As winter hits our idyllic Vancouver wonderland, reminding us of what most of Canada faces for 3-4 months of the year, I can’t help but notice that the snow does, for a short time, make us nicer people. We greet neighbours we would otherwise ignore, smiling at the communal inconvenience, the forced withdrawal from the rat race. We help each other push cars out of parking pits. We shovel the walk just a little further down our neighbour’s way. We share that ’snow-day’ feeling of missing school, skipping work, and delaying shopping. So here’s to that holiday state, holed up inside with family and friends, working our way through turkey dinner and liquor cabinet leftovers. Living in the now and sending a prayer out to those not blessed with such abundance.

Best of the Holidays, Dear Green Briefs Readers. May your track through 2009 be straight, narrow and true.

Lorne

You’ve printed your brochure on 100% post-consumer recycled stock. Your factory buys energy from a renewable supplier. Your fleet runs on biodiesel sourced from oil that was only used to fry organic, locally-grown potatoes. Now it’s time to do your media plan. This is no time to hang up your green values, but where do you start?
Talk to Koen Reynaert. Koen is an independent media planner and buyer who has been researching the green factor in media for over 2 years.
“I found myself not alone in this way of thinking, although most of the work seemed to be going on in countries as the United Kingdom, Australia and somewhat the United States.” Says Reynaert. “I have since been working to create tools that could determine if a certain media type or title fits the profile of a green campaign.”
Sounds logical. And Reynaert’s background of media buying in Europe certainly lets him back up his research. Of course, as with all things green, clients will have to weigh the advantages of proven, traditional choices with newer, greener ones. So Koen is working on a system he calls Eco Rating Points.
“Media Planners are obsessed with GRP`s, so why not develop a system of ‘ERP’s’ that determines whether a certain media type or title can be given preference over another. The matrix takes into account factors that affect the carbon footprint (e.g. recycled content, energy type used by the media type, distribution, recycling and disposal, the need of energy at the consumer end), as well as content, environmental policies such as eco paper purchasing policies, Corporate Social Responsibility, even donations to charities and/or environmental organizations.”
How would this affect the average buy? Wouldn’t such a system automatically be biased towards electronic media over print? Not necessarily says Reynaert.
“A mass TV campaign can have a larger carbon footprint than a targeted magazine campaign reaching the potential buyer of your green product. Which leads to the conclusion that ROI will go hand in hand with carbon footprint too.”
If you want to know more about Koen’s ERP project, or even just want to know how to pronounce his name, he can be reached online at Reynaert Media. But don’t wait too long, in case your customers start doing the research for you. Koen mentions one case in point.
“How could it make sense that a hybrid car was advertising in a magazine that was printed on 100% virgin fibre, most likely coming from the very vulnerable Canadian Boreal Forests? Wouldn’t it make more sense to at least do some research and find out if a certain magazine would be printed on recycled content, FSC-certified and Ancient Forest Free?”

Here’s Koen Reynaert’s Green Media Watch for December 2008:

Magazines in Canada that are doing a good job: Explore, Outpost, The Walrus, Outdoor Canada, Canadian Home Workshop and Cottage Life. All these titles are printed on 100% recycled (mostly post-consumer) FSC-certified paper and processed chlorine free paper.
Companies such as Transcontinental and Rogers have committed to environmental paper policies for all their consumer and trade publications.
Most TV stations in Canada have still a long way to go but they could look up to BSkyB (owned by Ruper Murdoch’s NewsCorp) that announced to go carbon neutral in 2006 and came up with initiatives such as set-top boxes that consume less power and purchasing 100% renewable energy.
BC-based TV networks score better than their sister networks in Ontario because the energy used by the source and their viewers is 80% hydro, where as in Ontario most energy comes from coal or nuclear power.
Surprisingly, the retail TV digital network offered by Walmart would score well too: for example Walmart is a client of Bullfrogpower in Ontario and the amount of energy used to reach viewers is much lower than a TV program reaching a million viewers all watching TV at home.
The outdoor industry: Pattison has struck a deal with Epcor to buy renewable energy certificates for billboards.
FSC-certified poster paper is an option
There are also eco-friendly alternatives for vinyl offered by companies like Astral Outdoor.

If you have a point of view on these wines or any organic alcoholic beverages you think we should test, please let us know. Drop us a comment, below.

The global financial meltdown has hit the green movement hard, right here in our back yard. Everything that goes into your blue box for recycling is sold to mills, usually offshore, who process it and sell it to the factories that make the cheap consumer goods we love. This works well when commodity prices and consumer demand are high. Now, both of those indices have tanked, and municipalities are forced to stockpile the materials gathered. Which is a real shame, as local recycling companies were beginning to take us a lot closer to the cradle-to-cradle manufacturing model our bulging landfills so desperately need. So how can we help?

First, we need to increase demand for recycled content in everything we buy. And wouldn’t it be great if we could knowingly choose goods that were helping us with our own trash problem? Of course that would take a domestic recycling and manufacturing industry. Which would employ people, and might actually be a decent use of government stimulus dollars… but is still likely a long way off. So I guess it’s not quite a marketing job just yet.

