has poked out Ian's eye. Give us your business and we'll forget the whole thing happened."

Being young and relatively unknown, Wexley can't rely on word of mouth alone to attract business, and its principals are not at all shy about selling themselves. A favorite technique (for when blackmail doesn't strike quite the right tone) is to build a one-page website known as "Welcome to Kick Ass." The site will be targeted to a specific person, and an original song will be written on his or her behalf. This is how Wexley came to work with Amp, Pepsi's Red Bull competitor. As with the office-supply company, a friend tipped Wexley off that a certain marketing officer might be open to entreaties. So Wexley sent Brett O'Brien, Amp's senior marketing manager, an unsolicited e-mail containing a link. He clicked on it and listened to his song, an excerpt of which follows:

You've got lasers for your eyes and four swords for your hands.

You're 12 feet tall and made of iron clad iron and pure alcohol.

So please don't light a match around you or you'll explode in a fiery ball of sexy hotness the likes of which have never been seen or ever witnesssssssed…

So why don't you give us a call today?

Brett O'Brien and the Wexley School for Girls ooh ooh ooh ooh…

The singing is acceptable but unpolished. And if you are looking for rhyme or rhythm or pentameter, you won't find any. It is what you might call low-fi, which is an adjective that fits easily with much of Wexley's work. O'Brien hired Wexley -- not to create commercials; that's the job of his big agency, BBDO. Rather, he wanted to solicit Wexley's help in naming some of the Amp products. "It's less about creating large-scale advertising with these guys and more like how do we infuse their influence into our larger message," he explains.

Not every potential client is ready. A while back, Jansport came by. Jansport makes backpacks. Tom Deslongchamp, who is an art director but, like everyone else at Wexley, is agile and contributes to pretty much everything, put on a white jumpsuit and a top hat and squeezed himself into a gigantic Jansport bag that sat in the corner of the upstairs conference room. When Jansport's marketing reps arrived, Deslongchamp hopped out of the bag and handed over the presentations. Perhaps it was a little much -- Wexley didn't get the job. Which is OK. Either you get what Wexley is selling -- a very particular sensibility and approach toward marketing -- or you don't.

This is not Mad Men or Melrose Place. The men and women of Wexley even bristle a little when you call what they do advertising. In their estimation, the ad business is undergoing a shift, one that affects agencies and their clients. The days of huge production teams and million-dollar media buys are waning, and, as the economy slips further into decrepitude and companies have less money to burn, this will only become clearer.

"Across the country, companies are telling their boards, 'Economic downturn; it's terrible out there,' " says Cal McAllister, Wexley's other founder. "And the board should ask, 'OK, what are you going to do about it?' Well, just like the Big Three need to think differently and not fly jets [to Washington] when they have eco-friendly cars to drive, they need to not buy a 30-second spot that everyone is going to TiVo right past and start thinking of other ways to reach their customer. There is less money out there right now, but there is also huge opportunity. People are spending more time getting information and branding messages than ever before. To reach them, it just takes a marketing department to think entirely differently. And that's exactly where Wexley comes in."

Under "What does Wexley do?" on the company's website -- a site that beckons with (to quote its own verbiage) a "half-naked statue lady" and that has a jangly, off-tune fight song -- it reads: "In the true sense of the word 'advertising,' we can act like an advertising agency. That said, we believe everything is advertising: Traditional media, design, packaging…guerrilla tactics and events, even squirrel races, done properly, can be advertising. Fact is, lots of our clients already have traditional ad agencies."

So what is Wexley, exactly? A nontraditional marketing company, perhaps, or an alternative ad agency. Or, to use the industry's latest buzzy categorization, a "media agnostic" outfit -- the idea being that media agnostics don't worship at the shrine of traditional media, which would be print, television, and radio. They reach the consumer in untraditional ways: websites, publicity stunts, viral videos. Whatever you call it, Wexley School for Girls is representative of a splinter cell in the advertising and marketing world -- small, creative operations born in the digital era and nurtured by the rise of the Internet, which provided a new and vast market for media buying that was not only cheap (or free) but also offered access to very specific groups of consumers.

Jonah Bloom, the editor of Advertising Age, says it's impossible to pinpoint the originator of the media-agnostic idea, but he credits the rise of the current movement to "a bunch of independent agencies in the U.K., like Michaelides & Bednash and Naked Communications. What those guys realized was that some other agencies were tending to solve every business problem with the same answer: 'Let's do a flight of TV commercials.' " Trouble was, DVRs were devaluing commercials (which are expensive to produce and place) -- and anyway, these firms found that there were plenty of other ways to speak to customers.

