Is Blue The New Green?
I’ve been reading a number of articles recently about how blue is the new green. I’ve always understood it to mean that yes, we are focused on sustainability (denoted by the word “green”) but we should also be concerned because a water shortage is looming – water, of course being blue.
But John Rooks, of the Soap Group, has another take on it in his article in Environmental Standard, Sustainability is Not a Color - Sustainability is Transparent.
Some nouveau-environmentalist and entrepreneurial ad agencies are trying to re-brand (a move akin to dogs marking territory) the environmental movement as “blue.” “Blue is the new Green,” they say. One argument goes that “the earth is mostly water, the sky is mostly blue,” so Blue is the best natural color of a deeper level of business-driven environmental movement. Some even claim this shift to be one of the greatest marketing trends of the coming year.
Surely there is a need to consider using other colors besides green to brand an eco business, over 300,000 green trademarks were filed with the U.S. patent office in 2007, but do you think we’ll see a rush to blue
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?
I seriously doubt it.
As more and more companies join the water conservation movement and come up with new and better ways to save one of our natural resources, I do think we will see more blue, but not as a replacement for green.
The water issue is real. Consider these statistics:
Since 1900, there has been a six-fold increase in water use for only a two-fold increase in population size. This reflects greater water usage associated with rising standards of living (e.g., diets containing less grain and more meat). It also reflects potentially unsustainable levels of irrigated agriculture.
According to the World Bank, world-wide demand for water is doubling every 21 years, more in some regions.
Water quality is deteriorating in many areas of the developing world as population increases and salinity caused by industrial farming and over-extraction rises.
Climate change also appears to be contributing to this problem and ecopreneurs are addressing the issue with new and innovative ways to desalinate ocean water; conserve water usage and change our diets to less water intensive foods.
Are you involved in the business of conserving water? We’d like to hear from you.
Photo Credit: Snap at Flickr Under Creative Commons License
Very interesting piece. I work in Arizona on the Water - Use It Wisely campaign, a water conservation effort that is celebrating its tenth year in action this month. When we first got in the game we were basically the only significant water conservation effort this side of the Mississippi and over the course of a decade we have definitely noticed a dramatic increase in water-based campaigns.
Some are clearly out for profit but most are really good and we feel like why try and compete amongst each other when we can all help each other and do what we’re hopefully all setting out to do which is to positively affect the water conservation effort.
So in the spirit of participation we’d love for you guys to participate in our conversation on our website at wateruseitwisely.com and on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Water-Use-It-Wisely/13129769986?ref=ts
We have a method of irrigation that actually does conserve water and is proven every day. We conserve over 80% of the water normally used for irrigation. We sell a subsurface irrigation system that distributes water uniformly under the soil and lasts almost indefinitely. It is used in almost any situation where plants are irrigated from turf and gardens to green roofs and living walls. Just view our web site you can see how it works and why. We are slowly starting to make inroads into the irrigation world but not without a fight. Seems that the larger companies have a pretty good hold on the markets buy the connections they have and how they go about making sure they get specified. We are slowly starting to win that war by finding those brave souls who will try something new. We will be specified in the USFO landscape refurbish, all of Tarrant county Texas municpal buildings and multiple other high profile sites around the USA.
Ryan,
I joined your Facebook group- sounds interesting.
Bruce, developing irrigation methods that conserve water is high priority. I look forward to hearing more about this.
Isn’t it just like environmentalists to move on before they’ve really moved in? It’s taken almost 40 years (since the First Earth Day, longer if you count from the time John Muir started educating Teddy Roosevelt) for “green” to catch on. In my humble opinion, it’s barely scratched the surface (only 2% of coffee is shade grown, only 3.5% of food is organic, less than 1% of cars are highly fuel efficient). Tactically, it seems foolish to get people off a dime they’ve barely gotten on.
Hey Diane!
Great to see you reading our blog!Your position as a leader of blogging women in the green movement provides our readers with thoughtful feedback.
Good point, that we need to focus on green before blue. On the other hand, there is a school of thought that might say, why let this get to a crisis point when we can raise awareness of the issue now.
I would agree that bottled water, which, in many cases is merely municipal tap water, has some significant drawbacks, the least of which is that is is unregulated for quality by the FDA and EPA in interstate commerce. Next, of course, is the wasted plastic not to mention the carbon emissions generated to make the bottles, fill the bottles and transport the bottles to market. Then there is the fact that approximately 15% or so of the bottles are actually recycled. This is an environmental nightmare.
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[...] desensitized. Corporations went through branding programs and corporate logos turned green. It is reported that approximately 300,000 green trademarks were filed with the U.S. patent office in 2007. [...]