WALL-E Packs A Real Wallop for Grown-Ups.

July 5, 2008 by guruofnew · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Parenting and children, entertainment 

WALL-E Like a gazillion other Americans trying to beat the heat this weekend (and in our case, the smoke from the Big Sur wildfires), I had to go see the latest Pixar mechanical-marvel, WALL-E. The critically praised film is now a box office wonder as well, with domestic grosses of $103,876,000 a mere 8 days after release.

I knew I would fall madly in love with the 2008 version of E.T. and R2D2, all digi-designed into one heart-rending creature who babbled adorably electronic coos, blips and bleeps. I also knew I would love the sweetly weird love story between the cutely-clunky WALL-E and ever-so-estro-oval EVE.

But what I didn’t expect was the absolute wallop of its powerful environmental message, delivered by a chilling look at what passes for humankind 800 years in the future. Not only did I want to sprint out of the theater and head for the closest treadmill but I also wanted to crush any cup in the vicinity.

And then there were my feet. I wanted to rush out and buy new shoes, simply to reassure myself that I still wear them.

I am fantasizing a dream triple bill at my local theater:

WALL-E
An Inconvenient Truth

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Are The Carbon Cops coming? Will We Be Dragged Off to Carbon Rehab?

June 26, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized, eco & sustainability, marketing & advertising 

41% of Britons think the Carbon Cops are coming.

25% think ‘repeat offenders’ will be shipped off to Carbon Rehab and forced to take Carbon Addiction classes.

So reports Reuters in an article about a recent survey conducted by the Energy Saving Trust, an organization set up to help people kick the carbon habit.

“The UK’s perception is that by 2050 we could have the sort of draconian infringements on our civil liberties that have been highlighted in our research. This need not be the case,” said EST chief Philip Sellwood said in the Reuters article.

Note: I’ve been waving this green flag for a while now.  Do you want your product to be the plastic bag of the future?  It’s either abide by our new millennium’s mantra — Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Or expect a visit from the Carbon Offset Police enforcing that fourth R: Regulate.

I will undoubtedly be the first to be taken away in (hemp) chains.  Convicted of cheeseburger, paper towel and Crystal Geyser addiction.

 

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Going Bananas Over Dole Organic’s Marketing Savvy.

June 26, 2008 by guruofnew · 3 Comments
Filed under: eco & sustainability, food & beverage, marketing & advertising 

I always love it when I get a new food project.  I get to wax eloquent with phrases like farmers-market-fresh and sun-plumped perfect. I get to invent new blends, flavors and colors. I get to nose around in my stockpile of ingredients and decide whether they should be mulled, cold-pressed or frappe’d.

But all of this is wimpy indeed — mere puffery, in fact — when compared to the way in which Dole has masterfully re-tooled its Organics line, giving it new life and a compelling new story to tell.  In an era when our favorite veggies suddenly turn villainous, made in China means made with mercury and lead, and no one is really sure what ‘green’ means anymore, Dole has taken not just the eco road but the ethical one as well.

The story: Dole Organic lets consumers “travel to the origin of each organic product”.  By typing in a fruit sticker’s three-digit Farm Code on Dole Organic’s website, customers can find the story behind their banana. Each farm’s section on the website includes background info, shows photos of the crops and workers and tells consumers more about the origin of Dole’s organic products.  You can even use Google Earth to get a closer look at the community.  A new Carbon Compensation 2008 chart is available as well.

I typed in code 698 and here’s what I got:   

Farm Name: La Gloria and Las Palmas

Las Palmas Farm and La Gloria Farm belongs to Andrés Altamirano, a member of VRAM group. La Gloria farm has 20 hectares of organic bananas and 20 hectares of organic cocoa. The farm is located in Machala, Province of El Oro in Ecuador. The farm is been certified by BCS Öko Garantie since 2005. Mr. Altamirano as well as his partners of VRAM group is commited with the improvement of the organic farming.  Las Palmas farm has 25 hectares in third year of conversion to organic, next January 2008 the farm will be certified as organic and will start exporting its organic fruit with Dole Organic Program too.

