GreenSky Thoughts

Is being 'Green' officially mainstream?

With more obvious individual benefits and a lower price point, food and drink has been an easy access point into the ethical market for the consumer. Last year saw this market broaden into the mainstream with ethical sales now accounting for 5.1% of the UK’s total food and drink sales.
We are already seeing a similar trend in ethical clothing, product and homeware design.  On the back of extensive media interest and coverage, sales of Fairtrade and organic clothing grew by an astonishing 79% last year and given the recent increase in high street ethical options this is likely to gain further momentum.
Fewer people are likely to switch bank accounts to a more ethical alternative or purchase a hybrid car as these things require far more personal and financial commitment and are thus more difficult changes to adopt. But as innovation in these areas continues, brands offer broader product lines, options grow and alternatives increase, even these high involvement areas are likely to see growth.

Create change with the carrot not the stick

We received a great greenspot recently from a member of our community about a new concept for galvanising consumer power to effect change.  Carrotmob was started in the US and aims to reward companies prepared to commit to more sustainable ways of doing business, by encouraging Carrotmob's database of consumers to buy the company's products. 

Carrotmob hightlights the effectiveness of finding positive ways of expressing our power as consumers.  As the founder Brent Shulkin says:  'We can harness the buying power of the casual consumer.  We can get businesses to make environmental decisions.  And we can do it with the carrot....  Not the stick'.

This video shows the success of their first campaign at a general store in San Francisco.  Hope they are able to continue the good work.

Positively Green

After leaving university, I lived with a friend who was a self-declared ‘Fash-mag-slag’. She loved and adored glossy magazines, would buy every title she could get her hands on and spend indulgent hours, between shifts at the restaurant where we worked, lying on her bed reading them.

I on the other hand felt quite the opposite about glossy magazines, holding a righteous-student-feminist view on them as portraying women as vacuous, skinny, air-brushed Barbie dolls.

Recently however, I bought a copy of the June issue of Marie Claire (for research purposes of course!), dedicated entirely to eco-shopping and ethical fashion choices and wrapped, like the anti-glossy, in a brown paper bag.

Marie Claire is committed to promoting ethical fashion choices via its ‘Fashion with a Heart’ initiative, which shows that because clothing is ethical does not mean it is made of hemp. No longer the territory of smocks and sandals, it is on the high street and it looks good!

The thing that impresses me most is that they have taken something that is generally presented as the ‘alternative’ choice and normalised it. Ethical fashion is offered as just another option, a more necessary one perhaps, but competing in style and accessibility with any other label or high street brand.

The language used throughout the magazine is positive, not laced with worthiness or judgement. They present the hard issues fairly, but instead of focusing on fear, they offer advice, instead of talking about problems, they offer practical solutions.

It made me think how easy it is to get overwhelmed and frightened by the language of the scientists and the media: Global Warming Threat! Carbon Footprint! Canary in the coal mine! Polar bears are dying! Statistics show...!

All of this may be true and it certainly isn’t comforting to think that the steady decline of the world as we know it might be out of our hands, but by focusing on what we can do we empower ourselves and participation suddenly seems like the easier, more fun option, instead of like a punishment.

Ripples

We have been conducting some research recently, in the form of one-on-one interviews, to try and understand what motivates people to make more ethical purchasing decisions. 

Rather than discovering an emerging, dark green, sub-set of ethical consumers, who get it 100% right 100% of the time, we are finding that consumers are simply including more ethical choices in their everyday behaviour.  Necessarily making trade-offs some of the time (should I drive to the farmer's market?  Or walk to the local supermarket and come away with unnecessary packaging?) but mostly aware of the importance of finding balance in their consumption and thus a more sustainable way of living.

One of the questions we asked our interviewees was whether they felt they had the power to make a difference.  Some felt frustrated by perceived apathy in our society and wondered why they should bother if nobody else did (If I don't buy strawberries in winter, what's to stop the next 20 people from doing so?).  Others believed they could, but only if supported by retailers, business and local government (since the council started collecting cardboard from the kerbside, we have been recycling more). 

