And, as a semi-official blogger and Sustainable Brands alumni, I have been granted special dispensation to offer a 20% discount code to any of my legions of loyal followers. So if you want the ultimate green brand networking experience, let me know. It’s going to be an amazing week.

Here is the link to the official program so far. Speakers include representatives from:

• National Geographic
• Lush
• Ford
• Intel
• BASF
• World Wildlife Fund
• Safeway
• Patagonia
• Interface Floors
• Earth911
• Molson/Coors
• 1% for the Planet
• North Face
• REI
• Neutrogena
• Unilever
• 3M
• Volcom
• WalMart

Just as a reminder, here’s the Green Briefs Unofficial Road Trip Video from Sustainable Brands 2011.

Well I was as shocked as anyone that a recent Ipsos survey put our humble BC retailer above North American green behemoth Whole Foods on the eco friendly scale. But that’s apparently what 1,177 adult British Columbians said, 19 times out of 20, when asked to name one retailer they thought best exemplifies an environmentally-friendly business – without a pre-determined list to choose from. (See the top 10 list below) London Drugs came in at #7, and was the only ‘general’ retailer on the list.

That certainly warmed our green hearts, as we have been working very hard to get the word out there on London Drugs’ recycling and green products with the What’s the Green Deal brand, featuring our industry-leading Bring Back the Pack and Styrofoam recycling programs. (Full disclosure, Green Briefs and Unicycle Creative is a strategic consultant for London Drugs – so neutrality is out the window here)

Hats off to all of the companies on the list – it’s a contest no one really loses. And thanks, BC. We’ll shoot for number one next time!

Top 10 Mentioned Environmentally-Friendly Retailers in BC

1. Mountain Equipment Co-op
2. Save-On-Foods
3. Starbucks
4. Thrifty Foods
5. The Body Shop
6. Real Canadian Superstore
7. London Drugs
8. Choices Market
9. Whole Foods
10. Safeway

As my clients and friends will tell you, I’m seldom without a notebook in my pocket. It’s just too easy to miss all the brilliant words, catchy concepts and million dollar ideas flying around that I might someday be able to take credit for. As a result I have boxes of bound dead-tree-skins, bursting with… well, let’s just charitably say that perhaps I’m before my time.

But the iPad is threatening to change all that. I have discovered three apps that offer almost as much spontaneity and doodle-ability as my ubiquitous notebooks, and one that has made quite an impression on my impressionistic painting style. All without using more trees. More than were already harvested to make, document and promote the iPad itself, anyway.

Notes Plus

This was my first note-taking app, featuring stylus-based writing and the ability to type text and even make recordings. (Not a feature I really use, but might come in handy) Multi-page notebooks can easily be created, and Notes Plus stores them in a hierarchy that is missing in most iPad apps. The writing and drawing capture is a little primitive, compared to the ‘Paper’ app below, but I have actually enjoyed the blocky interpretation of some of the lines when drawing cartoons in meetings. You can zoom in for more detail, change the colour of your text and pens and vary line thickness as well. But what I love most is that it lets me sketch and type on the same page, as notes can be exported as PDFs which lets you grab the typed text later. Drawings are also editable as vectors in Adobe Illustrator, which is kind of neat as well. A handy palm pad keeps the heel of your drawing hand from writing its own messy opus at the bottom of the page. At $7.99 it’s about the same price as an 8″ x 10″ paper sketchbook.

Paper by 53

As a lifelong Moleskine sketchbook aficionado, the clean interface of this app appealed to me immediately. The selection of pens, brushes and erasers is just what I might carry in my pocket, and the interpretation of the stylus sketching is the best I’ve tried. Opening the Paper by 53 app gives you a simple selection of notebooks to work in, to which you can add custom covers, using photos from your gallery. Adding more notebooks is a one-click process, as is adding page spreads to the books themselves. Once within a book, you pinch to open the pages and sketch away. Undo is kind of a neat two finger rewind process, but it’s limited. Page spreads can be exported as jpegs with email, so it’s easy to share million dollar doodles with clients, friends and venture capitalists. My biggest beef is with the colour palette. The designers wanted to keep things simple – I get that – but really, being able to select your own crayons is grade 1 stuff. I’m sure the app people at 53 will be releasing upgrades. If Moleskine does not merge with them first. Free with one pen, $1.99 a pen for the rest and $7.99 if you order them all. About half the price of a real Moleskine.