Now that carbon footprinting and corporate transparency are here to stay, it’s likely that more marketers will soon come up with their own seed to spoon stories and labels. Enquiring minds now urgently want to know: Where the heck did my dinner come from? Who grew it? How did it get to my local Safeway? What kind of footprint did it leave behind?

And the ultimate question of all: Which is worse? Carbon or calories?

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Just When You Thought It Was Eco-OK To Run That Online Media Campaign …

June 23, 2008 by admin · 2 Comments
Filed under: New Stuff, Technology, Uncategorized, eco & sustainability, marketing & advertising, media & publishing, non-profit/social cause, politics, tourism & travel 

We calculated our carbon footprint for all those red-eyes we flew to London, the SUVs we rented, the hotel rooms where we showered for 20-minutes and requested extra Egyptian cotton towels.  We even tossed in the methane from the cheeseburgers we devoured after Brett was intercepted in overtime.

And while our eco-sins are piling up like so many plastic bottles imprinted with 7’s, it didn’t occur to us until this very moment that we marketers need to calculate the environmental impact of our online media campaigns.  We felt so virtuous switching from treeware to those flashing banners and Facebook fan pages.

But now, a company called imc2 has launched Clear Sky Digital Media, a free tool that allows marketers to calculate and then offset the carbon footprint of their online media campaigns. The tool converts an online media buy into a kilowatt hour measure of the energy necessary to support its delivery. This measure is translated into carbon emissions and then used to determine the cost of buying offset credits.

Initially, I tried to calculate the carbon footprint of this blog but was quickly disheartened by the quantity of 0.0’s that appeared. Then I fantasized I was Chief Media Buyer for The Plastic Bags of America account, deep into planning the launch of a major online campaign featuring user-generated videos showing off the many healthy uses of recycled plastic bags. I picked the dimensions, selected high traffic sites like Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, then added the number of expected impressions. In seconds, Clear Sky not only calculated the carbon cost of the proposed campaign but told me how much it would cost me in green credits to offset. In this case, my Healthy Plastics campaign would create about 10 metric tons of carbon — and cost around $127 to offset.

So why do we need this new tool? Isn’t switching from forest to server farm virtuous enough? After all, an average issue of Time magazine is responsible for a quarter-pound of greenhouse gas emissions, while newsprint consumption alone is some 9.2 million tons per year. Electronics have got to be greener, yes?

Apparently Clear Sky’s mission is to simply persuade us to re-think all of our energy consumption and to start an industry-wide conversation about sustainability. Although currently not as devastating as dead trees, electronic media is having a growing impact on the environment. It’s already running neck and neck with air travel, each accounting for an estimated 2% of the world’s carbon emissions.

imc2 has raised some interesting issues — and here’s another one: Should the candidates in this year’s Presidential Election be required to calculate (and offset) the carbon emitted as a result of their campaigns? Imagine what it might cost to offset only the $45 million the money-making machine known as Barack Obama raised in the month of February alone and then spent aggressively on TV ads, particularly in Texas. A Presidential campaign carbon offset could be a significant energy investment windfall.

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Whole Foods + Other ‘Green’ Grocers Land on The Seafood Red List

June 19, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized, eco & sustainability, food & beverage, marketing & advertising, non-profit/social cause, telecom/mobile 

Greenbiz.com breaks the news today that even our supposedly uber-green grocery stores came close to flunking Greenpeace’s recent exam on sustainable seafood. Grocers with big green reputations such as Whole Foods, Ahold USA and Harris Teeter failed to score more than four out of 10 possible points in the report: ‘Carting Away The Oceans: How Grocery Stores Are Empting The Seas.”

Wegmans, Wal-Mart and Target followed with three out of 10 points.

The RED LIST is a compilation of 22 fished and farmed species with the most significant environmental impacts. All grocers surveyed sold fish from the Red List, which includes certain tuna varieties, Atlantic halibut, orange roughy and Chilean Sea Bass.

