Written by Ryan Jones
Published on September 30th, 2009
When you need to urgently need to blow your nose in Germany and don’t have a tissue on hand, you might ask a friend “Hast du ein Tempo?” (Do you have a Tempo?)
Tempo, it turns out, is a brand of tissue, not the German word for tissue.
Substituting a brand name for a general product description is relatively common across a number of languages. How many times have you heard someone say “Just Google that” or “Can I have a COKE please”? Over the years, powerful brands have impacted our culture and slipped into our language. For a brand, this is the ultimate compliment and a big awareness driver. In fact, Coke and Google (the 2 examples above) are now the #1 and #2 brands respectively on Interbrands latest list of powerful brands. Tempo continues to be a very powerful brand in Germany.
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Written by Jennifer Kaplan
Published on September 21st, 2009
Walking the green walk, isn’t always easy, and the holidays present special challenges. Its not always easy to mess with traditions. Last Thanksgiving I hosted a 100-mile Thanksgiving (I chronicled it in two blog posts on the OrganicMania blog). My attempt to convince my mother-in-law in Tampa that buying condensed milk at my local supermarket for her traditional key lime pie wasn’t really in the spirit of the plan, did not go over so well. That said, I can see a 100-mile Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza or even a 100-mile gift rule.
Tip #1: Source locally. Use local and sustainable produce, flowers, beverages, décor and rentals for holiday parties and meals.
Beyond that, there are two primary categories of activities involved in greening holiday parties and events: Finding ways to minimize the impact of the consumption occurring at the event itself, including food, flowers, beverages, décor, gifts, ect… Finding ways to mitigate the carbon footprint resulting from the airplane travel, car travel and lodging consumed for the event.
The good news is that there are a number of greening strategies that can deal with some or all of these factors that that are sexy and require little to no extra costs.
- Make sure you have a recycling plan in place. Make recycling easy by having a sufficient number of well-marked recycling bins near where people need them.
- If you are exchanging gifts (…think Secret Santa), make them green. There are a host of environmentally friendly gifts items ranging from aluminum water bottles to solar powered messenger bags to fair trade chocolates to locally made crafts that could fit the bill. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Jeffrey Berlin
Published on September 14th, 2009
Even a year gone since the failure of Lehman, fundamental questions remain regarding the core underlying assumptions of our financial system.
Though currently derivatives trading and black boxes appear out of favour, what will replace them in terms of helpful and productive uses of capital still has yet to be determined. This question was what the Conference on Social Capital Market’s, or SoCap09 tried to give some structure to; while the trend towards sustainable investments and long-term ROI seems to have taken the place of actively managed funds seeking 20x returns.
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Written by mcmilker
Published on September 9th, 2009
I’ve been asked this year to judge the Goddard/Eco Childsplay 2009 Best Green Toy Contest. Sponsored by Goddard Child Development Centers and Green Options own Ecochildsplay, it is both a great opportunity and one that has me thinking.
How does a small company compete against the big guys in the toy industry? In particular as pointed out by Wendy Johnson, with Birchtree designs writing on the contest Facebook page:
Hey, how about doing a contest of eco-friendly, local handmade items? There is no way we can compete with large corporate manufacturers. Also, not sure how eco-friendly a product it can be if the materials are coming from all four corners of the earth, is being made in another country, and then shipped to the US?
That’s a good point! And so I thought about and found that, hey- this IS just that kind of contest! Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Jennifer Kaplan
Published on September 2nd, 2009
Yet again, a LinkedIn question (asking for top 10 greening tips) got me thinking. Is there really a thing such as a generic list of top 10 tips for greening? I don’t think so.
As a start, the foundation of a green program lies in what a business is already doing. Do you recycle? Do you use CFLs? Do you have a programmable thermostats? Do you leave their PCs on all night? How much water do you use? What are your transportation needs? Depending on the answers to these and other questions, you will be able to identify the areas where the top green opportunities lie. Even if you business practices are not very green now, you will probably find that you’ve adopted a green business practices already, and that you can implement others with no cost or change in business performance. As an example, for most small businesses, changing to high efficiency lights or using recycled copy paper will have no direct impact on your core business operations.
So how do you know what the top 10 things you can be doing to green yourself are? One way to determine which greening practices will yield the most bang for the buck (a.k.a. be a top 10 tip) is to focus on the largest expense areas. There is often a correlation between expenses and volume of use. If you cut back on what you spend, you will likely reduce what you use.
