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The Greenwash Brigade

Entries tagged with 'marketing'

The magic of marketing

I was prepping a presentation called "Green or Greenwashing" for the Duluth Energy Design Conference and found this cartoon that makes me smile.

Just like Wall St., the Earth is overdrawn (two weeks ahead of '07)

Today is Earth Overshoot Day. Just like AIG and a collection of Wall Street luminaries, we, as planetary citizens, are 140% overdrawn today. This means that if we measured all the resources that Mother Earth starts to produce on January 1st-- such as oxygen, food, medicine, drinking water, forests, mineral ores, energy resources and acceptable climate,-- well before Halloween is upon us, we are overdrawn, using more resources than have been generated.

Update: Shh - don't tell anyone - these apartments are green!

About a week after this post, I received an e-mail from the marketing firm working on Blue: We "immediately realized that you are right. The info on what makes Blue so green was definitely hidden on the site. We moved that up to the homepage for everyone to see." ... The e-mail also included an invitation for coffee to "make sure we are speaking the right language." And a tour of Blue.

Shh - don't tell anyone - these apartments are green!

On the marketing website of an apartment building website claiming to be green, I looked eagerly for details on what made them green. Not only did I find nothing, I didn't even find claims that they were green. The problem: people building green aren't telling anyone, and if they do, they don't provide any proof.

Greenwashing is a gateway drug

A roofing product manufacturer recently asked me how they could make their product "look more green." Their marketing materials touted the environmental attributes of their product (greenwash), and he wanted input on whether they got the spin right for architects. I resisted the urge to choke him...

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of American Public Media or its employees. American Public Media is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers.

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