There is no such thing as Clean Coal

A great ad by Crispin Porter + Bogusky on the reality of Clean Coal.

The reality: There is no such thing as clean coal.

Best TV Ad: Coen Brothers' Clean Coal

With their trademark sardonic wit and style, the Academy-Award winning Coen Brothers bring an appropriate undertone to the "clean" coal spot from the Reality Coalition campaign, which ran on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central, and sped through the Internet. Joel and Ethan Coens' 30-second "ad" turned the slick coal industry's sales job on its head with a slick pitchman selling spray air-freshener spewing black dust, and tagged: "Clean coal is supported by the coal industry, the most trusted name in coal." The consortium of enviros (including Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and League of Conservation Voters) hit pay dirt mining the two-headed directing team, which is also behind film Burn After Reading. -R.C.

(Via: TreeHugger)

Ecuador vs. Chevron: Ecuador rejects $700 Million from Chevron

Ecuador rejects $700 million dollars offered by chevron as it is still waiting on that $27,000,000,000 from Chevron, a number erected by experts that examined the area in the Amazon. The Ecuador vs. Chevron case has been in trial since 1993 and still has lengths to go.

Read the article HERE (Bloomberg)

Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time

167 Million Acres across the Atlantic Ocean.

Read it HERE

Kevin Tuerff :: Enviromedia

We, Katie, Brian, and Jamie, recently got the opportunity to meet and listen to Kevin Tuerff of Enviromedia in our Green Brand Strategies class at the University of Oregon. Listening to what Kevin had to say about our environment, sustainability, the change in the ad industry, and just about everything else was mind blowing. Kevin has been in the ad industry for about 11 years, but what makes him stand out is his practice for working with businesses that are using sustainable practices. Coming up with a green strategy in advertising is not a easy thing to do. Kevin is doing this everyday. We think one of the most important things we took away from his guest lecture was his guidelines to develop a successful Green Brand Strategy and now we're going to share with you...

1. Authenticity Rules. No GreenWashing

2. Know Your Audience. Willingness High, Awareness Low

3. Explore

• What Green Problem Am I Addressing With This Product?
• How Is The Brand Promise Tied To Sustainability?
• How Can I Communicate The Brand's Greenness In A Unique Way?

4. Communicate Why The Green is Good? ...It's Not Obvious To Some People

5. Walk The Talk. Share The Good, Bad & Ugly

6. Sell It. Convince Consumers Your Brand Of Green - And Therefore Your Product/Service Is The Right Choice For Them.

Isn't this great, yet so simple! Amazing. Here are some other great quotes to help inspire...

"You can make money and still save the world at the same time."

"You need to educate and learn everyday about "Green" issues."

"The United States does not take time to talk about global issues compared to the rest of the World."

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Here is something for Chevron's big wigs up to think about:

What if Chevron were to actually clean up their mess? How would that effect them?

Answer: Positively

If Chevron were to clean up all of the toxic waste in Ecuador by dipping their petroleum stained hands into their back pockets and fishing around for some of that $24 Billion dollar profit they made in one year (2008) they would be able to ERASE their reputation as the destroyers of a beautiful land like that of Amazon, providing us with an abundance of oxygen needed in a time of climate change.

If they cleaned up ALL of the waste tomorrow (very possible, Chevron is filthy rich) they would then own that act of environmental heroism and people would see that they are honest about their business practices and to the environment. That they care about more than zeros behind a comma, and are thinking about a world that is in drastic need of help.

This would be one step in the right direction, cmon Chevron...LISTEN!

60 Minutes: Crude

This video shed light to millions that watch 60 minutes about what exactly is happening in Chevron dealing with the 16 year long trial driven by Steven Donziger, lead attorney in favor of Ecuador.

Although this trial is only now becoming aware by the general public, the destruction of Ecuador's Amazon jungle has been going on since the 60's.

Watch Chevron's spokeswomen, Silvia Garago, stumble over her words when interviewed. There is nothing better than watching a billion dollar conglomerate choking under pressure...