"It's less about the mass conversation as opposed to a whole lot more individual conversations," says Rae Ann Fera, editor of the industry trade magazine Boards. "The buzzword now is engagement. That's why things like events or microsites" -- which are very specific, ephemeral websites pegged to a product or event -- "or alternate reality gaming or experiential design are so big. There are very few situations anymore where you're guaranteed a huge audience. Companies like Wexley can target a smaller audience with a creative idea and really do something cool with impact."

McAllister and Cohen have not much enthusiasm for discussing Wexley as a cheap buy -- they billed $10 million last year, and they will gladly spend your money. But their work doesn't have to cost a lot. Wexley works often with small businesses and small divisions within larger brands. If a company calls and says it has $30,000 to spend on a viral video, McAllister says, he knows that money means a lot to that company -- too much, probably -- and that Wexley can't promise a video that's going to get more than a few hundred views. It will certainly be funny, but what good is that if nobody sees it? Instead, Wexley would rather use viral as one element in a complete media campaign that might even, in the right circumstances, involve a more traditional buy, like some print or billboards.

Take the case of Copper Mountain, a Colorado ski resort often overshadowed by bigger, more famous places like Vail and Aspen. For the current ski season, Copper had $200,000 or so to spend -- money that would typically go to a fleet of magazine and newspaper ads picturing a skier chest deep in powder, with a tag line like "You could be here."

"We were so over that," says Pete Woods, Copper's director of marketing. He called in eight agencies, including Wexley, and told them that, as a "challenger resort" stuck between operations with much deeper pockets, Copper needed nontraditional thinking. Wexley's thinking, he says, was "steps ahead of what everyone else was doing."

Wexley took a look at where Copper Mountain would most likely find customers and targeted Dallas and Austin. In the fall, it hired improv actors, put them in vintage snowsuits, and turned giant tricycles into human-powered snowmobiles it called Snowmobikes. It then collected piles of ice shavings and dumped the faux snow in busy downtown areas, creating a "snow day" that stopped traffic and attracted coverage in newspapers and on TV and radio. Woods says the ersatz ski patrol was so popular that bouncers at local bars invited the patrol in. "With what promotion in the world does the bar buy you drinks?" he asks.

The tag line for the work is National Snow Day, and Woods says the plan is to slowly build a campaign that will end up in Congress, where Copper will lobby for an actual National Snow Day. "The whole campaign is based around the idea that everyone deserves to feel that little thrill of an unexpected day off with zero obligations," says McAllister. "Anyone who grew up in a snow state knows what it's like when your school district is announced on the radio. That jolt is the motivation. We want to bring that to the rest of the country." (In the case of one Austin radio deejay who had never seen snow before, Wexley's snow guns blasted his yard and driveway, then had the station call and wake him up at 5 a.m. Says Woods: "And he goes to the door in his boxers and sees 3 inches of snow in his yard.")

As a microshop, Wexley isn't able yet to make a play to be a big company's agency of record, but that's not really what it wants now. Rather, Wexley, and other smaller companies like it, is biting off little pieces, looking to take on a particular niche of a business -- product launches, say, as Wexley has done more and more often, especially for Microsoft.

Recently, Microsoft asked Wexley to help promote Hyper-V Server, a software program that you would have no reason to know of unless you work in a programming specialty called VM. Wexley's job is to help sell the product to a very limited audience of the guys who matter. An agency that creates commercials and print ads isn't really optimized to think creatively about such a project. The agency would probably say, "Well, let's buy some ads in IT Monthly." But to Microsoft, this is an important product, and it has competition. It's not as simple as just putting the name out there. What Microsoft has found with Wexley is that it can hire a bunch of people willing to apply their wacky energies to even the most boring of products.

For one thing, Wexley decided to crash last September's VMWorld conference at the Venetian in Las Vegas, sending in hired actors dressed like the Venetian's staff to hand out fliers that said the competition's software was no better but cost more. On the back was a $1 gaming chip. A frenzy broke out; one attendee stole an entire bag of fliers and chips.

"Just that idea became viral," McAllister says. "Tech bloggers were at the conference; they took pictures and put it up."

"We know you want something viral, but maybe you don't want a video," says Cohen. "Maybe you want something like that. Those 2,000 people are a whole lot more valuable than a bunch of people who really don't care about the product."

