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Now that green has become a marketable attribute for better or worse, everybody and their brother is pushing how green they are. And, given the general standards of our fine American culture, that means greenwashing is now just as ubiquitous. I've been watching a rather sad back-and-forth, in which more and more businesses claim they or their products are "green" and consumers roll their eyes and wag their fingers, for a while now. So when I was asked to speak on a panel about greening your business for San Francisco's Small Business Week, I figured it might be helpful to provide some guidance for attendees.
The result is "Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts In an Age of Greenwashing," a short little piece of work written to help organizations connect with their customers without lying, misleading, or otherwise confusing the hell out of people. This is a pretty big kettle of fish to fry, of course, and it was difficult to get everything into such a compact format. But believe me, I tried! There's not a lot of fluff in here; this sucker is a legitimately informative resource for any business, however deeply involved in environmental issues it may be.
If you'd like a free copy of the pamphlet, you can request one using the contact page, or give me a call at (415) 643-0121.
I will be expanding this into a PDF, but it may take some time as I'm up to my eyeballs in content for the upcoming relaunch of re-nourish.com (another exciting project I'll talk about soon). The nice thing about the hardcopy version, though, is that you can keep it in your desk drawer for reference. Let me know what you think!
Edited 7/22/09: For those of you who might be concerned about my decision to create a printed piece, rather than only produce a PDF version of the guide, please see the comments. A lot of thought went into this, and I've explained that thought process to a commenter who took issue with my terrible choice.
Edited 8/3/09: The PDF has arrived! Download Keeping It Real Green while supplies last!
The result is "Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts In an Age of Greenwashing," a short little piece of work written to help organizations connect with their customers without lying, misleading, or otherwise confusing the hell out of people. This is a pretty big kettle of fish to fry, of course, and it was difficult to get everything into such a compact format. But believe me, I tried! There's not a lot of fluff in here; this sucker is a legitimately informative resource for any business, however deeply involved in environmental issues it may be.
If you'd like a free copy of the pamphlet, you can request one using the contact page, or give me a call at (415) 643-0121.
Edited 7/22/09: For those of you who might be concerned about my decision to create a printed piece, rather than only produce a PDF version of the guide, please see the comments. A lot of thought went into this, and I've explained that thought process to a commenter who took issue with my terrible choice.
Edited 8/3/09: The PDF has arrived! Download Keeping It Real Green while supplies last!
Labels: advice, branding, business, design, green_design, marketing, roughstock, sustainability, writing
5 responses:
awesome! case study?
Yes, definitely, Eric. I actually have a couple to send over.
Shame! I would think that someone promoting green practices would utilize them herself! Mailing out copies increases the carbon footprint through the printing of the pamphlet, use of natural resources, and the delivery of the mail. Developing the pdf first, not as an afterthought, would be a much more environmentally-friendly practice. I hope it's at least printed on recycled paper!
Diana, a world completely free of paper is quite the vision.
As I mentioned in my post, the pamphlet is printed on 100% recycled (30% PCW), chlorine-free, made-in-the-US paper manufactured by a family-owned indie company that's powered by 100% renewable hydroelectricity. It's printed to order (no bulk press runs, no wasted copies). Does that help?
The reason the PDF is coming after (no, it's not actually an "afterthought") is because the PDF version needs to be reformatted to accommodate a reader-friendly format. There's a lot of info in this guide, and the most economical way to print it was to do so on a legal-sized sheet (as opposed to a booklet, which would have used more paper). The result of a tri-fold layout, however, is a PDF whose panels are imposed out of order for screen reading.
Therefore, to create a PDF whose pages are in proper reading order, I need to essentially redesign the pamphlet. Now, I think it's just wonderful if you happen to never ever print any of the PDF references you download from the web. But many users do print the stuff they download, and therefore I also need to design the PDF to print to a standard 8.5 x 11 page without using too many sheets. A big chunk of sustainable design is, after all, taking into account the realities of user behavior (and users often print their PDFs).
But let's get to the larger point here: why offer the print version at all? While life would certainly be easier if environmental issues were black and white, the reality is they're not. The material I'm offering in Real Green is substantial. It's also important - because there are a hell of a lot of business (the vast majority, in fact) who don't get this stuff. They either don't know they're greenwashing, or they don't realize the consequences of simply not caring. This guide attempts to change the behavior of organizations who make uninformed decisions every day - decisions that are often far more destructive than the impact of the guide itself.
So, not only do I feel very strongly that the positive impact of the pamphlet will far outweigh the cost of printing it, but I also feel strongly that a printed piece is going to be much more effective in changing organizational behavior than a PDF - because people can tack it to their wall or keep it on their desk, where they are are far more likely to see the darn thing than if it were buried in some folder on their hard drive.
So. I appreciate your concern - and honestly, I have no problem with you calling me out on the carpet for potential hypocrisy. But as you can see, I did put some thought into this (as I do with all my work), and I happen to think your environmental impact assessments are a little off the mark.
Oh, I should also mention that it was originally produced as a printed piece because it was distributed at a real-world event where I spoke to an audience of business owners looking to green their organizations. Sending them home with a link to a PDF would dramatically reduced the chances of ever exposing them to this information.
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