Anyone who lives on the Monterey Peninsula in the spectacular shadow of the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium knows better. Some ten years ago, the Aquarium developed Seafood Watch, a program designed to create consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources.

All anyone at Safeway, Aldo, Kroger and Costco — the supermarkets that scored two out of 10 points – had to do was get out their mobiles and check the Aquarium’s online pocket Seafood Guide. Or maybe the grocers who scored a single point out of 10, including Trader Joe’s and Publix — might want to check out the Aquarium’s handy tips about how to ‘avoid items on the AVOID LIST.’

While apparently the authors of the report were somewhat upbeat about improvements in sustainability practices to come, inevitably what news like this does is increase consumer skepticism and ups complaints about greenwashing. These days, with a growing group of citizens making a tangible effort to green up their acts, there is an urgent need for transparency, not tricks.

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Methane-Schmethane. Meat *Is* The Menu at LA’s New Animal.

June 12, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized, eco & sustainability, entertainment, food & beverage, lifestyle & leisure 

With half the planet growing and glowing green, it had to happen.  Le Resistance.  The Uprising. The Anti-Vegan.

Meat is back with a juicy vengeance.

This week launches the proud and primal return of the carnivore, smack dab in the heart of uber-emerald Los Angeles. 

Animal is the new restaurant from gutsy chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Carmelized Productions.  Not surprisingly, the place is sort of tucked away, perhaps to keep rampaging greenies from tossing red paint at the unmarked door.

The menu sounds politically correct — ’seasonal’ paired up with ’sustainable’ — until that ‘other white meat’  (pork) shows up.  Everything sounds daringly meaty. There’s even a chocolate bar sprinkled with bacon bits.  So if you were raised in Green Bay rather than Half Moon Bay, you might just prowl on over furtively, carrying your I AM NOT A PLASTIC BAG for the leftovers.

The wine list sounds politically perfect, too.

Animal:

435 North Fairfax Avenue, between Oakwood and Rosewood Avenues, Los Angeles/Fairfax Corridor (323-782-9225).

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Winners and Sinners in the Green Name Grab

June 2, 2008 by admin · 3 Comments
Filed under: Uncategorized, Women, eco & sustainability, fashion & beauty, marketing & advertising, media & publishing 

Everybody’s out to grab a green name. 

Last year, applications with the word ”green” more than doubled from 2006 to 2007, from 1,100 to 2,400; there were some 900 applications each filed with “clean” and “eco” (up from 800 for “clean” and around 450 for “eco”), and trademarks with “environment” or “enviro” went up from 325 to 450. 

Other words that saw some of the largest jumps in applications were “earth” (increasing 60 percent from 550 to 900), “planet” (a 50 percent increase to more than 400) and “organic” (going from 450 to 700 applications, a 57 percent increase).

These tidbits come from Greenbiz.com, itself a big Winner this year, with a newly launched site redesign that finally does justice to Greener World Media’s pioneering place in the thriving environmental business landscape.  Cleaner and uber-readable, the new look showcases the remarkably robust level of cutting edge content. Joel Makower, with 20+ years as a leading Green Guru, and Pete May, b2b publishing veteran, lead the charge.

Not such good news over at another (formerly) growing green pub.  One of my favorite girly-green sites, Green Girl Guide, will be no more as of June 23rd:

We didn’t want to say goodbye, but a few months ago National Geographic sent us a cease-and-desist letter because of a perceived conflict between our site and NatGeo’s TheGreenGuide.com (Who knew?) and suddenly, what started out as a side-project for three green-minded women suddenly turned into a David and Goliath story of epic proportions. With no resources to fight the geological giant, we’ve decided to part ways.

Thankfully, we sense a new green winner-in-the-works, with the upcoming ecostiletto.com, founded by ex greengirlguider Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, who wisely hired (my friend) Courtney Owens Zielinski to design the site.

Stay tuned for updates from Sustainable Brands 2008, held right here in eco-paradise Monterey.

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