Month: August 2012

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics-International, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

An AP story on the Republican Convention in today’s paper puts it this way:

Mitt Romney conceded Sunday that fresh controversy over rape and abortion is harming his party and he accused Democrats of trying to exploit it for political gain.

“It really is sad, isn’t it, with all the issues that America faces, for the Obama campaign to continue to stoop to such a low level,” said Romney, struggling to sharpen the presidential election focus instead on a weak economy and 8.3 percent national unemployment.

Let me see if I get this straight:

  1. Mitt Romney has spent the entire campaign trying to distance himself from the moderate stances on social issues he embraced as recently as 2008, embracing a hard-right radical ideology that would attack women and gays, increase economic disparity, and stack the Supreme Court with more radical-right ideologues.
  2. Mitt Romney chose as his running mate Paul Ryan, whose budget proposals are akin to a hit-man attack on the poor, and whose environmental record makes me worry a great deal about the future of the planet (Paul Ryan gets a miserable 3% rating from the League of Conservation Voters)—and who co-authored extreme anti-choice legislation with none other than the notorious Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, yes, the same one who made the ridiculous remark about pregnancy being nearly impossible in cases of “legitimate rape.”
  3. Mitt Romney is content to stand behind a Republican party platform that contains a full-blown assault on women’s reproductive rights.
  4. As an example of taking the high road, I suppose, Romney made a joke that essentially endorsed the discredited birther movement that claims Obama was not born in the US, just last week. Talk about focusing on the important issues!

And please, finally, let’s not forget that the Republicans have no legitimate claim to run on economic issues. Not only did George W. Bush turn the largest surplus in history—that he inherited from Bill Clinton, who built a remarkable ecnomic recovery after the disaster of the Reagan-Bush years—into a raging deficit, not only did the economy crumple under years of deregulation and defanging the watchdogs, but the Republicans have sabotaged Obama’s recovery efforts over and over again, with the expressly stated goal of making him a one-term president. Even so, housing starts are up, private-sector jobs are up, and the stock market is waaaay up.

And let’s not forget Romney has made it quite clear he will be the president of the 1%. Those of us in the 99% will not find a friend in Romney-Ryanomics.

Joseph Welch asked Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” He’s often misquoted as asking “have you no shame, sir?” That second question is the one I pose today to Mitt Romney.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

Los Angeles Unified School District, a massive consumer of single-use plastic, has banned Styrofoam under student activist pressure—the first district in the nation to do so. And the school district superintendent, John Deasy, will put the topic on the agenda of a district superintendent’s conference.

This is great news—but I have to question why the district switched to compostable disposable trays. It’s certainly more ecological, and probably cheaper, to buy a commercial dishwasher and switch to not only reusable trays, but reusable dishes as well. I would think the materials savings would cover the costs of the machine and the employees to run it, as well as create some needed employment.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, propaganda

Vacationing in Northern Minnesota, driving up Hghway 61 from Duluth, at mile 54.3, we followed a sign for a scenic overlook that had a nice description in a book of gentle hikes on the North Shore. This took us off to the west a mile or so, up a high hill overlooking the lack.

Unfortunately, this lookout was built by the Northshore Mining Company to provide views of its massive taconite transfer plant, a hideous blot on the beautiful lake view. From the parking lot, there are signs to three different views: plant, lake, and city.

When we saw “plant view,” we figured it would be some rare species growing on the side of the hill, but the sign actually refers to the taconite plant, and the lookout contains an informational display about it. “City View,” on the other side of the hill, provides a vista of the small town of Silver Bay, an uninspiring collection of suburban tract houses and a large campus with a green-colored roofs that I’m guessing is the local school complex. The “Lake View” overlook was a little bit better, with a pleasant, if not exactly breathtaking, view of Palisade Head just north—the lookout we thought we were going to is there—and Tettegouche State Park two miles beyond

I found myself extremely annoyed. I felt I’d been betgrayed by false promises, and event hough there was no charge, it wasted my time and my psychic energy—the moreso because it turned out Palisade Head, just a mile and a half up the road, wasa much nicer overlook.

This “attraction” gets my vote for Most. Useless. Scenic. Overlook.

And Most.  Misleading. Marketing.
Not a way to build goodwill.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business Tagged with , , , ,

Too much goes into the landfill. Good article on Sustainable Brands about how manufacturers can and should be recapturing the materials, and how the US lags behind many other countries on this.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

GOP VP pick Paul Ryan’s attacks on the poor and the middle class are well-known. His opposition to women’s rights and gay rights includes cosponsoring a bill that would force women to carry a baby to term even in cases of rape or incest , and is not a big surprise. He gets an actual zero from NARAL, after all.

But even I didn’t know that he scored a truly dismal three percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters—meaning he has voted the wrong way on almost every significant piece of environmental legislation. Or that he has investments in oil and extractive mining companies that would benefit under his tax plan. His wife’s father owns and operates four of the companies, and the Ryans have ownership percentages up to 10 percent, according to Newsweek.

He has made it clear he will be a friend to oil and coal, and an enemy to renewables and conservation. He is also a climate change denier, which means the US government would fall even farther behind the rest of the world in dealing with catastrophic climate change.

