Category: Green Business

By Posted on Posted in Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

Busy week of interviews. Catch me talking about green marketing:
November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506

November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, https://www.your15minutesradio.com

November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.” https://www.richwriting.com/2011/11/shel-horowitz-on-get-noticed-now-w4wn-com/

November 25, interview with Susan Davis on Good and Green Radio will become available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-good-and-green-radio-with-susan-davis/ as well as at iTunes

 

Here’s a description that Susan Rich wrote. It’s pretty accurate for all four calls:

Join get-you-noticed expert and internet radio host Susan Rich as she talks marketing ideas that help you grab attention and drives sales.

This week she’ll be joined by the ultimate expert in Get-You-Noticed tactics: copywriter, marketing consultant, author, and speaker Shel Horowitz. He has published eight books on the topic, the latest is: Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

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

A lot of visionary people out there are convinced that pretty much anything in the waste stream can be turned to more productive use. And quite a number of them are building low-cost houses out of other people’s discarded junk.

The above link takes you to several articles, with cool photos, about various people who are doing just that. (Note that the first, second, and fourth links all cover the work of one man, Dan Phillips of Huntsville, Texas—but with different pictures and narrative).

What I love about this kind of approach is that it simultaneously accomplishes multiple goods:

  • Provides low-cost housing at a time when so many have lost their homes
  • Reduces landfill waste, and thus extends the life of our landfills
  • Demonstrates the viability of other approaches than throwing stuff to rot slowly in a huge heap
  • Reduces the need to harvest virgin materials, and thus cuts back on environmentally destructive practices such as clear-cutting and strip-mining
  • Eliminates the release of significant carbon and other greenhouse gases compared to construction from new materials
  • Encourages all of us to use our creativity and ingenuity  to address the problems of our time
  • Shows yet again that one person can make a difference
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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Green Marketing Tagged with , , , , ,

Here’s a company that’s been selling hand-made recycled art papers since 1998 (think about really cool and classy invitations)—and has just developed a new paper line using post-brewery barley as one of the ingredients—and being smart marketers, billing it as the first beer paper. They sponsored this morning’s HARO, and thus, I learned about them. I clicked over half expecting some very rough page put up by a few carousing fratboys–boy, was I wrong! These people love the earth and love what they do, which is obvious on every page of their site.

The firm is called Twisted Limb, out of Bloomington, Indiana. I love their sustainability page, too.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business Tagged with ,

Fascinating article by Marc Stoiber on how Patagonia’s latest environmental initiatives tells customers not to buy what they don’t need, and to make what they do buy last forever. And if it doesn’t last forever, Patagonia will take it back and recycle it for you.

It may be counter to common logic, but Stoiber thinks this will increase sales, and tells why. And I agree, for reasons I cite in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green—that caring and an envirnmental/soial justice agenda build fans and build the brand.

Patagonia is always a great company to watch and learn from, and this initiative does not surprise me.

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Green Business, language Tagged with , , ,

Remember those old ’30s movies where some cigar-chomping newspaper editor screams into the phone, “Get Me ‘Rewrite!'”

Today, I followed a link to a webpage that made ME want to scream, “Get Me ‘Rewrite!'”

Try to digest these three paragraphs (the first two are next to each other; the third is a few paragraphs down) and tell me what you think they mean:

The Danotek high-speed PMG system’s attractiveness to investors is based on a uniquely efficient stator-rotor configuration, as well as its existing relationships with wind industry manufacturers and developers such as Clipper Windpower and DeWind.

The BWP low-speed PMG system’s attractiveness is based on an innovative PMG concept that gets away from expensive rare earth metals and creates efficiencies that BWP says can make wind power competitive with traditional sources of electricity generation without the need for incentives…

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the BWP PMG design is that its magnets are part of an axial flux air core machine which operates at relatively low temperatures and are made with a rare earth metal called neodymium. More commonly, PMG magnets are part of iron core radial flux machines like Danotek’s, operate at relatively high temperatures and require a rare earth metal called dysprosium.

OK, what is the writer trying to say? He talks about “stator-rotor configuration” and “axial flux air core machine” as if we automatically know what these things are. He says this new technology is a move away from rare-earth metals, except that it actually isn’t; it just uses a different kind. I don’t believe in dumbing things down, but I do think a reasonably intelligent person ought to be able to understand the gist of a piece of writing.

The “translator” acquaintance who posted the original link summarized it as “they can do unsubsidised wind for cheaper than coal.” (Thank you, Ian Gordon.) I guess we can extrapolate that from “make wind power competitive with traditional sources of electricity generation without the need for incentives.”

So why didn’t they say so in the first place?

The purpose of written communication, IMHO, is to communicate. While I’m not a techie or an engineer, I am reasonably familiar with the concepts of alternative energy; I’ve been reading about it for more than 30 years after all. And this one left me scratching my head.

In fairness, this appeared on a green technology trade journal website, where, presumably, many of their readers will be familiar with at least some of the jargon. But I think this one is over the top. Someone just beginning to research the field ought to be able to read the article and have some idea of what it’s about. Without Ian’s help (or five or six readings), I would have very little clue. Someone new to the field would be lost entirely.