So, whether reducing paper use or switching to high efficiency lights is a top 10 tip depends, well, on how much paper and electricity you’re using. A business may want to target all expense areas over a certain threshold amount. You can measure this in dollars or as a percentage of overall expenses, such as any expense on which you spend over $500 a month, or that represent 10% or more of total expenses. A list of business expenses can guide the planning process. Start with the areas of the business that will have the greatest financial impact. You may not be able to change things as dramatically as you’d like, especially at first. Look for actions that are achievable and cost effective to implement. If staff leave lights on in unoccupied rooms (bathrooms, storage sheds), you may want to make turning off the lights in unused areas a priority. That step may be as simple as posting signs on light switches. If, on the other hand the lights are generating significant added costs, they may want to install motion sensors or bi-level light switches.
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Written by Jennifer Kaplan
Published on August 27th, 2009
The FedEx logo has a hidden message. Does it matter?
In a blog post called “25 logos with hidden messages – Amazing Graphic Designing tricks!” Charlie Johnson, the author, talks about what makes a logo a good marketing tool. He says:
…make your logo look more conceptual and clever using the graphic designing tricks. As it is said, a logo should not be a plain looking symbol…it should reflect you and your company’s personality.
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Written by Deborah Fleischer
Published on August 25th, 2009
When WalMart finally unveiled their new Sustainability Index, I found the 15 questions a bit underwhelming. Especially, after all the press and fuss (you can download the questions from the WalMart web site).
For example, the first question, “Have you measured your corporate greenhouse gas emissions?” is so simplistic, that a yes answer could mean many things. Scope 1? Scope 2? Have they taken on the challenge of addressing the full supply chain?
GreenBiz.com offers some advice for getting the most out of the questions, if you are a Walmart supplier that is just beginning to think about environmental issues.
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Written by Deborah Fleischer
Published on August 25th, 2009
I had the opportunity to be a sustainability coach to some of the Clean Tech Open semifinalists last week.
The Annual Business Competition provides green mentoring and sustainability workshops to help clean tech entrepreneurs integrate sustainability into their business plans. And I found myself stressing the business case for why integrating green made business sense.
While some of the companies we met with were very committed to sustainability, others seemed to be going through the motions because it is required by the competition.
I understand CEOs of start-ups have many competing issues to focus on.
I thought it might be helpful to review here the three key reasons why it is makes good business sense to invest in sustainable business practices:
- It will save you money
- It will provide better access to capital
- It will drive top-line revenues
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Written by Jennifer Kaplan
Published on August 24th, 2009
American Express, in partnership with NBC Universal, is holding a competition to “Shine A Light” on an “inspiring” small business.
I find so many of you inspiring, I’m thinking: Could it be you?
They are looking for small businesses that are:
- Innovative
- Give back to the community
- Demonstrate a “customer first” mentality.
If so, they want to hear your story and you might win a $100K grant in cash and marketing support from American Express. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by mcmilker
Published on August 14th, 2009
This is a guest post by Eric Cohen is a management consultant who works with small businesses, helping them to reach new levels of profitability. His work with these companies led him into sustainability, and his community site, Padosa.com, is a free site dedicated to helping members go green, profitably. He can be reached at info@padosa.com and welcomes all feedback!
I’ve heard this conversation a number of times at the small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME) I work with:
Green Vendor: “So Mr. CEO, how many of my carbon neutral, biodegradable, BPA-free whoozamacallits would you like to purchase?”
CEO: “This seems like a great product and of course my company wants to protect the environment. So I will give this to my purchasing manager, and she’ll contact you in a few days.”
Of course what the CEO says is not what he thinks. All he hears is “Blah, blah and blah. More $. Blah blah and blah. Politically correct. Blah blah and blah. No budget and no time. Blah blah.”
The big companies have the resources to be more strategic in their decisions to go green. Not so for the SMEs. The vendors that I have seen succeed are the ones that have the ability to translate the benefits of the products they offer into the language that the businessperson wants to hear.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
The sellers are not speaking in the terms that the mainstream executives want to hear. They talk enviro-talk. The executives are still evaluating purchasing decisions based on the only values they have – financial – and regardless of whether that is right or wrong, it is what it is. Read the rest of this entry »
