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

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.

 

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

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.

Winners and Sinners in the Green Name Grab

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.