Eco-Footprint Recalculation

   Before I retook the quiz, I was worried that it wouldn't have gone down at all because the steps that I took to reduce my carbon footprint were not necessarily quantifiable from this quiz since it focuses on household measures.
   However, I took the quiz anyway and it did go down by .3 earths. Services were 55%, food was 14%, mobility was 14%, shelter was 7%, and goods was 10%. So, my food, mobility, and shelter impact went down during the course of this quarter.
    The goal that I stuck to strictly was always taking the stairs, never the elevator, for which I am pretty proud of myself. The energy savings of this activity would not show up on my household ecological footprint. I also started eating more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (usually 2 or three a week) in congruence with the PB&J campaign. This was also hard to quantify in my quiz because none of the ingredients are local but it did save trips to the store and money on on-campus lunches in addition to being a non-meat based lunch.
    There are a few things that were not a part of my original goals that I have started doing to reduce my carbon footprint. One of which is paying closer attention to what I can recycle at home. I have also started taking my reusable grocery bag to the store to reduce plastic and paper bag consumption. Another factor that has helped reduce my household ecological footprint has been unplugging my chargers when I'm not using them.
    I'll admit I have been slipping a little bit on buying local and organic produce because I have been going out to eat a lot recently. The weekend trip to Texas for an interview did not help my mobility footprint either. All of that aside, this exercise for class has shown me that no effort is unnecessary, every little thing that you can do to reduce your impact counts. This idea needs to be spread so that more people will be empowered to make any small change that is reasonable for them to reduce our impact on the earth. Not every activity is realistic for everyone, but find some goals that you can stick to and do it! Changing one habit will make you aware of other unsustainable behaviors and be a catalyst for more change!

The Problem with PlayPumps

    Earlier in the quarter we discussed how we could use business to help society. One of the business ventures we brought up was the Darfurstoves and their goals to help with the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. The class decided that it is not only important to want to help people but in order for it to be a sustainable solution in business it must also make money. The tricky part is that it also cannot just be about making money. This was the fallacy with the PlayPump (sorry for the spoiler for those of you who have yet to take Mgmt 495).
     The PlayPump was designed to use the energy of children playing to pump water out of the ground. It could support a small village and kept women from having to walk miles to another water source. With good intentions, PlayPump International installed pumps all over parts of southern Africa with funding from donations and advertisers. Months later, when a third party went in to check on the progress, it turns out that most of the pumps were not working as promised. It seemed like PlayPumps International did not do their due diligence in researching prime locations for these pumps or for villages that wanted them. No one was willing to take responsibility for the ineffective pumps and eventually the program was abandoned.
     The moral of this story is that philanthropic ventures have to chase the triple bottom line (profits, people, planet) and not lose sight of any one of the three. I do believe that it is possible for a business to succeed in this kind of venture but the leader needs to be in it for the right reasons and have a good business strategy. A new term for this type of business is 'social entrepreneurship' and there could be a future for it if business leaders can balance the priorities.

Eco-Goals Update

    So, originally I wanted to only take the stairs and never the elevator, buy more organic fruits and veggies, take fewer short trips to the store or at least carpool with someone, and pay closer attention to recyclable packaging. Evaluating my progress on these goals, I realized I started strong and have lost steam on the second and third one. Reducing my carbon footprint by reducing travel has been particularly difficult for me in the last week with a trip to Texas on an airplane which of course involved a drive to and from Seattle as well. However, I have stuck to only taking the stairs (even when I'm running late to class!) and have paid attention to the packaging on products.
    A couple weeks in to the challenge, I decided to commit to eating at least 2 PB&J sandwiches during a work week for lunch. This has been easy to accomplish because its cheap and easy to make. It also didn't hurt that my cousin made me homemade jellies too! I checked out the website to see what the campaign was all about and right before I was about to get skeptical on all of the carbon emission numbers being thrown around, there was a link directly answering my question: Where did they get the numbers? I've been keeping to this goal and shouldn't have a problem sticking to it although haven't taken the pledge.
     Like the PB&J challenge, I noticed that becoming more and more aware of the effects that my actions have on the environment has changed my focus of my goals. While I'm not doing fantastic on 2 of my goals, I have started unplugging my power cords when I leave and such things because this class has made me aware of simple actions like that really making a difference. So with this in mind, I think it is important to note that you should set goals that DO make a difference but are also realistic for you to achieve. Isn't that what they teach us in business anyway?
     One final note: on my trip to Texas I learned something that others are doing to conserve water. Currently Texas is in a drought, so everyone is on restricted water privileges for watering their yard. The water in the shower takes a long time to get warm, so instead of letting gallons of water run down the drain waiting for the warm water, they put buckets in their shower to collect the cold water and then use that water in their yards. Something that we as Northwesterners RARELY have to think about...

