In This Issue

Green Advertising Under a Magnifying Glass: Part 2

You Should Know About: The Inpact of Choosing the Right Paper

Sponsor

On Wednesday, April 23, Don Carli of SustainCommWorld, will moderate a session for the IPA Technical Conference entitled "Green with Envy: How to Win Customers and Save the Planet."

The IPA's Premedia Workflow Conference will be held at the Westin Hotel in Chicago, April 22-24, 2008.

Click Here for Information

PODCASTS For those of you who were unable to attend The Business of Green Media Conference held at Cal Poly in January - good news! Podcasts of many of the presentations and discussions are now available thanks to Prof. Brian Lawler of the GrC Department.

Click Here for Podcast Site

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On June 19, Don Carli will be the keynote speaker at the "Sustainability in Printing" Conference in Philadelphia. Don will address "Going Green - A Printing and Publishing Market Overview."

Click here for more Conference information

This Conference will be presented by IntertechPira.

SustainCommWorld is pleased to announce that Pira will be presenting 2 workshops as part of The Green Media Show pre-conference education offerings in Boston on Spetember 30. More information to come.

Quick Links

The Federal Trade Commission is planning to host a public workshop on April 30, 2008 to examine developments in green packaging claims and customer perception of such claims. Click here for more information

Greetings!

In January 2007 the Federal government issued Executive Order 13423 addressing green procurement. Recently, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy issued a proposed policy letter on the acquisition of green products, services and strategies for procurement. Click here to review the Policy Letter

Although green procurement is only one part of environmental sustainability, this policy, although not yet final, is thought by many analyst groups to telegraph the development of sustainability strategies across the public sector.

As with many social and economic movements observed during our lives, there seems to be great value in remembering the canary in the mine. Meaning, what signals will inform our strategic decisions to join, act, implement, change direction in our business? To our way of thinking, this Policy Letter is another massive indicator that Sustainability is the new way of business.

Lisa Wellman, CEO, SustainCommWorld

Green Advertising Under a Magnifying Glass: Part 2

Green washing - hype about how good a job various companies are doing in their sustainability efforts - presents all of us with a sense of disgust at the brazen misrepresentations being presented in some product ads.

We examined GM's ad for the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid and the Coal industry's "Clean Coal Initative." Both present the audience with a "sit back and relax, all is well," motif. They both go on to imply that the CO2 and emissions problems are almost solved and they encourage the viewer to "go back to sleep" implying that "we have the problem well in hand."

A quick Internet review of mileage recorded by those who review vehicle performance noted that the Tahoe mileage averaged 19.3 miles per gallon. The Tahoe ad looks like a quasi-Disney episode with kids wearing box-costumes made to look like cars. The announcer asks them if they like their "crowded cars?" and they answer "Noooo." He then tells them how wonderful the new Chevy Tahoe Hybrid is and they all agree it is wonderful.

It's so wonderful this $50,000+ vehicle gets 19.3 miles per gallon with the hybrid engine option. That's less than half what the Toyota Prius gets. Is this progress? Perhaps a better question, will this result in enough "progress" quickly enough?

The Clean Coal people remind us that 50% of our electricity comes from burning coal and aren't they wonderful? They leave out the fact that nearly 50% of our CO2 problems continue to come from burning coal. The Clean Coal people also talk long and hard about how they've "cleaned-up" the process. Then how come the upward climb of CO2 emissions continues? The fact is, alternative coal furnace emissions, is in its infancy and no single alternative has given us a viable, currently implemented commercial process to burn coal and get "clean anything" out the smoke stack.

How can these two entities continue to air such misleading ads? And what can or should the industry do about it? With auto advertising a multi-billion dollar revenue stream, how do media companies align their own Sustainability activities with clients whose messages may mislead or worse, misinform? And where is the consumer in all of this, trying to make intelligent buying decisions yet faced with fact and fantasy? What's the role of advertising but to change the way people think and what people do? There are some interesting tensions intrinsic in advertising's role in green marketing and corporate action.