Sketchbook Pro

This is more of a painting app, at least the way I use it. Best advantage, besides not containing any nasty chemicals like cadmium red, is that I always have a paint box with me. With SketchBook Pro I can swipe out a blobby picture anywhere without so much as a cup of water for my brush. The interface takes a little getting used to, but I love that I can make layers like Photoshop, and blend them, delete them or control their transparency. There are a variety of brush textures and sizes, and it works great in low light conditions. Downsides are, it seems to be a bit unstable. I have lost entire paintings that didn’t save themselves when the program crashes, which it occasionally does for its own temperamental artistic reasons. Perhaps it feels it’s really worth more than $4.99

The Sustainable Art in the Deal

I don’t know if programs like these will make a huge dent in my consumption of artistic consumables. I most certainly will still leave a box of analog sketchbooks for posterity, or the recyclers to dig through and/or burn for heat. So use fine Arches watercolour sheets for your masterpieces, but for quick notes and on-the spot sketches, why not save the paper? Or who knows, sometimes those quick sketch-from-the-hip shots are the real gold. Just ask Picasso.

The awards ceremony was held at a tasteful luncheon on March 16th, and the crowd clapped as enthusiastically as they could with one hand busy shoveling pan-seared arctic char and swigging glasses of surprisingly non-local Wolf Blass red.

As you might guess from the headline, London Drugs did not take home the hardware this time. Canadian Tire was the retail category winner, with substantial CSR reporting and a line of their own private label green products.

But the real winners were all of the people who work so hard behind the scenes to make sustainability happen. Too often, these unsung heroes toil away measuring obscure statistics and driving change in the darkest corners of the business world.

It’s nice to see them recognized, among their peers for their dedication and devotion. Thanks to the Globe Foundation for making that happen.

Here are all of the winners, in the various categories -congratulations to all, and maybe we’ll see you in 2014!

Not too long ago, print was the pariah of the green movement. Piles of catalogues and reams of newspapers destined for landfill seemed fated to be replaced by the electronic word. The paperless office of the future beckoned.

Well, print’s place has certainly changed. That you are reading this on your digital device is proof of that. But ink on paper has also come a long way.

Hemlock Printers recently asked Unicycle Creative for a simple brochure to remind people of the more sustainable side of printing. As one of North America’s most environmentally conscientious printers, they have some good backup for this claim, including carbon-neutral certification and a program that even lets you buy carbon offsets for you print project. And new digital technology means more precise quantities and much less waste.

The symbol we chose to deliver this message was the humble beaver. Hard-working and rooted in nature, yet certainly a consumer of fiber. In the most sustainable way.

Choose the right technology, the right paper and the right printer, and using print in your communications mix need not be a blemish on your sustainability report.

If you want to find out more about where, when and how to use print strategically, drop me a line. For more on the sustainability of print, recycled stocks and digital technology, talk to Hemlock.

If you have a tree you need taken down on your property, we have a connection for that, too.

Thanks to Apple, I now carry more computer in my pocket than all of NASA had to work with when they sent meat puppets to the moon in 1969. I take photos and video anytime, anywhere. I blog, I tweet and I have my own contacts database in ‘the cloud’.

So why, when I am attending a 21st century business networking function, would I want to exchange slices of printed, dead tree-skin just to introduce myself?

Is the business card dead?

The geek-inventors of the world have certainly tried to make it so. On my iPhone is an app called ‘Bump’ that lets me butt phones with other bump-enabled cybernauts to automatically exchange information. Attendees at technology trade shows gleefully scan each others’ coded badges, presumably so they can send them a bag full of pdf brochures. I can even buy clothing emblazoned with a QR code, allowing anyone with a smartphone scanner app to instantly price-check me like a 160lb bar-coded ham.