In particular, one response to this question had a huge impression on us.  A very determined, positive reply from a woman who said 'Absolutely!  I influence my partner, I educate my children...'

This stood out for us as she recognises her power to make a difference in a way we had not considered - not through grand gestures towards changing society, or reinventing her lifestyle, but simply by recognising that the ripples set in motion through our words, our actions, our choices, touch those closest to us first.

I Am Not A Plastic Green

M&S has been in the news this week launching its new initiative to charge 5p for their plastic carrier bags.  They will support their shoppers by giving them a free bag-for-life in the month leading up to the change and all profits from the sale of the bags will go to the Groundwork charity.
This issue was highlighted last year with the success of the Anya Hindmarsh ‘I am not a plastic bag’ shopping bag, which was developed in partnership with We Are What We Do.  It created huge public and media interest and became the must-have fashion accessory of last summer.  (To the extent that we recently noticed fake versions being sold on Portobello Market!).
Towards the end of last month Gordon Brown announced that he would use legislation to stop supermarkets handing out single-use shopping bags for free, by amending the climate change bill currently going through parliament.
This is good news, as according to their website, M&S hands out a staggering 280 million plastic bags every year (it’s probably safe to assume many of those are not reused or recycled) and that’s just one large supermarket chain in the UK alone.
However, given the infamously high levels of packaging at Marks & Spencer, is this enough?
Recent research has taught us that consumers seem to be looking to trusted brands and retailers to help them make ethical purchasing decisions easier and to support their intentions to be more ‘green’.  M&S is a very well respected brand in the UK and shows real commitment and intent with their Plan A (because there is no Plan B) campaign.  So could they be doing more?  Almost force the hand of the consumer by simply not making plastic bags an option. 
I suspect 5p is not going to break the bank of many M&S shoppers...so will it be enough to change their shopping behaviour?

Retail Therapy

The issue of ethically produced clothing first caught my attention at the beginning of the school year when a friend noticed that school trousers contain Teflon.  Horrified by the prospect of putting her son in clothing covered by the same material as that used on non-stick cook wear - she began the search into 100% organic cotton school uniforms.  And discovered it was no easy task. 

When it comes to buying ethical clothing, the perception seems to be that you have to sacrifice style, and often pay a higher price.  Although nobody would knowingly buy something made by slave or child-labour, with so many retailers now selling really affordable clothing, it's hard to know (but easy to suspect) just what it is keeping their prices down.

Many of the bigger retailers here in the UK (Oasis, M&S, TopShop) are making an effort to sell clothing made from 100% organic cotton.  Something the Howies brand has been doing for years.  Howies have an ethical policy that runs throughout their business and are committed to campaigning for fair treatment of labourers working in clothing factories.  Often smaller companies bravely take on the retail giants with their strong, uncompromising ethics and in the case of clothing retail, it has had the positive outcome of driving change on to the high street.  The demand for organic cotton goes up, the organic cotton market grows to satisfy demand, more cotton is grown organically, the environment benefits, we get to buy ethically produced clothing and so the virtuous circle is completed - through our involvement in a bit of retail therapy.

Aside from the larger high street stores who are 'greening' themselves, more and more 'born green' clothing brands are appearing as designers and retailers seek to express their desire to create socially and environmentally aware products.  People Tree, American Apparel, Terra Plana, Ethletic are a few of the more recognisable names and just last week we met a designer, Eloise Grey, who makes coats out of organic tweed.  Using no dyes or chemicals we were delighted to hear her describe the colour of the tweed as changing depending on the 'shade of sheep'.

Although occasionally you may have to pay that little bit extra, it is worth knowing that you are not impacting the environment, or some distant community, negatively.  Pay a bit more, but buy things that last, not for a weekend, or even a season, but for a few years.  We can take back our planet and look fabulous doing it!

