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Green Marketing and Better Brands – Asheen Phansey from Sustainable Brands on Vimeo.
The tried and true values of being honest, forthright, and not making vague & unsubstantiated claims still matter. The style, direction, and purpose of branding has become led by values. What matters most to customers. But it must be authentic, transparent, ethical, and done right. Listen as Asheen talks green product marketing and the path to a better brand.
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10 Strategies for Building a Credible Sustainable Brand – Jennifer Rice from Sustainable Brands on Vimeo.
Jennifer Rice reviews key considerations in building credibility, from mitigating risk to driving revenue. She’ll present a range of credibility-building ideas such as how to leverage brand strategy options, customer experience design, certifications, and more. This session will help you answer the following questions: * What is credibility, and why is it important? * How can you zero in on the customer segments and other stakeholders who’s influence matters most? * How to tease out which dimensions of sustainability matter to them, and whether they will give you “permission to play” in sustainability-related offerings? * Top ten strategies to building credibility, including new offerings, certifications, ingredient or initiative-based brand plays, enriching your customer’s experience, and more.
Learn more about Sustainable Business & Design at: sustainablelifemedia.com
The tried and true values of being honest, forthright, and not making vague & unsubstantiated claims still matter. The style, direction, and purpose of branding has become led by values. What matters most to customers. But it must be authentic, transparent, ethical, and done right. Listen as Asheen talks green product marketing and the path to a better brand.
[vimeo 11532961 w=400 h=225]
Green Marketing and Better Brands – Asheen Phansey from Sustainable Brands on Vimeo.
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As head of internal communications for Marks & Spencer, Robert Nuttall played a central role in devising and implementing the internal and external brand and communications strategy for the retailer’s much lauded sustainability campaign ‘Plan A’. The project has been described as one of the biggest sustainability initiatives in the UK. Having worked as a practitioner designing and executing consumer-focused sustainability strategies, Robert has also been managing partner at CSR consultancy Clownfish before founding Green Mandate.
Here, Robert provides his six steps to devising and communicating a successful consumer-focused sustainability strategy.
For more details: http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/marketing/robert-nuttall-how-design-and-execute-consumer-focused-sustainability-strategy/11273
Sustainability is redefining today’s business model as arguably the top area of focus for corporations. The building products manufacturing industry, in particular, carries a large responsibility to the environment, and a key role in ensuring a viable and safe world for future generations. What is produced today must not only exist tomorrow, next year, and many years beyond – it must live and provide purpose.
Operationally, manufacturers encounter some of the biggest environmental issues and must manage resources and waste efficiently. These companies must possess superior insight, knowledge and transparency regarding the products society uses today, which will have a major impact on our future. With the opportunity to design and produce solutions that fit market needs, manufacturers must have sustainability at the core of their purpose, offerings, strategies and infrastructure to deliver true value to customers, stakeholders, employees, society and the environment.
That said, companies mustn’t be influenced by the often-misinterpreted term, “sustainability.” Sustainability is not green, grey, blue or any other color. It is not necessarily about LEED credits and “eco” terminology, but it is about the longevity and lifetime value of a product or process as a practical solution for today and the future. Ensuring the presence of quality, solution-driven products and processes requires a shared sustainability vision within an organization and a program that is unique to what we’ve seen in sustainability attempts thus far.
Companies needed to start taking sustainability issues more seriously, particularly if they want to be around for the long term, a sustainability expert warned earlier this week.
Environmental Resources Management’s Simon Clarke said many firms still do not understand what sustainability means and the effect it can have on the bottom line.
“It is not just about ‘green’ issues – you don’t have to care about polar bears to understand the importance of a sustainable economy.”
As Carbon Management becomes more important for companies around the globe, many software and software-as-service solutions are coming to the market. The current options in the market vary greatly by price, and quality of information produced.
Below is a list of the current marker leaders in this segment. Please share your comments about your experience with these products.
ecoSoftware – CA ecoSoftware helps you meet energy and sustainability goals such as effectively reporting carbon emissions, reducing energy consumption, and cutting costs.