Will You Join Us [Greenwash]?

An example of Chevron's attempt at making the planet "greener" with their "Will You Join Us" campaign is only digging themselves into a deeper hole.

By Chevron saying "Will You Join Us" they are pretty much

saying the following: We are doing great, look at how we are solving the earths problems by doing our part, you should join us.

It is a selfish campaign that denies the fact that they are destroying an eco-systeme extremely valuable to the planet, and causing disease and cancer to the indigenous in Ecuador that have no other place to drink their water other than the petroleum intoxicated water pumping

permanently through their Jungle.

think about this when looking at the following advertisements:

Chevron Toxico

"On January 1st, Chevron board member John Watson took over as the new CEO. With Mr. Watson taking the helm at Chevron, he has an opportunity to show leadership by dealing with the crisis in Ecuador." ChevronToxico.com

This is the main website responding to the crisis in the Ecuadorian jungle. It follows the entire timeline of what Chevron has done to nearly destroy a perfect eco-system what many call "Los Pulmones del mundo" which is translated in english as "The Lungs of The World" for all of the oxygen emitted from the trees.

Move over Google, You're wasting too much damn energy!

If you have any sort of conscience for energy efficiency you should stop using Google and start using Blackle.

Blackle.com is the exact same thing as Google, except the screen is black. By changing the screen from black to white you are saving some energy. Under the search engine on Blackle it show how many Watts of energy it has saved in the day by switching the background to black.

This is very easy to do, there is no reason not to change.

Just think if everyone started using Blackle, how much energy do you think we could save? Could be a fun experiment.

Check it out HERE!

Side note: Because of this I have changed the background of my blog from WHITE to BLACK.

TED TALK: BILL GATES

What's up Bill Gates? No carbon emissions by 2050? Let's Go!

GREEN DETECTIVES

Green Detectives is a great website run by Enviromedia that follows climate change.

Green Detectives includes a detailed blog involving sustainability practices not only with businesses but also peoples everyday life, a timeline titled "Road to (Climate Change" that shows all of the environmental advances that will help climate change, and my favorite interactive tool on this website which is called the Green Detective Decoder which goes over commonly used terms used when talking about sustainability, green practices, and climate change.

Ever since 2007 when the "green" movement hit the world, industries have found ways to profit off of what we call "green," when in fact they are in no way environmentally friendly. It is what Enviromedia calls "Greenwashing" (I have a blog post about the whole website devoted towards greenwashing). This website includes up to date articles under Cases Cracked, that focus completely on these types of companies.

This is a really informative website for someone just learning about the "green" movement and climate change in general.

Check it out HERE

Eugene: Green Store

The Green Store. 5th and Olive. Eugene, OR.

Today was an incredibly sunny day for the middle of February in Oregon so I decided a bike ride through Eugene would do the trick. Upon coming back from a little act

ion on the river I rode past this store that caught my eye.

Being in the brand new Green Brand Strategies course, which focuses on brands that claim themselves as being green, I decided I had to go inside and see what all of this was about.

Upon perusing the aisles for a couple of minutes

I noticed an overwhelming amount of greenwashing. Many different products were just normal products that do nothing "green" except for the fact that the title of their product was "ECO___" or had something about being "Green" on the packaging. My favorite is when a product claims they are green by littering the packaging with earth tones and green leaves as if it was plucked from a tree right before hitting the shelves.

Here are a few of the products I found in the aisles, I took these pictures with a camera phone so the quality isn't too high...

What I did like about this store was that it installs solar panels on houses. Although solar

panels have been around for a long time we will start seeing more and more houses powering themselves via solar panels. It is a great way to save energy and cut costs. The Green Store also installs windmills but they said that they rarely sell windmills due to the lack of wind in Oregon (I was wondering the same about solar panels and the lack of sunshine in Oregon).

They have a website HERE

Eugene: Sy's Pizza

Sy's is a great place in Eugene to grab a slice of pizza and a garlic knot, I was in there yesterday doing just that when this sign to my right was screaming at me in my peripherals.