When Microsoft drafted Wexley to work on its college recruiting efforts, in which it had been struggling against more glamorous companies like Google, it was another seemingly unsexy piece of business but a critical one for a technology company built on big brains. So Wexley launched a campaign called Hey, Genius!, which targeted the top students across America. Wexley sent the students e-mails with links to websites that -- literally -- sang their praises. It drew up sandwich boards with students' names on them ("Hey, Sean Lynch!" for example) and had actors stand outside their classrooms wearing them. It built the first ever Jobcuzzi, a hot tub parked in student unions and occupied by a sycophant in a suit who barked congratulatory greetings at prospective hirees.

The campaign hit more than 60 colleges and had 72 distinct creative pieces. "It was about as integrated as it gets," Cohen says. And it cost less than $1.5 million.

You know what Microsoft did the year before it hired Wexley? It bought ads featuring stock art and tag lines like "Options are good" and gave out pens and stress balls. ("Stress balls?" says Marr. "What kind of message does that send?")

"This year, they closed their numbers four months early," says Marr, who notes that he recently spotted a kid at LAX in a Wexley-designed "Hey, Genius!" T-shirt.

He smiles. "Everything is a brand opportunity."

Not even two years ago, the Wexley School for Girls consisted of 18 people in 1,000 square feet described by McAllister as "more like an undergraduate independent newspaper club space." The bathroom was 3 feet from his desk. "And it had saloon doors." The rent was $1,100 a month. "That is how you keep costs down," says Marr.

The School existed at that location for three and a half years, McAllister says, until the day it moved to Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, into a former print factory that, according to the plans, was meant to have a retired helicopter attached to the roof. (The landlord approved this request, but the deal for the chopper fell through.) Inside, there is a faux Chinese restaurant with faux chickens hanging in the windows (it houses production, and, yes, people have stopped in inquiring about lunch) and a woodland-themed miniature golf course that winds among the desks where the creatives sit.

Wexley was founded in 2003, when, after a few years of working for Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, Cohen acceded to his wife's desire to return to Seattle. He thought the city lacked a firm like Wexley and saw no reason he couldn't start one himself. McAllister, whom Cohen had hired as his replacement at Hammerquist & Saffel in Seattle when he first decamped to Portland, was more than ready to quit his big-agency job at Publicis (where he had since moved), and so the two men set up shop. Cohen was 35; McAllister was 32. They spent their first few weeks filming themselves doing things while wearing University of Washington women's volleyball uniforms. Their first video: jumping and touching stuff. "I was like, Running a company is easy!" says McAllister.

A few marketing directors who knew them in their previous lives started throwing work their way. "We were doing well, but it was doing traditional work that we didn't want to do," McAllister says. For instance, they created a series of hilarious commercials for the San Diego -- based continuing-ed company Microskills. The ads featured a crane that rolled in and plucked unhappy workers from their jobs and hauled them away. It won awards, but McAllister and Cohen felt the campaign was a failure, because Microskills scotched what they considered the crucial component of the campaign: an actual crane, bearing dummies, that would be driven up and down highways and parked outside Padres games.

"We really needed the stunt to happen for it to live up to the full idea," says McAllister. "We felt ourselves beating this drum about reaching people across all mediums but just slipping down the 'boutique agency that does funny ads' path. That's not what we were about.

"We didn't set out to be an ad agency. So we had a good first year, but 2004 was really, really difficult. We committed to each other to not take that work anymore from old marketing directors."

Wexley's big break, when it came, wasn't a piece of paid business. Nike put out a call for short films based around the idea that "you're faster than you think." These were not commercials; the logo was not to be featured.

McAllister and Cohen sat around throwing ridiculous ideas back and forth. And McAllister said, "What about 'winner take Steve'?" His inspiration, he says, was the sort of nerdy summer camp moment when kids decide that the best way to settle something is with an athletic competition. In this case, two boys would race for the right to the name Steve. The loser would have to find another name.

Friends at a film production house suggested a recent Brigham Young University graduate named Jared Hess. He had shot a film called Napoleon Dynamite, which had yet to come out. (It would eventually gross $44.5 million at the box office and more than $100 million in DVD sales, becoming a cultural phenomenon in the process.) Cohen and McAllister loved his sensibility.

You could say they got lucky by stumbling into Hess right on the verge of his breakthrough, or you could acknowledge that maybe Cohen and McAllister had hit on a comic sensibility just at the moment when it was about to explode.

The film aired on a loop on Nike's website and in Niketown stores across the country. It hit more than 20 film festivals and became an Internet sensation. Most important for Wexley, it said to marketing directors and their bosses, "This is what we were talking about."

"We said this is what viral can be for you," McAllister continues. "The case study we were able to put together was quite literally what we were telling people viral could become. Plus it was Nike -- a giant, respected brand known for its marketing. It wasn't just some nickel-and-dime little running store down the street."