The FTC is, in fact, holding hearings to review and revise their green marketing guidelines for this very reason. There is evidence of significant potential for the public to be mislead as terms like "carbon neutral," "environmentally friendly" and "sustainable," are becoming more prevalent. Check out the Guide for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims

Media's (Hidden) Energy Costs Continued

According to United Nations University, the average 24 kg desktop computer with monitor requires at least 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture, much more materials intensive than an automobile or refrigerator, which only require 1-2 times their weight in fossil fuels. Researchers found that manufacturing one desktop computer and 17-inch CRT monitor uses at least 240 kg of fossil fuels, 22 kg of chemicals and 1,500 kg of water - a total of 1.8 tons of material. By the end of 2007, well over one billion PCs had been sold worldwide.

ENERGY STAR is a program supported by the U.S. Environmental Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. As of July 20, 2007, ENERGY STAR's new specifications for computers went into effect. The new specification applies to a variety of products including desktop and notebook (or laptop) computers, game consoles, integrated computer systems, desktop-derived servers, and workstations. Only the market's most energy-efficient computing products qualify for the ENERGY STAR label.

As part of our commitment and sustainability program, SustainCommWorld joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative .This initiative is about smart computing and offers organizations free information on the acquisition and low power usage and settings for their computers. It's a no brainer to incorporate this free program as part of your sustainability program.

You Should Know About: The Impact of Choosing the Right Paper

It should not come as any great surprise that choosing the right paper can save wood, water and energy and cut pollution and solid waste. Conservatree offers a one-stop shop for information on environmental papers for both small-scale paper and experienced, large-scale purchasers. Since almost every business makes purchases of copy paper having a listing of specific brands of paper, their environmental information and availability can be very helpful.

Many paper companies we reviewed had excellent information on their "eco-brands." Several had calculators to help you determine the impact of choosing one brand over another. Or, choosing a lighter weight paper for a project.

One research project regarding changing just the margins on paper revealed a number of amazing statistics.

According to a study done by the Penn State Green Destiny Council, reducing margins to .75" on all sides results in a total reduction of paper by 4.75%. This means that using these Efficient Margins on a ton of paper saves 19 reams of paper, which saves 1.14 trees.

This calculation is based on the following stats from Conservatree:
-1 ton of uncoated virgin (non-recycled) 20# printing and office paper uses 24 trees.
-1 ream of paper (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree.
-1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets
-The trees that are being used to make the paper are a mix of 40 foot-tall hardwoods and softwoods, 6-8" in diameter.

So, you ask, what's the big deal? 1.14 trees don't seem like much of a tree-savings for a whole ton of paper. Check these numbers out - they add up fast:

In 2003, the U.S. consumed approx. 5.4 million tons of office paper. If everyone used Efficient Margins, every year we would save 6,156,000 trees.

Here's how you get that figure:
(5.4 million tons) x (Efficient Margins saving factor of .0475) x (24 trees/ton) = 6,156,000 trees

And by reducing the amount of extra paper we'd have to create, we'd save a lot in energy costs and waste products, too...

-Total energy: 9,840,368 million British thermal units (Btus), which is enough to provide power to 108,136 homes

-Greenhouse gas emissions: 1,459,535,366 pounds, which is the equivalent of CO2 emissions from 132,528 cars

-Solid waste: 584,396,539 lbs, which is the equivalent of 20,871 fully loaded garbage trucks

-Wastewater: 4.8 billion gallons, which is enough to fill 7,408 Olympic-sized swimming pools

Suddenly, one little margin change feels like it has a lot more impact!

Check here to reference statistics

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Please share your information.
A valuable article, report or website can help all enhance our knowledge and make a difference in our industries and our communities. Send your input to terry@sustaincommworld.com.

          Terry Wellman, Editor
SustainCommWorld - The Green Media Show
terry@ SustainCommWorld.com
    206 275 9992

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