Unless you include the sell-job we have to do on the Canadian Government to get them to subsidize recycling plants instead of tar sands plants.

This summer, a new green growth quietly sprouted at London Drugs. ‘What’s the Green Deal?’ is a program that puts environmental and sustainability information on display, with in-store signage, flyer features and even a new web site – www.greendeal.ca. (Full disclosure – Unicycle Creative was the consultant employed to help develop the program, so you’ll have to excuse me if this post doesn’t live up to my usual standards of journalistic impartiality and acerbic criticism!)

For customers, ‘What’s the Green Deal?’ highlights eco-friendly features and benefits of products right at the shelf, from organic certification to recycled content to energy savings. It also lets people know about the ‘green’ services London Drugs offers, from in-store recycling drop-off for plastic bags, batteries, electronics and appliances, to the packaging take-back on all purchases. (London Drugs is one of the only places around where you can actually recycle those infuriating Styrofoam cubes that cushion everything we buy) For interested customers, organizations and the media, www.greendeal.ca also compiles London Drugs corporate environmental and sustainability information in one easily accessible resource.

The program idea originated In 2007. With growing public awareness and interest in all things ‘green’, the London Drugs executive and marketing team decided the time was right to tell their story and take the next steps down the endless road to sustainability. Unicycle Creative was engaged to consult on communications and the development of a Green Marketing Strategy.

This was done through a three-step process; 1) Analyzing the market; 2) Reviewing London Drugs programs & products; 3) Developing a sustainability platform and in-store program. (For more information on the case study, please drop me a line)

Unlike some green product programs, ‘What’s the Green Deal?’ is not designed to judge which products are ‘green’ and which are not. It simply identifies product benefits that help customers make their own greener shopping decisions. Some of my greener readers may see this as a cop-out. “What’s so green about a computer router, even if it does have an Energy Star rating?” I hear you say. Fair enough. But if someone does need a router, they should be able to quickly identify the one with the best environmental attributes. And if the hundreds of thousands of people that shop London Drugs’ 68 stores are learning about environmental benefits on the shelf, I believe that drives the movement to green awareness forward, in a very mainstream way.

That’s the real strength of ‘What’s the Green Deal’. It’s a program based on the customer service values and ‘friendly expert’ positioning that is at the heart of London Drugs. It has the support of the executive. And it’s backed by some very solid corporate behavior that had its start long before sustainability was a water cooler buzzword.

Will ‘What’s the Green Deal?’ be criticized? Probably. Will the program change and evolve? Absolutely. Will London Drugs customers shop greener as a result? Stay tuned….

*Founded in 1945, B.C.-based London Drugs currently has 68 stores in more than 35 major markets throughout British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Renowned for its creative approach to retailing, the company employs more than 7,500 people and carries a diverse range of health and consumer electronic products.

Your humble Unicycler is one of a group of bloggers who offer commentary on the emerging green products industry.
My blog entry for them this week poses the question, ‘Where is the Green Mafia?’ Check it out for a light look into the future of environmental lobbying, and have a look at the other bloggers as well. It’s a resource worth exploring.

Well, Dear Readers, I have managed to parlay my recycled office paper business cards into a coveted Applied Arts Advertising & Design Annual award in the category of best logo usage.  AA is a highly respected magazine profiling the finest design, advertising, photography and new media from across Canada and around the world.

My cards, in case you haven’t yet had one forced on you, are made from paper sourced from my blue box. Each is a recycled piece of art, hand-stamped or embossed with the Unicycle Creative seal. (E-mail me if you want a few)
Now would it be too cheeky to make a limited edition series of cards out of the award certificate?

Well it’s all over but the handoff. A planet collectively sighs with relief, and can now laugh a little less nervously at SNL’s Sarah Palin skits.
But with the economy disassembling itself, the environment has not been the stuff of big speeches in this election. So how will Obama’s ‘Change’ manifest itself for the green movement?
I came across a great blog post this morning by Adam Stein of TerraPass. Here he quotes from a couple of Obama interviews that seem to indicate the President Elect has a lot of grey matter at work. Take this:

“…the fact that the engine for economic growth for the last 20 years is not going to be there for the next 20, and that was consumer spending… And what that means is that just from a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical.
… to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority when I get into office.”

Sounds like good news for green energy entrepreneurs. Here’s another clip:

“… if we’re going to be serious about renewable energy, I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago. And we’re going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated from those car batteries, back into the grid. That can create 5 million new jobs, just in new energy.”

How could this all affect Canada? With British Columbia’s potential for hydro, wind and wave energy, we could be a key part of a Western North American green power grid. But only if our policy-makers can look beyond our current role as dirty-energy and clean-water bulk wholesalers and invest in some quick R&D for green technology.

But for now, remember that Obama’s quotes here are off-the-cuff interviews, not scripted speeches. A President that even knows that plug-in hybrids can be connected on a smart grid has got to be good for our green priorities.

I wonder if he can unicycle?