It was instant credibility and got them in the door with Washington Mutual and Coke. "People started taking us seriously when really big brands started trusting us with budgets that were decimal-point rounding errors for them but for us were reasonable production budgets," says McAllister. "That was when the stars aligned for us."

Every morning, the students of Wexley gather at the picnic tables outside a 1973 Prowler trailer parked in the middle of the office for the 9:07, a daily meeting. Its purpose is twofold: to make sure the company's 22 employees (all of whom are young and many of whom work late) get to work on time and also to allow each employee to discuss what he or she is working on and to communicate anything he or she might need from fellow workers or from one of the bossmen. The meeting is one of the things Marr implemented to help impose structure on the creative chaos.

Someone runs the meeting from a laptop, going through a spreadsheet of clients. In a meeting in late fall, there's Brooks Sports, Copper Mountain, Pepsi, G4TV, and a whole list of Microsoft projects, representing various divisions. Ian Cohen congratulates the Hyper-V Server team on the Vegas stunt. "We got kicked out," Cohen says. "Which was awesome."

"It was a pretty basic guerrilla attack, but it got the news hit, and the URL was called out," says Marr. "The client was ecstatic."

Then, partly for my benefit and partly to fill in those not involved with the most recent project, just completed -- the creation and execution of Microsoft's annual company meeting, a rah-rah gathering of thousands held at Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners -- Marr rolls a series of teaser videos e-mailed to Microsoft employees in the months leading up to the meeting, with the goal of heightening interest and increasing attendance. They are spoof reenactments of the brainstorm sessions at which Wexley and Microsoft planned the event.

Wexley's team is portrayed as a bunch of eccentrics, including a cliché-spouting Fred Willard-style doofus named Chet and a loudly dressed dude named Hawaii, inspired in part by McAllister and his propensity for ridiculous shirts. They pose outrageous ideas, including one in which a "junior account guy" dressed as a butterfly wrestles a bear "Thunderdome style," which alludes to the fact that at one point they considered renting an actual tiger to use in the proceedings. (Ultimately they decided Microsoft didn't need to rile up animal rights activists.)

The Microsoft representatives are portrayed as overly starched and square, and anyone who has worked at a big company will get the jokes about conference calls, room-scheduling conflicts, and corporate bureaucracy. At the company meeting, the shorts played on giant screens while the crowd filed in.

The company meeting was easily the largest project, logistically, that Wexley had ever tackled, right down to the world-record paper-airplane launch. In previous years, Microsoft had pleaded with attendees not to make airplanes out of their programs; people worried, seriously, that someone would put an eye out. Wexley turned the idea on its head. It told the 20,200 attendees to make paper planes and then, by means of a message on the jumbo screen, demanded that they be tossed in unison. (To appease lawyers, people on the field level were given protective goggles.)

"We had four and a half hours of stuff that could go wrong," says Marr. "We had pyro. We freaked that place out. It was awesome."

Thanks to projects like the company meeting, business is good. In 2008, for the fourth straight year, Wexley's sales doubled. Even in a down economy, business (at least so far) has not suffered.

Ideally, Wexley is asking to be invited into the conversation as early as possible, to help build a brand from the beginning. The traditional model is that a company develops a marketing plan, then goes out and asks its ad agencies to execute the consumer promotion. Wexley wants to be there for the marketing plan. (Or, as in the case with Pepsi's Amp, working to brand products long before marketing them is even an issue.)

"We're getting in so much earlier now," McAllister says. "They're coming to us asking us what people want. We're effectively helping create marketing campaigns from the client side. We're creating products in some cases." For Virgin Mobile, Wexley designed a Miss Virgin Mobile competition that was an online beauty pageant using photos taken on mobile phones. Wexley owned the trademark and, from the beginning, was an equity partner in the results.

"From an ad agency perspective, you never did that," McAllister says. "You were handed the brief. We're creating the brief and then helping decide if the business succeeds or fails. That's why this stuff is so fun."

The afternoon that I am to leave Seattle, Cohen tracks me down in Marr's office, where I sit in the shadow of life-size cutouts of Cohen holding water jugs like dumbbells, McAllister shirtless, and Roxanne Okada, the account director, giving a thumbs-up. Marr's shelf is lined with fake hardcover books such as Awesomenomics and The Art of Blowing Minds. Cohen is worried that Wexley is coming off as too much of a zoo, that I might think it is just a chaotic funhouse that isn't also a thoughtfully operated business. That this message is being delivered by a man whose desk sits on a lifeguard platform in front of a mural of the beach is more than a little rich, but it's easy to understand how this sensitivity could lurk just under the surface of Wexley's clown mask. It's easy to imagine any number of business owners walking into this office, spying the creepy wizard statue just inside the door or the white grand piano that serves as a conference table and saying, "There is no way this sensibility could work for me."

