The Greenwashing Conference
Today is the final day of the “Good and Green – The Green Marketing Conference” here in Chicago. I’m not going – I just learned about it, actually. I think the goal is to teach how to greenwash. “Make sure they’re buying your brand! At Good And Green you’ll learn how to increase your brand’s emotional, cognitive and financial connection in today’s “greening” consumer markets,” reads the promotion. I don’t think they care at all about the environment. They care about monetizing the environment.
It goes on to say, “Perceptions of environmental, ethical, and social stewardship are the fastest growing contributors to consumer brand value.” It’s like Sales 101 on how to ”market” your company by evangelizing the emotions of the general public. Kinda like saying, “But the label says “Natural” so it must be good for me.” I was waiting to read the part about how they are having Donald Trump or the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy there LIVE and then in the fine print…via satellite.
I’m sure the conference isn’t all bad. It just reads like it has the potential for being less than meaningful. I shouldn’t totally bash it without attending – but I don’t have the $1900 to fork over for 2 days. I guess they are using their own principals of how to make money off the green movement.
Your post asking “who really owns your favorite organic brands?” was enlightening, and there’s no doubt that brands are seeing the green movement as an opportunity to make money, but I think the question we have to ask is “do we care?”. This won’t be the first time market factors have forced companies to make changes that, on a holistic impact scale, are better for the world at large. I’m glad companies are seeing green as an opportunity to capitalize financially because that means it’s being seen as a competitive advantage. So if the environment is only benefiting because big corporations can make more money, so be it. Right?
But are they actually doing it or just evangelizing vapor? I agree – if they actually make changes to be “greener” then that is fine. On the who owns organic brands thing – we realized very quickly when Kraft made changes to one of our favorite products by using cheaper ingredients that changed the taste. The brand was compromised, in our eyes at least.
It’s all give and take – so I guess you have to decide where you want to lean. For instance, a lot of carpet is made from recycled materials like soda bottles. The factory still uses a ton of natural resources trying to reconstruct that bottle into the carpet and ultimately that carpet will be in the landfill. It prolongs the end-of-lifecycle instead of being cradle-to-cradle. Its still cradle-to-grave. So are you happy they use recycled products or mad they didn’t use natural fibers that decompose?
I guess time will tell on who does what and how honestly they do it.
If you conduct a Life Cycle Assessment on bottles, turned to carpet or bottles turned into decks, you’ll find that the end result isn’t good – energy wise or
chemicals back into the ground wise. If you want to see what a perfect new product looks like, check out Forbo Flooring. Their Marmoleum has a field to field story that is totally inert for the planet in energy and chemical output. The best part? They can prove it with documented and third party audited certification via SMaRT. http://mts. sustainableproducts.com
That’s where the market is moving, from green to sustainable to prove it.
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[...] I used to work for a company that shared a floor with a PR agency. When I worked there, they threw so much away that had a great useful life left. I’m guessing that they aren’t an anomaly in the corporate world. The sad thing is (yet not surprising) that they were not only a sponsor of the Good and Green Conference here in Chicago in December, but they had a panelist speaking, too. Before I knew that they were a sponsor, I had ripped the conference apart for contributing to the greenwashing phenomenon. [...]