These two signs read "Don't put my box baby in the trash..." and "Translation: If you are putting a box in the trash you don't need a 'TO GO' box. NEXT TIME USE A PLATE AND HELP US AVOID FURTHER PRICE INCREASES"

Sounds about right, every time you throw away a box means that you asked for a box but you stayed at Sy's to eat the pizza. Sy's makes a good point by telling us to just get a plate next time we eat-in at Sy's.

Then I looked at my plate. It's a paper plate, that I have to throw away after I eat because of all the grease marks. Now, doesn't that seem sort of odd for them to be so critical of people using boxes when they give out plates? Plates cost money to buy, just as the boxes do.

My resolution: Sy's should have re-usable plastic plates in order to cut the cost of having to buy paper plates for those who eat-in. If you think about it Sy's is not that big at all, it seats less than 10 people inside. If they were to get plastic plates that they recycle and clean after each use they wouldn't have to keep buying paper plates, and the price increase would not be necessary for the next piece of pepperoni I will be craving!

GREENWASHING INDEX

Greenwashing index is a great site run by EnviroMedia in partnership with the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. It focuses on criticism of advertisers these days banking in on the "green" movement. The site is structured with all sorts of commercials and print ads for your viewing pleasure, after viewing the ad you are to rate the ad from 1-5, 5 being BOGUS and 1 being Authentic and sincere about

"green" strategies and practices being advertised.

This is a fun site, great to see what brands are genuine about their advertising and business practices and also which ones are using it solely for profitability i.e. bullshit.

GREENWASHINGINDEX.COM

Sustainable Brand: HP

HP, Hewlett Packard, is one company that has been instilling sustainable business practices in their manufacturing of products for over 10 years now. Since before the "green" fad swept the world with words like "clean coal", and "green technology" there was HP. A business that was based on less waste and environmentally friendly business practices. Here are a few statments from their website I found inspiring:

"HP developed its Design for Environment (DfE) program over 10 years ago with the goal of reducing the environmental impact of products and services. In addition to meeting safety and regulatory requirements, our objective is to design products that use fewer materials, are more energy efficient, and are easier to recycle, while maximizing overall value for our customers."

-Key words here I like are "fewer material", and "energy efficient." Many times people are wasting energy without even knowing it in our own personal lives, and for a large company like HP to be conscious of how much energy they are using is great for the environment with the amount of products they make every year.

"Electronic waste, or “E-waste,” is a growing environmental concern. Worldwide regulatory trends highlight the need for companies to consider the impacts of their products at the end of their useful lives. Our vision at HP is to offer recycling services wherever we sell our products worldwide."

-Great! E-waste is more trash, more trash to fill the landfills with, why not help out someone else in need and recycle the already used products for someone else to use instead of contributing to global waste.

-As for the future?

"As a leader in corporate citizenship, HP is committed to proactively addressing global environmental challenges. We will continue to build partnerships with key stakeholders and communities; develop innovative technologies and business solutions; and balance the interests of our corporation with the needs of the environment."

-I think as a company it is important to build relationships with groups and organization with the same goal, it will only propel productivity.

Here is an article on some other sustainable brands including HP: HERE

Chevron Toxico

Last week in class we discussed greenwashing and how some companies are taking advantage of the green movement for profitability benefits. As noted in other blog posts, the term "green" is easy to be thrown around these days, oil companies such as Chevron have started a "green"campaign aimed called Will You Join Us? It involves average looking people pledging to use less energy, or use their car less etc. All of which are focusing on the amount of energy will be saved by their pledge. Here are two of them for reference.

What peeves me about these ad's is the lack of transparency with the oil industry Chevron. These ad's focus on what they are doing here in the United States, detailing that they are making a conscience effort to be more energy efficient, thus green. What they don't underline is how disgustingly inconsiderate they are where they do the dirty work, where they pump the actual oil they sell to these figures we see in the advertisements.