But Cohen comes bearing a binder full of PowerPoint slides and spreadsheets focusing on Wexley's work for Live@edu, Microsoft's on-campus e-mail software effort. He talks of the research department and how much careful analysis actually exists behind the giant red nose. "There's a whole lot of thought and work behind the scenes," he says. Despite the stunts and the jokes, he says, it's "all about metrics and measurability. There really is a science behind it."

There is a perception, Cohen says, that Wexley is just wacky for wacky's sake -- which perhaps should not be surprising to a company that announced its arrival to the neighborhood with a parade. It's a nutty (and yet highly engineered) ethos that extends to the website and the marketing materials and even the client materials. When O'Brien of Pepsi got the pitch that helped persuade him to hire Wexley, the cover sheet had rainbows and a dolphin with a thought bubble that said, "Can I get a…Wha Wha?" -- which is the hook from an old Jay-Z song that became a cheesy white-guy cliché.

So you can see where people might get that idea.

"People describe us like that," Cohen says. "We wouldn't describe ourselves like that."

He considers this for a second.

"But if our competitors think this, good."

Survey: 'Green' tag should be banished

2009-02-03T14:37:00.001-08:00

Survey: 'Green' tag should be banished

Posted by Martin LaMonica

Numerous environment-theme blogs and news sites over the past week have pointed to a statement put out by Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., calling for the demise of all "green" labeling.

Since 1975, the university has been taking nominations for words that need to be banned. The top vote getters for 2008 were "green" and "going green." Also on the black list were the terms carbon footprint and carbon offset.

(Credit: TerraChoice)

One word-banning nominator, Ed Hardiman from Bristow, Va., summed up his lack of patience nicely: "If I see one more corporation declare itself 'green,' I'm going to start burning tires in my backyard."

Web site TreeHugger declares that the term green is "barely hanging on," while Willie Brent at his Mr. Cleantech blog speculates that many media companies will need to rethink their naming.

As a person who helped name the CNET Green Tech blog, I suppose I have something to answer for here.

And clearly, there are some real abuses. TreeHugger points to how the concrete industry--source of one of the most polluting industrial processes--has tried to paint itself green and sustainable.

Aggressive green marketing--also known as greenwashing--isn't very helpful to consumers who actually care about making environmentally conscious buying decisions.

But the answer isn't to ban the word green. Consumers simply need to be as savvy as they can and seek out as much information they can. Businesses should also get used to disclosing more--those with less to hide come out looking better.

Greenpeace puts out an electronics guide every year in which it drills down into a number of factors--use of toxics, recycling, carbon emissions, and corporate disclosures.

The same should hold true in other product categories--the more detail, the better. And this is where standards and certifications like Energy Star can really help.

For this to work, journalists and Web writers need to be as specific as possible in the terms they use, and try to give an environmental profile of different technologies.

After all, things aren't often black-and-white. There are many shades to being green.

Valentine's Day + The Green Perspective = Green Love

2009-01-29T06:02:00.001-08:00

Green Love For Her

Green Love for Him

A Fantastic and Unique "Green" Gift for New Parents

2008-12-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

Eco Mom + Green Baby & A Bundle of Ready-To-Eat Organic Meals

Sweet Pea Nourishment and The Green Perspective, two Philadelphia local green businesses, have joined together to offer a unique gift pairing for the New Year and beyond. By combining local organic foods and green products, the gift recipient gets a comprehensive and contemporary flavor of the breadth of the green movement.

The arrival of a new baby into the world is perhaps the best time to start thinking about creating a healthier and safer environment around you. Being new parents however is also extremely hectic which leaves little time to go shopping much less prepare the healthy and wholesome meals they should be enjoying.

This gift pairing will help mom and dad out by including a Sweet Pea gift certificate redeemable for a bundle of lovingly cooked organic and local meals—tailored to your tastes and needs-- to be delivered at home at the time when they are most needed as well as an Eco Mom + Green Baby Green Gift Basket.

The meals will include reheating and storage instruction along with clear Ingredient labeling. The Eco Mom + Green Baby gift contains a number of essential items that will help mom and dad create a green environment for the youth including: a package of three glass, BPA-free, baby bottles, an organic cotton baby sling for easy carrying, a cute organic cotton onesie, natural soap and a book about how to "Raise baby green" from one of the foremost experts.

