The Green Companies of Today
Green is and has been a hot topic for a while. In fact, one of my good friends told me that he wouldn’t go back to school for an MBA in Business, but rather he’d go get a “Green” degree. He’s right…its the future and its here to stay.
This inspired me to go out and look at current companies who are making efforts to go green. Take a look at the list below:
1) Fox Broadcasting Company, April 16th, 2008.
http://www.fox.com/earthday/
Fox joined with their stars to deliver a new “green” tip each day in the month of April up to Earth Day. Various Fox stars provided their own tips on how to take simple actions now to be green and make the planet a better place to live. Some examples of the tips are: “Electronic payments can make a difference,” “Careful what you pour down the drain,” and “Always recycle your batteries.” More information and to see the archived green videos, visit: http://fox61.trb.com/news/environment/stv-fox-greenit-meanit-1,0,1998661.htmlstory
2) Arrowhead Water Company, 2008. http://www.arrowheadwater.com/DoingOurPart/EcoShapeBottle.aspx
Arrowhead has created a new eco-shape bottle that uses 30% less plastic and has a 30% smaller label. This is now the lightest water bottle ever created and as a result it’s easier to carry, easier to recycle, and each bottle requires a smaller amount of energy to be produced. All of these new improvements help improve environmental efficiencies in creating the bottle, using it, and recycling it.
3) Macy’s Department Store, April 12th, 2008.
http://www.macys.com
Macy’s has made an effort to go green by creating recyclable shopping bags with non-laminated paper. Compared to their previous bags that were not recyclable, the new bags are now made out of 30% recycled material and are 100% recyclable. This is a big improvement for Macy’s who uses 43 million shopping bags per year. In addition, they are offering reusable tote bags for a price, which also helps limit the number of bags used. Macy’s will also be sure to use recyclable paper for gift wrapping by producing these from ingredients that are biodegradable. More information can be found here: http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2008/04/14/daily47.html?ana=from_rss
4) Staples, January 2008
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/ecoeasy/happy_fun_place.html
Staples has created a big initiative for becoming a “green” company by devoting a section of their website to green products. This specific section of their website sells only green products, so customers can feel confident that they are contributing to helping the environment. In fact, their green product line is quite extensive with several products ranging from recycled paper to energy saving technology. In addition, on the green homepage, they list the number of trees Staple’s customers have saved just by buying the green products; the total is now 526k+ trees and this number increases by 1 tree every minute.
5) Whole Foods, January 2008
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/byobag/
Whole Foods has shown their devotion to helping the environment by asking their customers to either buy a disposable bag or bring any bag from home (paper, plastic, backpacks, etc) to put their groceries in, which the customer will receive a five cents credit per bag. Their goal was to eliminate the use of disposable plastic bag by Earth Day with their BYOB (bring your own bag) initiative. In the month of January, this plan already started seeing results as they used half as many bags compared to the same time last year. So instead of the paper vs plastic question, they are pushing the new concept of “reuse” bags.
What am I missing? There’s gotta be other great companies doing their part too. Please let me know.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Green isn’t just the new black, green is the new pet rock of advertising. Clearly accellerated by the attention to fuel prices and the recent passing of Earth Day, the week prior all the normal brochures/flyers I got in the mail were replete with green messages. Pick a TV network…there has got to be some numbers to back up the high density of ‘green’ as a focus in commercials lately.
But then, you’d not really be surprised by most of this if you were from the ultimate green (emerald) city, Seattle. I’m still gathering the facts to write about the phenomenon this city is in so many ways. There, green is second nature to just living. Every other city I’ve lived in since, ‘doing’ green has been the walk of an alien. I wish I’d photojournalled years of taking plastic bags to the grocery store only to have the cashiers try to throw them away.
But even the ‘best’ get it wrong. The Saturday before Earth Day, I was at Whole Foods and over the loudspeaker they were proudly proclaiming that they would no longer be carrying plastic sacks because it takes xx number of years to biodegrade. 1) In the tight confines of a landfill not a whole lot of anything biodegrades (which is why I have a nuclear reactor in my backyard — a compost bin). 2) To transport equal numbers of bags to a destination, 1 semi-truck of plastic bags is equal to 9 semi-trucks of paper bags.
It’s about TOTAL waste. The only voice for this sort of logic was a long defunct magazine with the title “Garbage”. It was way before its time. They were brave enough to talk through the entire stream of issues like this (frequently getting bashed by the non-thinking who screamed ‘corporate sell-out’). The articles in that magazine should all be resurrected and sold over again. They were priceless.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Hi Paul,
Your comments are great! Thank you for that great analysis! You do bring up a good point regarding the amount of labor/capital it takes to transport plastic vs paper bags.
Just curious, what company do you feel is doing the best they can to be green AND eliminate total waste?
-Chris