Discover Earth Live

This is a wonderful new app on the Discovery Channel website, which allows you to watch global weather patterns in real time.  The objective appears to be exposing the audience to the realities of climate change but what is more fascinating is seeing the earth as a living thing as it warms up and cools down.

It is spot on the Discovery Channel brand too - bringing to life their ethos of learning, searching for and finding amazing things in science and nature.

Earth Hour - 29th March 2008

Last year, Sydney, Australia hosted Earth Hour 2007 to motivate people to take action against the threat of global warming by turning off their lights for one hour at a particular time.  The event attracted a great deal of coverage and was adopted by a number of other cities around the world. 

This year, the event is going global and consumers throughout the world are being asked to participate in an hour of darkness at 8pm on 29th March.

In his book 'The Green Marketing Manifesto' John Grant touches on the idea of branding something to make it more real or tangible to consumers.  He refers specifically to the phrase 'Carbon Footprint' and how giving a name to acknowledge our individual or corporate CO2 emissions provided people with something tangible to respond to and take responsibility for.

Creating a branded event like Earth Hour empowers individuals to participate on a grand scale in a solution to a global problem.  Like Live Aid or AIDS Day or wearing a pink ribbon for breast cancer, it moves people to become involved and enables us to see how our small contribution can make a real difference.

Trains vs Planes (and Automobiles)

Yesterday's Campaign (31.01.08) features a piece headed: 'Europe's rail networks seek agency to promote green credentials'.  Exciting to see the rail networks positioning themselves in this way. Particularly in a culture where budget airlines have made travelling to europe a viable holiday and more frequent business destination for us all.

The article suggests that 'The winning agency will create a pan-European campaign that is expected to criticise the carbon footprint made by aeroplanes, while promoting the use of trains to business travellers.'

It is a fact that in Britain, 6% of CO2 emissions come from aircraft engines (higher than the global average of 2%), but despite this, it's unclear why the agencies would need to focus on criticising air travel's carbon footprint?  When there are some very obvious benefits to rail travel.

Less waiting, fewer queues, crowds, checks, you can move around freely and enjoy the changing landscapes as you near your destination.  It may take longer (provided your plane isn't delayed), but isn't that part of the pleasure?  Not having to rush, compete, less stress, more time to think, to write, to read.

Eurostar did some ads last year (see below) that really evoked the worst bits of air travel - the delays and frustrating check-in times - vs. the relative calm of travelling by train.  That a one hour flight to Europe can take a whole day because of general airport chaos!

Trains you just step onto - it's beautiful, simple, carbon efficient and ... romantic... remember 'Before Sunrise'?

Resolving to be Greener in 2008

With the start of every new year comes the opportunity to resolve to do things differently to, and possibly better than, the year before.  Being January, and keeping with the theme of the last post (EDF Energy TV commercial), I was interested to discover that EDF Energy have done some research into new year's resolutions and found that 'green' resolutions are more popular than giving up smoking in 2008! 

So popular is the desire to be more green, that it came in a competitive third place on most people's lists, just behind the usual favourites: get fit and lose weight.

The top ten green resolutions of 2008 as published on the EDF Energy site include:
1.      Recycle household waste 62.4%
2.      Turn the lights off when not in the room 60.1%
3.      Reuse and recycle plastic shopping bags 59.1%
4.      Turn off electrical appliances rather than leaving them on standby 56.8%
5.      Turn off taps while brushing teeth 53.6%
6.      Boil only enough water needed instead of filling up the kettle 52.8%
7.      Install energy saving light bulbs 48.9%
8.      Buy local food 43.6%
9.      Start composting 28.5%
10.    Walk or cycle to work 25%

Obstacles standing in the way of achieving these goals boil down to concerns about not having enough time (to be green), money (to go green) or information (to act on green).

It's great to see a brand supporting the cause and using their advertising pounds to talk about it.