The cost is $200 w the organic baby sling, $150 without. The Green Gift Basket will be delivered by USPS priority mail with a gift certificate and details inside so that the gift recipient can arrange delivery of the delicious meals at their leisure.

To give this gift to someone you know or to learn more please email Todd Baylson (Owner of the Green Perspective) at toddb@thegreenperspective.com.

This was kinda funny: 10 Green Gifts That Suck

2008-12-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

http://condo-blues.blogspot.com/2008/12/10-green-gifts-that-suck.html

Monday, December 8, 2008

10 Green Gifts That Suck

There are some great environmentally friendly gifts and some that are not. I suspect that these are the items that a Greenzilla would give. (You know, the zealot who raises the green living bar so high that pretty much every person who honestly tries to do their part still fails in the eyes of the Greenzilla because you haven’t met the Greenzilla’s specific expectations?)

On the other hand, if you’ve decided this holiday season not to give gifts not as a token of love and appreciation but as a way to force your recipients to live the green life by doing everything exactly like you do – NO EXCEPTIONS then these sucky enviro-gifts may be for you. (Personally, I’m not into the Greenzilla line of thinking because I think that there’s always more than one way to do something and achieve the same goal, which in this case, is a living a more sustainable life.)

1. Compact florescent light bulbs. Even though they are expensive, they are still light bulbs people! And honestly how do you know if your recipient doesn’t have a package of these in a closet somewhere and are waiting until their current bulbs burn out before they make the switch? Which I might add, is a green practice because they are using what they already have. The Better Green Alternative? Give the person a lamp to go with the CLF bulb.

2. Rechargeable batteries. Giving a battery is just as lame as giving a light bulb, even if it is a more expensive rechargeable battery. The Better Green Alternative? If you’re giving someone a gift that uses batteries, then include a set of rechargeable batteries and a recharger.

3. Some wooden toys. I get that last year’s plastic toy recalls freaked out a lot of parents (me too.) However, I think that some wooden toys can be just as dangerous – look at this handmade wooden baby rattle. Imagine the concussion baby could give you when they throw this ~~warhammer~~ at your head when they play endless rounds baby’s favorite high chair game of I Throw the Toy and Make Mommy Pick It Up. Also, some otherwise fun little kid wooden toys turn into sucky green gifts when given to much older kids. The Better Green Alternative? Do not look at the wooden toy in question with your responsible grown up eyes but from the perspective of your inner child. And please find something that’s age appropriate. A wooden rattle for an 8 year old would suck, but a wooden trebuchet or catapult would rule. (I wouldn’t mind having one of these either.)

4. Organic fiber underwear. Remember the look on Ralphie’s face when he opened the gift of underwear in the movie A Christmas Story Yeah. Natural fibers or no, the gift of underwear is not a gift any kid wants to get. Period. The Better Green Alternative? Getting a pair of organic fiber undies from your beloved that’s so va-va-voom that you can’t open the gift in front of the kids. Or your parents. Or your grandparents.

5. Carbon credits. This is the gift that says, “I couldn’t come up with anything else to cover my guilt so I’m giving money to a company that normally plants trees whether I give them money or not but I’m doing it in your name.” The Better Green Alternative? How about just giving the person a tree for their yard or plant for their home? Or another type of carbon – cruelty free diamonds.

6. Used and broken items. Vintage items are unique but not so great if they are broken beyond usability. The Better Green Alternative? Do I really need to say out loud? Give something that’s all in one piece and in working order, unless you are passing down a beloved family heirloom.

7. Shake flashlights. Great in concept but poor in execution. It takes about 15 minutes of shaking one of these babies to get only a few seconds of weak light from the flashlight. The Better Green Alternative? Crank generated flashlights. A few twists of the crank and you have strong light – and no more searching around the house for batteries, bonus.

8. Sock monkeys. I don’t care if your Great Aunt Tally made it with her very own hands by candlelight from socks made from organic wool. Sock monkeys creep me out. That puts them on the sucky green gift list.

And don’t even get me started about the freakoutablity of the sock monkey octopus.

The Better Green Alternative? None. Socks are meant to be worn on feet. Not for monkey making.

9. Environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. Nothing says, “You have a dirty disgusting house” like the gift of environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. The Better Green Alternative? An all expense paid trip to a spa to make up for implying that the recipient’s house is a dirty pit of despair (even if the recipient’s house really is a dirty pit of despair and could use a good clean.)

