ecoAmerica/Blog

The 6 Dangers CEOs Face when Communicating "Green"

Michael Sater, Sustainable Life Media, provides a great review of the most significant negatives that can result from when companies use green to enhance their brand in communications without appropriate transparency or authenticity.

Top Five Greenwash Posts of the Year

In honor of the holidays, I'm posting this amusing list of the top 5 greenwashes of the year that Triple Pundit put together. Topping the list are the healthy certification of "Froot Loops," an ad campaign that blamed immigrants for climate change in California, blaming dictatorship on Fiji water, and the Siggs brands' damaging revelation that the bottles did include BPA despite being known as the environmentalists' reusable water bottle of choice.

85% of Americans Expect to Reduce Household Energy Use in 2010

According to a new survey released by Tiller LLC, Americans are including household energy reductions and other simple actions in their resolutions for the new year. About 85% of respondents said that they were "somewhat likely" to reduce their home's energy consumption and 84% expect to recycle more. A majority of respondents also expect to purchase more from environmentally responsible companies and use reusable bags.

On environment, Obama and scientists take hit in poll

Leading into Copenhagen, Obama was coming off increased public doubt around climate change, particularly climate science (due to ClimateGate). Despite that, a poll found that almost two-thirds of respondents thought that the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions (down 10 % from June). The most interesting thing about the poll was how many people said they would support regulations even if they increased their energy bills.

Happy Holidays from ecoAmerica!

Happy Holidays from ecoAmerica!

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
 
From,
The ecoAmerica Team
Jenni, Kara, Lee, Lia, Meighen, Rafael and Robert

The Consumer Impact of Copenhagen

Karen Barnes, Director of Insight at the Shelton Group, reviews how the recent events in Copenhagen and the international attention of climate change will impact the green consumer marketplace going forward. She suggest that it might be the consumer tipping point that finally turns the tide of public opinion towards climate solutions for those who follow the lead of government and other leaders.

Worry Over Global Warming Cools

Adweek examines the strategic gap in support for climate change solutions and explains what it means for green marketers. He encourages marketers to break out green behavior and messaging from global warming (which seems like a legislative and not consumer issue). He shows how Copenhagen is unlikely to have an impact on mainstream Americans (similarly to many people's reactions to An Inconvenient Truth).

Bringing Green to the Masses and the Masses to Green

ecoAmerica friend, Jim Jubelirer, wrote a great piece in which he synthesized the various studies that have come out on people's attitudes and behaviors toward environmental issues (including ours). He goes on to discuss how deniers use cultural, ideological and other tactics to undermine climate solutions advocates. He recommends using targeted messaging based on values based research (like the American Climate Values Survey) to shift audiences.

Clean energy conservatives can embrace

This recent Washington Post article delves into how and why certain environmental issues are conservative issues. Conservatives like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon gave us the National Parks and Environmental Protection Agency, respectively. Murdoch encourages continued conservative support of clean energy to produce a bipartisan agreement on climate legislation based on values that conservatives, independents, and Democrats can all support.

Greenwashing’s Two-Edged Sword

Bill Roth, triplepundit, provides great context of the impact that greenwashing has had on businesses that are debating sharing their greening efforts, companies and nonprofits that have partnered on a promotion and consumers' response to green products and services. He emphasizes that consumers and businesses are still in the midst of understanding and accepting green products and each others' authenticity/acceptance of those ideas.