But I don’t see the technology really catching on yet. It’s hard to scan anything in the dimly-lit beer-soaked after-hours events where I prefer to network. I’m not sure I would look too good in QR checker patterned sport coat. And I can’t remember the last time I bumped someone (other than my wife).

In fact, just the other day I was at a PowerPlant 10 Green Leaders event at the Tiki Lounge in Vancouver’s retro-glam Waldorf Hotel, swapping business cards like Fred Flintstone at a Water Buffalo convention. One designer showed off a card she thought was particularly sexy, even though it wasn’t hers. We mused over whether flower-seed-infused super-sustainable paper business cards would grow if planted (see below for the answer). I handed out my usual assortment of stamped recycled rubbish from my blue-bin, which most always seems to start a conversation. And the next day, I dutifully went through my pocket full of paper, entering names and emails and following up on the many interesting conversations I had between beers.

Frankly, I don’t know if I would have taken that extra step to reach out and touch someone if, upon meeting them, their email address had magically morphed itself into my database.

So I believe the death of the business card has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, there is more opportunity than ever to create an introduction piece that goes beyond mere digital efficiency. It will never end up in a Rolodex, but if a card starts a conversation, encourages someone to remember your brand, and respectfully biodegrades afterwards, its future is secure.

Yes, the seed-paper-business card will grow if planted, but apparently you need to water it occasionally.

If Santa doesn’t show up at your house Christmas Eve, look for him at the corner of 8th & Cypress in Vancouver, dangling above a rather creative display of recycled ornamentation in a Kitsilano traffic circle. At least that’s where I last saw the guy. Not so fat, definitely not jolly and looking, frankly, a little worse for wear. Not sure who he pissed off (Hell’s Angels? The RCMP?) but I hope they show some mercy by December 24th. Otherwise this whole town could be on the coal list. Not that the mining-happy BC Liberal Government would mind that at all.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. The guy who set up the display saw me taking this pic and asked me to donate to the Food Bank. So I did. You should too – come on, it’s a 5-minute online transaction. Maybe it will help save Santa.

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is known the world over as a tough neighbourhood. So when we were asked to brand a redevelopment of market homes on the border of this area, we knew it would not be easy. But with a strong developer and a surprising number of community advantages, this project has become a small but effective redevelopment success story.

Salient Group, with offices right in Gastown, has used their local knowledge and love of heritage renovation to launch some of the area’s most innovative residential redevelopments. Just a bit further east, a local property lending institution was stuck with an old stratified concrete and brick building which had sat vacant for a number of years. They called upon Salient’s expertise to reconceive, develop and market the homes.

Salient called Unicycle Creative.

Establishing the story
In the original branding session, we realized there’s more to Gastown and the Downtown Eastside than you’ll see on the evening news. It is home to some of Vancouver’s most exciting new restaurants, shops and businesses.

“Our buyers are people who know this area, and may even already live or work here,” says Robert Fung, President of the Salient Group. “They see the possibilities this neighbourhood has, and they like its creative ‘edge’. So we knew we didn’t want a traditional real estate campaign with smiling people sipping lattes.”

From a sustainability perspective, the re-use of an existing building shell, the addition of density to an ‘urban village’ neighbourhood and the focus on affordability for entry-level purchasers all reflected quite positively on the development. But a purely ‘green’ angle was secondary, we felt, to the rich story of the community itself.

21 Doors. A name that opens a lot of possibilities.
Intimate. Understated. An approachable scale of community development. A limited number of buying opportunities. These are some of the qualities communicated in this unique development identity.

“We knew an over-the-top creative name would be trying too hard,” says Unicycle Creative Director Lorne Craig. “Yet branding this building with the address alone would not say enough. We wanted people to imagine sharing time in the central courtyard with their neighbours. We also wanted to respect the fact that the Downtown Eastside is already a community, and we are part of that. 21 Doors has a close-knit quality to it that we hope will continue to inspire the people that live there.”

Celebrating a ‘Community of Independents’
The LiveAt21Doors identity was designed as a combination of art and journalism, using line drawings, gritty concrete textures and a duotone colour palette. A neighbourhood map boldly features hip new local restaurants and businesses right next to Downtown Eastside landmarks like the Carnegie Centre and Pigeon Park.