Hara – Software-as-a-service product that gives companies and municipalities the ability to itemize and track all of the inputs (water, electricity, chemicals) and outputs (the product, greenhouse gases, wastewater) that make up the business processes.
Planet Metrics – Software-as-a-service that helps companies assess energy and carbon use in their business and identify “hot spots” or areas where the biggest emissions reductions can be made. The system connects to other business enterprise software, and taps into deep databases.
Zerofootprint – The company’s Velo software-as-a-service automates the monitoring and modeling of an organization’s carbon emissions to provide a carbon footprint and planning tool.
Carbonetworks – The company’s Velo software-as-a-service automates the monitoring and modeling of an organization’s carbon emissions to provide a carbon footprint and planning tool.
Noblis – Noblis has been offering its carbon emissions analyzer to the GSA and U.S. government agencies for some time but more recently rolled out the software to commercial organizations.
Clear Standards/SAP – Clear Standards sells a subscription service in which customers pay an annual or quarterly fee for its web-based emissions management tools and services.
Dakota Software – Dakota has been selling software to help companies management environmental incidents (accidents, health risks, etc.), and more recently has offered carbon management
eQuilibrium/EnerNOC – Software-as-a-service that enables commercial, institutional, and industrial companies “to monitor, mitigate, and monetize” their carbon footprints.
CSRWare – Software-as-a-service that enables companies to track their use of resources like power and water.
Pure Strategies – The company offers a lot of consulting and services around environmental supply chain management.
If your business hasn’t upgraded its lighting in the past 10 years, there is a good chance that you could save significant money an electricity consumption by using more efficient bulbs or retrofitting your ballasts to more efficient models. Many businesses find lighting a good place to begin their greening efforts because the upgrade are generally not that expensive, and the payback period is relatively simple to calculate.
Before you beginning your upgrades, it is important to have a good grasp of what different types of lamps are available. Below is a description of the most important types.
Incandescent Lamps - The incandescent light bulb or lamp or incandescent light globe is a source of electric light that works by incandescence (a general term for heat-driven light emissions). An electric current passes through a thin filament, heating it until it produces light. Incandescent bulbs are made in a wide range of sizes and voltages, from 1.5 volts to about 300 volts. They require no external regulating equipment and have a low manufacturing cost, and work well on either alternating current or direct current.
Fluorescent Lamps – While a wide range of light sources are available, the predominant types used in commercial and industrial spaces are fluorescent and HID lighting. Historically, fluorescent lighting has been used for high-quality, general-purpose indoor diffuse lighting. Typically, HID lighting has been used for industrial and outside lighting and is generally very energy efficient in lighting large areas. Recently, technical advances and a flood of new products have increased the use of HID in interiors. Although fluorescent sources are still limited by their inability to function in very hot or cold environments or as spotlights, some recent advances in physical size, thermal performance, and light quality are allowing wider application in industrial, manufacturing, and residential environments. New types of Fluorescent Lamps are becoming available that are far more efficient, such as the T-5. You should consider replacing existing T-8 or T-12 lamps, even if the ballasts need to replaced. Because of the energy savings, the payback period of a retrofit is usually quite short.
Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) – A CFL is a type of fluorescent lamp and can last eight to 10 times longer and use 65-80 percent less energy than incandescent lamps. Many CFLs are designed to replace incandescent lamps and can fit into most existing light fixtures formerly used for incandescents. Compared to general service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, a CFL will have a higher purchase price, but can save over 30 US$ in electricity costs over the lamp’s life time. Like all fluorescent lamps, CFLs contain mercury, which complicates their disposal.
Light Emitting Diode (LED) - A LED is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices, and are increasingly used for lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962, early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness. Newer LED lighting consumes dramatically less energy than even compact fluorescent lights, with efficiencies of over 90 percent over incandescent bulbs.