10. Nothing on purpose followed by a lecture about consumerism. There’s no way to tell whether the giver is being sincere or is just a cheapskate with a clever excuse. And lectures at a time of appreciating family and loved ones is just, well, mean. The Better Green Alternative? If you really feel that strongly about not giving anything to anyone for the holidays (even gifts of time or for services or to events) then excuse yourself from even going to holiday festivities. Please don’t let your negative views spoil the rest of the responsible gift givers holiday fun you big meanie.

What gift do you not want to see under your holiday tree?

7 things every environmental entrepreneur should know

2008-11-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

from Harga Blog

http://andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/06/7-things-every.html

A lot is happening at the intersection of environmentalism and entrepreneurship these days, and it's creating a hybrid form: the environmental entrepreneur. Some are coming from the entrepreneurial community. Many more are environmentally driven and, realizing that "commerce is the engine of change," are starting new ventures. Here's some quick advice based on having a front row seat at the intersection for the past few years.

Solve the right problem first.
That problem has to be the customer's. Your project will, by definition, benefit the environment and coming generations (you're an environmental entrepreneur, right?). But if it doesn't also benefit the people who have to pay for it in the first place, it will die. If the first slide in your presentation doesn't clearly describe a living customer and a real pain they are feeling now (and you could solve), then you're not ready. Don't lead with global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, or wetland protection unless you're talking to the people who feel this pain directly (like foundations and policy makers). Instead, talk about how your solution will help the customer--help grow market share, reduce costs, improve quality, increase margins, reduce weight, grow hair, or get their kids into Princeton. Solving the customer's problem first focuses you on the here and now, forcing you to be the one person who understands better than even your customers, what they need.

Always solve more than 1 problem.
Good ideas solve someone's problem. Great ideas solve more than one problem. Don't waste your time pushing one-dimensional solutions, the successful ventures, green or otherwise, that you hear about solve multiple problems at once. That means solving the problems of suppliers, distributors, retailers, and regulators, and investors. Powerlight developed a solar panel system that clicks together, has a layer of insulation underneath, doesn't require penetrating the existing roof, and is durable enough to walk on. This reduces the efficiency of their panels (as they don't tilt toward the sun) but it makes installation easy, and installers recommend them. Whose cooperation do you need? What do they get out of the deal? Run the numbers. If everyone doesn't win, go back to the drawing board until you find a solution where everyone does.

Embrace style.
Somewhere along the way, style became the antithesis of substance. Nearly 100 years of Madison Avenue advertising has made style a cheap substitute for substance (just look at the US auto industry). But you can't blame them. Consumption is as much about identity as it is about performance. Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple, and Chevy all sell identity as much as the products their names are on. The Prius was helped by images of celebrities filling the gas tank; Willy Nelson's name scored style points for biodeisel among truckers; even Gore is revamping his style to great effect. Think about your new venture: Style has a substance all its own. What's yours? What's your company's identity and who wants to share it with you?

Don't make leaps.
Most environmental entrepreneurs have visions of fixing entire systems--after all, that's what's broken--and design solutions that promise wholly new technologies enabling (and requiring) wholly new behaviors. Think hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which require innovations in fuel cells, fuel, fueling stations, fuel companies, and fuel distributors, to mention just a few. But that's where most promising ideas fail. Innovations succeed when they offer evolutionary, not revolutionary, changes in behavior. Create a design that provides small steps, easy changes, for your customers. Edison designed his electric light to look and act just like the gas lighting existing customers were used to. Only later did people start using electricity for other uses. Natura non facit saltum: Nature does not make leaps. Neither will customers.

Know when good enough is good enough.
You will always have two choices: keep working on the product or get it into the hands of customers and see what happens. Hundreds of millions have been poured into perfecting the Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, all based on what people think the automobile industry will want in 15-20 years. Jadoo Power Systems, on the other hand, found a way to put hydrogen fuel cells into the hands of customers today. How? By taking the technology that exists today and designing products that people need now. Jadoo sells power solutions to video crews, rescue workers, and the military--all of whom will pay right now for something than provides the same power for less weight. And by doing so, they are learning dramatically (doubling performance while halfing costs). Get to the market as soon as you can--there is no substitute for learning what people will pay for, and how they'll actually use it.

Forget the better mousetrap.
Emerson had it wrong. Build a better mousetrap and the world will not beat a path to your door. The better mousetrap--or whatever your solution--is the beginning, not the end. Once you have that, you need to market it. You need to get the word out to your customers quickly and effectively by building a website, sending out a press release, writing an editorial (or better yet, an article describing the problem, the market, and the opportunity better than anyone else has yet). Who needs to know about your product? How are they going to hear about it? How can they reach you? The light bulb was 40 years old by the time Edison started marketing his version. The steam engine was over 100 years old before James Watt found the investors, distribution channels, and manufacturing partners to bring it to the mass market. We remember Edison and Watt because they built successful business around existing mousetraps.

