Green Ump

If the FTC can go after Kmart's green claims, are you next?

The FTC is cracking down on claims made on vendor's documents. This time the case was about paper plates sold at KMart. The manufacturer of the plates claimed they were "biodegradable in a backyard compost."

"In truth and in fact, American Fare paper plates will not completely break down and return to nature, i.e., decompose into elements found in nature, within a reasonably short period of time because a substantial majority of  total municipal solid waste is disposed of by methods that do not present conditions that would allow for American Fare paper plates to completely break down."

Full run down on the article here.

What does this mean for your products? First, watch the language on your packaging. By now most building products are wrapped in paper/cardboard or very little plastic. It's ok to tell the truth and say that you are using less packaging than last year, but not ok to leave that wording on the package for the next few years. The first year, it's an improvement, the following years it's misleading. 

What you can say forever is that your packaging is made from FSC certified forests and soy based inks. You can also suggest that they recycle the packaging and keep the low carbon footprint walking forward. 

Consumer problems like this are a big flag to the commercial world. What happens there is voiced LOUDLY on the web and then carries back to the business to business sector. 

What are you doing to lower your packaging footprint and voiceprint?

A cheap way to find out your business carbon footprint

The downside of this GO GREEN movement is the high cost of entry. Intuit is out to make it cheap and just another click on the keypad. 

Intuit is the software company behind Quickbooks and other small business products. Joel Makower wrote a great review on his blog. It's called GREEN SNAPSHOT and it's a FREE SERVICE that is part of their current programs. 

That's the aim of Green Snapshot, a just-launched free service of Intuit, the company that makes popular financial management software like Quickbooks and TurboTax. Snapshot is aimed at the same market as those products: millions of small and midsized companies, few of which have the time, temperament, or temerity to calculate their company's carbon footprint, let alone take action to reduce it.

Full article here.

GREEN SNAPSHOT is just that, a snapshot. It doesn't audit your books, but it does take "your book's" entries and turns them into useful information to help you streamline your business and lower your personal impact. Take the tour.

Once you know where you stand, you can share that information with your customers. It's not for big business and it isn't a full blown Life Cycle Assessment of your products or services or answer all the questions asked on Green Building Pages, but for FREE it does provide the snapshot that most of us need to kick us into do-better mode. 

Are We Recoverable?

Can we do it? Even if we change our products, our packaging, our delivery and our recycling... Can we recover out of this downward spiral that the environment is in? According to this research, the answer is yes!

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2009/05/28/yale_study_most_polluted_ecosystems_recoverable.html

Paul Hawken's Engaging Commencement/Commitment Speech

If you've been doing your best green imitation or market saturation for a while and haven't had great success, perhaps you need a shot of Paul Hawken. The following talk is not only inspiring in what he says, but also how he says it. I found myself drawn in by the logic, the poetry and the line-by-line comparison of what was and what could be.

If your job is to motivate masses of buyers to your product line, take a lesson from Paul on how to engage the mind.

"When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seat belts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint...." more ...

Twittering for Sustainable Products

Is Twitter for the birds or is it a viable way to get your sustainable product into the public's searchable eye?

Before you judge it as a time waster, go to Twitter (you have to sign up) and then search #green and see what comes up. You'll also see #________________ in the sidebar. Many groups are beginning to use Twitter to see what others are doing and to group their ideas together. By putting a # sign in front of a predetermined word or phrase, 'tweets' can be collected into one group.

Confused, ok, search for "sustainable building products" and see how many are using that phrase. Now search for "green building products" and see what pops. Try other combo to get the idea.

The #_________ acts just like that key phrase you just used, except it ties all the tweets together using the the #_____ phrase instead of using the key words.

While going through this exercise, I also located #greenbuilding of which I have added to my list to follow.

Do you have a favorite #__________ that you like to follow? Let me know at [email protected]