Get me “Rewrite.”

(If you’re struggling to create a piece of writing that’s understandable without talking down to your reader, I’d be glad to help. I do that for a living, at reasonable prices. Contact me here.)

 

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

According to the New York Times, it seems the Chinese want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to electric cars. With only a minuscule budget for R&D, the Chinese want to coerce their way into access to expensively developed technologies for electric cars by making that access a precondition for foreign manufacturers who want to sell electric vehicles in China, if they want the same subsidies that Chinese-made electric cars enjoy. (This happens to be a violation of the World Trade Organization’s rules, and China is a WTO member)

Here’s how I think that would play out:

  • At least some foreign automakers, wanting access to the vast and rapidly growing Chinese market, make the devil’s bargain and share their technology secrets
  • China begins a crash program in its state-owned car companies to bring cars to market using this technology
  • After one to three years, the foreign automakers find themselves closed out—and sitting on a big useless pile of expensive infrastructure—as the Chinese rush cheap and shoddily built EVs to market using American, European, or Japanese technology

General Motors is actively resisting and protesting; Nissan doesn’t even want to go into the market under these conditions; yet Ford apparently plans to cave.

This is one time I find myself agreeing with General Motors. This is a bad idea!

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business Tagged with , , ,

With all the partisan conflict gridlocking Washington, it’s refreshing to read about a 16-year-old partnership between deep environmentalists and deep conservatives.

The “Green Scissors” project, with participation from the likes of Friends of the Earth on the environmental side and the Heartland Institute among the conservative groups, targets $380 billion in wasteful government spending that happens to also foster environmentally negative impact.

Among the programs suggested for the chopping block:

  • Ethanol Excise Tax Credit
  • $49.6 billion in subsidies for the troubled, environmentally disastrous nuclear power industry
  • $109.6 billion in highway subsidies
  • A $5 billion natural gas subsidy

Download your own copy of this year’s (and previous years’) reports at https://www.foe.org/green-scissors.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business Tagged with , , , ,

Wow! Tell this to your skeptic friends. One of America’s top research think tanks, Brookings Institution, now says that the 2.7 million Americans employed in green industries has outpaced the number working in fossil fuels.

That is quite extraordinary!

For some good analysis on what this means and where we should go from here, read Green For All’s Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins’ excellent article on Treehugger.

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

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, my area of Western Massachusetts grew wheat, barley, and other grains. Until recently, though, in my lifetime, farms around here basically grew no grains other than corn. Maybe a bit of amaranth as a decorative flower.

In the past five years or so, that’s begun to change, thanks in large measure to two local artisan bakers and a few craft beer brewers who have created demand for local grain.

Today, I stumbled on an announcement in my local paper about a two-day conference (today and tomorrow) on growing, processing, and marketing a variety of local grains. I’m not a farmer and won’t be attending. But as someone who thinks local community food self-sufficiency is going to be a very important issue in the coming years, I think that’s pretty darned cool.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Green Business, Peace and War, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

While the GOP lines up to see who can be more crazy and out-of-touch and unintelligent than their competitors, the Left is strangely quiet. Haven’t even heard rumblings of candidacy from Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has set the bar for leftist challenges in the past two presidential elections.

And this is odd, because Obama has failed the Left, despite being elected on a platform—dare I say a mantra—of “change.”

Yes, he can claim a number of significant accomplishments—one blogger found Obama’s legislative accomplishment rate was an astonishing 96 percent—but on most of the issues that really matter, his record does not inspire:

WAR:

We’re still in Iraq, where five US soldiers lost their lives this week. And we’re way deeper in Afghanistan than we were, with about 100,000 troops on the ground. And we’ve deployed in Pakistan and Libya. The only real move toward peace was Obama’s recent speech on the Israel-Palestine conflict

HEALTHCARE:

All that energy into the pathetic and complicated Obamacare compromise! Not only was single-payer not “on the table,” but even the wimpy public option was taken off the table. What was left?  A gift to the insurance industry and not much else. I want a candidate who will propose a one-sentence health reform bill: “All US citizens and legal residents are eligible for Medicare from birth.” If we need to phase it in, start by moving eligibility to age 55, then 40, then 20, then zero over a period of years.

ENERGY/ECONOMY/ENVIRONMENT

I lump these three together because the solution integrates across the disciplines: A massive, Marshall-plan-style initiative to get OFF fossil and nuclear energy sources in ten to twenty years, replacing them with sources that are both clean and renewable (with special attention to deep conservation that reduces the need for energy by 50 percent or more). We’d use government loans to jumpstart the effort, bring the price of conversions down, and front the money for homeowners, tenants, farmers,  and business owners to get systems in place—with the loans repaid out of the energy savings. This would boost the economy, create hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of jobs, get people out of poverty, put them back to work, remove our biggest reason for starting wars—and drastically reduce our carbon footprint, all at once!

The candidate who can articulate this vision, who can claim the unfinished mandate that Obama promised and didn’t deliver, has a pretty good shot at galvanizing the American people—if they can be convinced that these changes are actually possible.

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