Remember, success makes you the new problem.
Careful what you wish for--you just might get it. Any company that succeeds grows, and any company that grows needs to worry about managing cash-flow, making payroll, paying creditors, and staying around in the long-term. Compromises start to creep in, waste starts to add up, and pretty soon you're part of the problem. For environmental companies, this is especially challenging. A world filled with electric cars would be a world littered with lead-acid batteries and darkened by coal-burning power plants. Look to companies who, like Patagonia in the last decade or Hewlett-Packard in the 1950s, turned away from growth in order to remain the companies they wanted to be in the first place. Just remember, when you succeed, why you started in the first place.

Posted at 11:35 AM in Design, On managing innovation, Sustainable Design, Various & Sundry | Permalink

Interesting Article: Consumers and their interest in Green Gifts

2008-11-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

Shoppers Willing to Pay More for Green Gifts

Jennifer Berry, Earth911 livescience.com 14 Nov 08;

As the 2008 holiday shopping season rapidly approaches, retailers are looking to forecast consumer behavior and spending during a tight time in the world economy.

Thinking Green

According to a survey by Deloitte LLP, almost 59 percent of consumers expect to reduce their spending this holiday season. However, the survey also found that 44 percent of consumers are willing to pay extra for "green" gifts. Half of these consumers say they are willing to pay between 10 and 25 percent more.

Green shopping practices also continue to be a focus, with 38 percent of consumers saying they will use fewer plastic bags while 21 percent are planning on not wrapping holiday gifts to conserve paper. Shopping online also continues to be considered a greener practice, with more than one-third of consumers saying they will shop more online and in catalogs this year in order to save on gas.

"The big question around the green movement has always been how it translates into revenues for retailers," said Stacy Janiak, Deloitte's U.S. retail leader. "Our survey shows that a significant number of people will pay more for eco-friendly products, which tells us that this issue is becoming a key factor in consumers' purchasing decisions." In fact, one in five consumers say they will purchase more "eco-friendly" products this season.

Thinking Value

Consumers are also predicted to alter their shopping habits by focusing on value. More say they will shop at venues such as discount department stores, warehouse clubs, outlet stores and even flea markets and re-sale stores. 73 percent of consumers surveyed said "the best value for the money will cause them to shop at a particular retailer this season."

Other luxury indicators such as quality and selection of merchandise and customer service/experience ranked lower than last year. Consumers are looking to purchase more items on sale, consolidate shopping trips to conserve gas and use more store coupons.
Top Gifts

Despite these value-driven trends, expensive electronics continue to be listed as some of the most sought-after items, such as Nintendo's Wii gaming system, Apple's iPod and iPhone, Sony's PlayStation and the Microsoft Xbox. The top "generic" gifts mentioned were televisions (HD, plasma and flat screen), computers, laptops, GPS systems and digital cameras.

Green Gifts For Events and Corporate Gifts

2008-11-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

Green Gifts For Events and Corporate Gifts

Bamboo Utensils Sarong

Bamboo Utensil Sushi

Bamboo Utensils Wrapped

Map of the Bike For Obama route for Nov. 1st

2008-10-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a map of the route. You can also go to google maps and search for Bike For Obama.

Here is the place to rsvp on the campaign website: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gs54vl

Thanks!

Todd, Mark and George

Please stay tuned for the Ride For Obama Route + !

2008-10-13T10:11:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone,

We just tested out the route for the Bike For Obama mission (to take place on Nov. 1st 2008) this past weekend...it is a beautiful and special route and we are going to have a great ride.

We need to update the map slightly and will then publish it via google maps here and have more info and details as well....so check back. RSVP via the Barack Obama website here:

this covered bridge is on our tour route.

thanks! Todd, Mark and George!

perfect timing! by Doug K.

2008-09-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

"I was in the elevator yesterday and some dude who was 50 years old was reading the times, turns to me in a straight face and says "excuse me, can I borrow 700 Billion dollars please?"

I answered, "I would, but I just spent my last trillion on a war."

A great political rant from my bro DG!

2008-09-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight... If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different." Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story. If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow , Trig and Track, you're a maverick. Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded. If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience. If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive. If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian. If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible. If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America 's. If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is extremely admirable.

The Green P Booth and our nature friend

2008-09-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

This is a close up of our nature friend on top of the mug...and some green P stuff.

This is the Green P booth at PHS Members Day.
pics by Matt Gribben. Concept by Frances Baylson