Right-wingers used to try to insult environmentalists by calling us “tree-huggers.” Personally, I think that’s a badge of honor. But let’s spread it widely that Paul Ryan is a tree-hater, and that a vote for Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan is a vote AGAINST the Earth.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun Tagged with , , , , ,

This article in the New York Times feeds a lot of people’s ideas about what it means to live a green lifestyle: a guy all by himself in the desert, living off the grid in a dwelling he pieced together out of old shipping containers.

That scares a lot of people. Heck, it scares me! But it’s important to note that John Wells, the occupant of said desert paradise, is happy. He’s got a few hundred thou in the bank and he’s there because he wants to be.

I know people like that. My friend Juanita’s no-plumbing, no-electricity hilltop cabin that she and her late husband built by hand is as frugal a dwelling as I know, and culturally about as far from the New York City that both Mr. Wells and I chose to leave behind as it’s possible to get.

But the point I want to make is this: you can still live a green lifestyle and enjoy all the creature comforts and social conveniences of modern life. Consider Amory Lovins, energy futurist extraordinaire, whose spacious and gadget-filled 4,000-square-foot home was sustainability state-of-the-art when it was constructed in 1983. In the cold, snowy Colorado Rockies (just outside Aspen), he doesn’t need a furnace, or an air conditioner—and his monthly electric bill could be made back by skipping a couple of lattes per month at a fancy coffee shop..

Frugal, green lifestyles can be about comfort, ease, lower maintenance costs, and even luxury. They don’t have to be about deprivation—unless, like John Wells, you don’t think of being a hermit in the desert as deprivation, but as liberation. It’s his choice, and I say, go for it.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business Tagged with , , , , ,

Ray Anderson, CEO of InterfaceFLOR, took his company from a traditional petroleum-based carpet maker to a green pioneer whose name comes up frequently when people talk about merging deep sustainability
AND profitability

Anderson pioneered the idea of modular carpeting, so that if one area is worn out, you can just pop in a couple of new carpet squares instead of replacing the whole darn thing.

In his last years, Anderson created an ambitious program geared toward making Interface a zero-waste company.

Triple Pundit gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Ray Anderson, one year after his passing—written by Giulio Bonazzi, Chairman and CEO of Italy-based Aquafil Group—a supplier and friend to Anderson whose company created a process to recover and recycle polyamide 6, a carpeting component.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing Tagged with , , , , ,

I just came back from my local cafe, where I had a second iced coffee in the compostible cup I’d saved from yesterday (which I did compost when I’d finished it)–and discovered this article about edible coffee cups from Italian coffee giant Lavazza.

We’ve been doing this with ice cream for about a century–why not coffee?

It sounds good in principle–but I have questions:

  1. What if you prefer your coffee unsweetened? This cup is made of sugar.
  2. If this becomes popular, will it worsen the epidemic of sugar-related health problems like obesity and diabetes?
  3. How long will the cup last before falling apart? I tend to wait until my coffee is room temperature–does the sugar start to melt by then? I say this out of some negative experiences with very early biodegradable disposable diapers when my daughter was an infant–some brands had a tendency to start biodegrading while they were still being worn–not to mention leaky ice cream cones (despite this, when I get ice cream, it’s usually in a cone, for environmental reasons—no dishes to wash or throw away)
  4. Considering how much coffee is consumed in transit, can it take a lid?
  5. Is it too hot to hold in your hand?

Still if they can work through these issues, it’s a great concept. Obviously, I haven’t tried these cups. It’s totally possible they’ve worked through all these issues and more. I wish them well; they certainly get points for creative thinking and cross-pollination from different market sectors.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , ,

Guest Post by Marcia Yudkin, Marketing Expert and Mentor

“Does my idea reinforce what people already believe, or does
it challenge them?” writes Adrian Alexander in a description
of criteria he uses when looking for thought nuggets that
can get people talking and caring.

Although he looks for the element that he calls “high
tension” to select the ideas he develops into ads, you can
use it as a tool for identifying powerful headlines, subject
lines, book titles or press release themes. Indeed,
Alexander tests a promising idea by writing a fake press
release about it “to see if it’ll create buzz. Is it worth
the paper it’s written on? This helps me call BS on
myself,” he says.

To achieve a highly charged degree of tension, you need to
contradict a cherished belief, create unlikely
juxtapositions, relabel something familiar or shift the
context of a common conversation.

Adds Alexander, who is quoted in the book The Creative
Process Illustrated, “Great ideas don’t need mass
communication to be heard. Ideas, if they’re big enough,
diffuse through culture organically and can infiltrate
hearts, minds and culture as a whole.”

Marcia Yudkin mentors marketers who hope to spread the word about their ideas, talents and inventions. Her upcoming Kindle Jumpstart Course offers step-by-step guidance for publishing on Amazon’s Kindle(www.yudkin.com/kindle.htm). This post originally appeared in her Marketing Minute newsletter (which I’ve been reading for many years), and is used with her permission.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Business Ethics, Green Marketing, Greenwashing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Yet another company has gotten in trouble for greenwashing. Raz Godelnik writes in Triple Pundit about cereal giant General Mills’ legal woes: multiple lawsuits over deceptive packaging, claiming for example that its Nature Valley brand of granola bars is “all natural” when in fact it’s highly processed and contains such ingredients as maltodextrin.

You’d think by now companies woud have caught on that honesty really is the best policy.

Of course, it would be nice if the word “natural” actually had a legal definition, and thus some teeth. But it would also be nice if a company that claims to be strongly guided by ethics would do a better job of walking its talk.

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