Change your viewpoint.....save the world

I am not “sold” on this be more environmental and you will save the world mentality that is sweeping the world. Sure I do my part and recycle, became a one car family, ride public transit to and from work and even turn my lights off when I leave the room.......but according to TV I am not doing enough.

I personally made a choice to not put CFL or compact fluorescent tubes cause they are jam packed with mercury and while I think hybrid cars are super cool and important I also wonder what is going to happen to the environment when there are 50,000 hybrid car batteries in some junk yard somewhere......OK I may be over-reacting but I still do more than most people I know so I can sleep at night.

So anyway while I started rolling this blog post idea through my head I thought “How can I make this post interesting and help the world at the same time?” and the answer I came up with was to offer up some ideas for companies on how they can be more environmentally friendly and get world wide love and admiration for it.......sounds like a big task but remember, I am the Smartest Man in the World and the solution was simple.

“Carbon Neutral”

Or actually take some of your company carbon neutral.

I am not the first to suggest this and most of this idea if not all of it came from an article a few months back in Advertising Age (see kids....reading IS FUNdamental) about the jeweler John Hardy and how he was offsetting all of his paper advertising by planting bamboo plants in some far away exotic land. He also plans to use this bamboo for jewelery boxes in the future. This is pretty innovative for a jeweler and while I assume his intentions where altruistic there was a another great benefit that came from doing this.

Wanna guess what it was?

People talked about it.......in conversations.............in the media.........in this blog post that will surely result in at least one big sale*.

Now imagine if some other companies took the same approach. There is no way to guarantee that the PR value would be the same but even if no one talks about it you are still doing something good......BUT if people do talk then you are doing something great!

Companies that do a slew of mailings (like a Netflix/Zip.ca) or companies that hand out hundreds of thousands of flyers (like a Zipcar or those guys in Vegas that give you the cards with the naked ladies on them) could still get in early on this and make a positive environmental commitment as well I think there is room for at least a few more people who get in early to make a media splash.

I never try to be preachy on this here blog but I kinda think that companies should do a bit more (if possible) to make changes where possible.

-saul

*This is mere speculation and not a guarantee :)