Ecuador is a large source for oil, South America in general has an abundance of oil in fruitful areas like the Amazon. Chevron takes advantage, economically, of countries like Ecuador who are already in debt to the United States and thrashes their sustainable Amazon jungle for the sale of petroleum. Due to the drilling in these areas much wildlife and indigenous Quechuan people of Ecuador have developed cancer and disease forcing them to the outskirts of the Amazon and the city, not their natural habitat.

Chevron as a company is terrible. They say one thing and do another. Hypocrisy in it's truest form. The lack of transparency is frightening and it is incredible what they have been able to get away with in the Amazonian Jungle. Just recently activists and Ecuadorian citizens have come to realization of the severity of this issue and have started to take action. Happening right NOW is a very lengthy lawsuit against John Watson (CEO Chevron), by the people of Ecuador. Here is a video and website with a ton of information on this topic to get everyone up to speed and start taking action:

Visits ChevronToxico.com for all the latest information on this case.

-JS

Article: WorldChanging.com

CLICK HERE

This article above is from a blog called WorldChanging.com. It is a good bog about sustainability and green thinking, I have also found it to be pretty credible and sound in most of it's articles and posts.

This article is about how people today need to stop investing in companies that produce products that will eventually no longer exist due to the physical state of our planet. It's inevitable that many resources will no longer be available in the future, to continue to inject money into those companies seems meaningless when we could be distributing that money to companies that are creating new wave sustainable products.

After you read the article what industries specifically do you think this article is talking about when telling us to stop investing in them?

Check out www.worldchanging.com

-JS

Strategy for Sustainability (1)

Strategy for Sustainability is a book by Adam Werbach I am required to read for my Green Brand Strategies Class. I am a little over 30 pages into this book and I have found some great ideas and consistency in Werbach's ideology towards brands consciousness of being "sustainable". He introduces 4 components which makes a brand Sustainable. Any brand is able to loophole themselves into marketing themselves as Green, that's as easy as saying you didn't wipe today because you are saving the trees. Being sustainable is different. Werbach dives more into this later in the book. These 4 components really stuck out for me and how he uses them as a platform for which every brand should use in transitioning themselves to be "sustainable".

"Social (acting as if other people matter): Actions and conditions that affect all members of society (e.g., poverty, violence, injustice, education, public health, and labor and human rights)

Economic (operating profitably): Action that affect how people and businesses meet their economic needs---for example, securin food, water, shelter, and comforts for people and for businesses turning a profit so that they'll be able to continue for years to come.

Environmental (potecting and restoring the ecosystem): Actions and conditions that affect the earth's ecology (e.g., climate change, preservation of natural resources, and the prevention of toxic wastes)

Cultural (protecting and valuing cultural diversity): Actions through which communities manifest their identity and cultivate traditions from generation to generation." Pg. 9,10

These 4 components are what a company must focus on in order to maintain a sustainable brand with longevity. A lot of companies these days focus on the short term economic goal. Fast money. Werbach shows many examples of how companies that have failed due to setting short term goals first instead of setting their sights on long term benefits by adopting these four components into the company's actions.

Check out the book and learn more about Adam Werbach HERE

Green

Green can be portrayed in many different ways, sure. It’s a color, it is the way your face makes before you vomit, it’s a way of life for some people, and in the last decade with the ever growing awareness of our environment and the importance of a sustainable environment, green has become a way for people and brand’s alike to advertise themselves as being environmentally friendly, instead of wasteful and selfish.

Green can be a very effective way for brand’s to advertise. When you break it down to what it means for a brand to advertise themselves as green, it is merely persuading the consumer to use their product by letting them feel like they are doing something useful for the earth. People in general care significantly about their reputation and what other people think about them. For them to use a green product they are convincing themselves that by buying and using this product they are doing something environmentally friendly and “green”.

Many other companies are very passionate about being green and passionate about the message they are sending to everyone by being sustainable. This blog will help show what companies are doing in order to title themselves as being green and sustainable.

GREEN BRAND STRATEGIES

Throughout this term I will be posting Ideas, concepts, thoughts, links of how brands advertise themselves as "G R E E N"