USELESS - a People brand and not a Consumer brand….

I came across this blog tonight and the first posting caught my eye right away - there was a logo like the one you’re seeing here “USELESS”.  How brilliant!  We should definitely use less!  I went on and read the article, it discusses how “people” are not always “consumers”; in fact, we should try to be people and not consumers!  I like the idea.. and I agree with the concept.  

Some of the products are very interesting:

• the messenger bags are made of used billboards: 700,000 billboards are used annually (and discarded annually) in the US!
• the “USELSS earth” costs $25 and you can by it made of 100% nothing  - all proceeds go into funding clean water projects 
• all products “locally” made in US
• 10% of all sales go to funding clean water projects

Have a look at the website and this blog article, i enjoyed both!

Are you a consumer or a person?

Carbon Credits - let’s buy our way to sustainability!

Perfect cartoon - unfortunately a lot of us think we can just shop to sustainability…..

Food for thought - Frito Lay’s Chip Tracker for locally grown potatos

Frito Lay’s (owned by PepsiCo) has launched a new campaign to show that 80 local farmers from 27 states grow the potatoes used to make its chips.  Better yet, they are trackable - US only (For Lay’s Chips in Canada, apparently all chips are made with Canadian potatoes - we’re talking 16,000 acres spread over 7 provinces including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and PEI ).  On the tracker website, you can check where the bag of the Lay’s Classic Chips is made by putting in your zip code and the first 3 digits of the product code on the bag.  For a company that purchased 2.8 billion pounds of potatoes from US farmers in 2008, it’s pretty amazing that they take the time to launching such a campaign! The campaign is not without its criticisms - most of the specialty chips are made from only a few plants and are not trackable. I wonder what is the breakdown of the flavour of Lay’s Chips sold in US?  If you can find the stats, please let me know!

Personally I like this type of marketing, it gets people thinking about where do our food come from and what is the environmental impact of taking food far far away from home. But does it make you buy more chips if you know it’s made locally? Anyway, expect to see displays of this campaign in 40,000 stores in the US and several TV ads real soon!

beware of eco-label on consumer products

We see a lot of green components on labels of consumer products, as product marketers try to sell us to sustainability. Do you ever wonder whether the eco-labels are legitiment or, in many cases, even meaningful?  You can check out the “report cards” for common green labels at the Consumer Report’s Green Choices Eco-Label Centre!  You will be able to find out what it means when labels like “no alcohol in bathing foam” or “seafood safe” mean under the following categories:

They cautioned that we should be thinking about these questions when we see eco-labels:

Meaningful and verifiable;
Consistent and clear;
Transparency;
Independent and protected from conflict of interest; and
Opportunities for public comment.

This website is great and I recommend everyone going to take a look!  If you find something particularly interesting, please share!

NHLPA carbon neutral challenge

I consider myself a Vancouver Canucks hockey fan.  In fact, although not not expert in NHL, I usually keep an eye on what’s going on.  I just discovered the NHLPA Carbon Neutral Challenge that initiated April 2009.  I honestly have NOT heard of it, ever!  I did stop watching hockey because Canucks didn’t make the playoffs, but I thought I might learn about the challenge as 523 players have signed up!  For a 23-men roster for 30 teams in NHL, that works out to be 76% of the rosters in NHL have signed up for the challenge!  You think there should be a bit more PR….  or maybe there was, i just completely missed it.  Actually all high profile players you can think of are on the list!

The process is quite simple.  You sign up, you calculate your personnel carbon footprint from designated websites, and then you buy “good” carbon credits to offset the carbon footprint…   Unfortunately, in addition to minimal PR, it also feels like that players just pay their way to carbon neutrality because caring for the environment just seems like a fad!  I want to know:

• what’s the carbon footprint of a Canuck who travels more than an Islander?
• what’s the carbon footprint of a NHL hockey player comparing to you and I?
• did they calculate their own carbon footprint?
• what’s going on in 2009?

If you know anything.. let me know…