A gallery of artistic photographs by project designer Arno Apeldoorn brought a fresh eye to the Gastown area, showing off the textures and light that make this historic area such a treasure. These were also used prominently in the display centre.
The traditional glossy real estate lifestyle brochure was abandoned in favour of a simple door hanger, distributed to local businesses. This piece played off the ‘door’ theme, while showcasing the many benefits of living in the Gastown/Eastside area with a bit of fun. A print ad in the Georgia Straight drove more prospects to the LiveAt21Doors.com website, setting the stage for opening day.

Open for success.
After the dust settled on the first weekend of sales, 19 of the 21 Doors were spoken for. The affordable price point of these homes and the intelligent courtyard design by Taylor Kurtz Architecture & Design were the real draw. But overcoming the negative perceptions of a neighbourhood in transition by putting it in full view and celebrating its diversity no doubt played a valuable part in such a successful launch.

These units were never designed to gentrify the area with million-dollar homes. They were offered as an affordable opening into one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets.

So perhaps most satisfying statistic of all is the fact that over 50% of sales went to first-time buyers. The sales team worked extra hard to make deals happen for those new home owners who love the Gastown area and want to bring their own energy to the community.

All of which makes these 21 Doors a worthy contribution to the revitalization of Vancouver’s original neighbourhood.

So how do you tell that story in a way that appeals to the fashionistas? (And still include the sustainability branding of parent company Cadillac Fairview…?)

Well, everyone loves a good discount.

By framing the ‘Green At Work’ message in a 100% OFF price tag format, Unicycle Creative got instant shopper attention and described Pacific Centre’s waste diversion rate in one clean graphic.

The team at Pacific Centre went one step further, designing an in-mall Recycled Runway Fashion Show, using local artists to create a stunning ready-to-wear-it-again collection. Unicycle designed a pair of banners to frame the show and communicate key zero waste messages.

Some of my deeper green readers may look down their noses at the idea of such a bastion of consumerism dipping a pedicured toe into the sustainability pond. But I see it this way: Shopping isn’t disappearing anytime soon. Putting sustainability on the radar of fashion shoppers is an important step in creating the conditions that will put pressure on all parts of the retail supply chain to green up their act. Zero Waste is a solid start.

It might as well look good on them.

Unfortunately, this discovery may remain secret for some time. I don’t think most people would have made it past the drab industrial label and yawn-inducing name. Wait for it:

Coronation Grapes.

Where is the connection? The last coronation affecting Canada took place in 1953. (Queen Elizabeth, in her young-Audrey-Hepburn period) This sounds like a product my Aunt Phyllis would have on her tea tray. It’s a name only a British soap-opera fan could love.

Not wanting to gripe without offering at least a token solution, I got curious and visited the BC Grape Growers website to find out more. Turns out this particular variety was actually invented in Summerland, BC. It’s the most abundantly-planted table grape in the Okanagan, and you can use them in any berry recipe.

A grape with this much kick-ass flavour and genuine local roots has a lot of options for rebranding. Start with the colour. The size. The delicate velvety ‘bloom’ on their surface. Or go right to their origins. Even the obvious ‘Summerland Grapes’ would be an improvement, offering visions of glowing vineyards and a direct connection to their history. But I’m sure even more could be done with a little thought (and a few glasses of wine).

Start with a more intriguing package design, with the local story and a link to more info and recipes right on the box. Then take the marketing outwards. Locavore restaurants could feature these grapes as appetizers, in desserts, salsas and on ice cream. (Or in a glass of vodka! The Summerland Grapetini!) Make them part of BC wine festivals. Design a kooky claymation character to sing and dance their praises on YouTube. Anything, for crying out loud, that will break peoples’ habit of mindlessly reaching for the massive-carbon-footprint-foreign-jumbo-mutant-grape-bunches offered up in every big box mart.

I am one of the rare ‘committed local’ buyers who will go out of my way to try produce that didn’t rack up more air miles than my last three vacations. But the mainstream will need something more inspiring than ‘Coronation’ to shift their buying habits. BC Grape Growers, you have my number.

God save the grape.