Environmentally Friendly Gowns

Herff Jones has begun offering eco-friendly gowns for college grads at WWU. I decided to look into this to find out just how much they were doing to make these gowns eco-friendly.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Not only did Herff Jones provide a description of these gowns but also included the website to the supplier of the gowns, Repreve.

Here's the summary: the gowns are made out of 100% post consumer plastic water bottles. It takes about 29 water bottles to make one gown and their unique process eliminates the need for crude oil. Repreve is made by Unifi, a leader in sustainability in the textile industry. With a portion of their profits, Repreve donates to other organizations with environmentally friendly causes.

This was a pretty cool discovery and now I can say that I actually know about the gowns that I'm encouraging grads to buy for commencement and yes, I bought one of the eco-friendly gowns for myself.

Here are the links to the websites:

Herff Jones Eco Gowns
Repreve

One Man's Trash....

Is another one's LIGHT SOURCE! Those of you who have take Professor Love's marketing innovation class have already seen this, but I think it is really neat and a great addition to the concept of reusing! Why not reuse something we would just throw away to make someone's life better? Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-Fpsw_yYPg&feature=related

Collaborative Consumption

     SwapStyle is a collaborative consumption website where people can swap clothing and accessories. Registration is free, however, if you want to become a verified member, which shows your commitment to the SwapStyle service, there is a ten dollar fee. Similar to Facebook you can set up a profile with your swapping needs listed and can add a profile picture. When you have something you want to swap, you upload a picture of it onto the website.  

      One thing that was really interesting about this website was their emphasis on how this is an eco-friendly way to get new clothes. They added statistics on how much clothing ends up in landfills from the US annually (23.8 billion pounds). SwapStyle is aware that some of their customers are environmentally conscious and is making sure that they are not ignoring the value they are providing to this customer segment

      SwapStyle functions as a redistribution market. It is trying to change how we think about purchasing clothing and the assumption that we always need to buy new products. Collaborative consumption could help change our mentality from a ‘me’ to ‘we’ perspective. The social network trend has made it much more likely to reach out to people and websites create a feeling of community for the people involved. Collaborative consumption will also help switch consumers thinking to buying less rather than just buying “green” products

SwapStyle's website:

http://www.swapstyle.com/

Thoughts on Reducing Consumption

Several of the books and readings for this class have discussed using our marketing powers to reduce consumption rather than just promote the purchase of green products. I really like this idea and am encouraged that there is a potential movement in this direction in the marketing world. Many times when I tell people that I'm a marketing major they assume I am just trying to manipulate the masses into buying more stuff they don't need. I like to argue and say that that is not the reason I am getting into marketing because there is so much more to marketing than and I do not necessarily believe in that lifestyle either. So, making a switch to buying less which means using the idea of collaborative consumption or buying products that last longer will be key to this change in mentality.

Realistically, we will not be able to stop consumption altogether. Our book mentioned that as martketers we need to be aware that not everyone wants green products forced down their throats. Marketers can advertise products that they know to be green without the emphasis on their environmentally friendliness,  but rather their other marketable traits such as functionality and quality. I like this point as well and I think both points would be valuable to keep in mind as we move forward in our marketing careers.