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.

Always on My Mind

Over the past week, I've noticed just how much this class is making me think about my environmental impact. I've had to consciously remind myself several times of my goals for this quarter, especially yesterday when it came to taking the stairs to the 4th floor of the E-Sci building. I'm hoping that this conscious effort will eventually lead to a behavior change in the future and it won't be such a challenge. Having this class and my environmental footprint constantly on my mind has also made me want to add more goals to my list in a sort of snowball effect. I'm going to try to eat 3 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a week now too. It's easy enough and I like the classic PB&J.

When I was signing up for commencement, I also decided to go with the eco-friendly gown that is made out of post recyclable materials because of this class. (I encourage everyone in this class who is graduating this quarter  to do the same.) Doing so also gave me the drive to research exactly what that meant which I hope to do soon and will post my findings at a later date.

As for clarification on the buying more local and organic foods goal I mentioned in my previous post, I am going to try to substitute one of my regular fruit or vegetable purchases a week with an organic or local alternative. I would really like to utilize the Farmer's Market more, as soon as the fruit season really gets started, by purchasing fruits there once every two weeks. Our group project will help me do this since part of our project involves food vendors at the Farmer's Market.

Ecological Footprint and response

I couldn't figure out how to post the visual of the results onto this blog so I'll just do a brief write up of the results. It would take 3.9 Earth's to support my lifestyle. The footprint was broken down to 15% food, 8% shelter, 13% mobility, 10% goods, and 51% services. It also takes 17.3 acres of Earth's productive area to support me.

At first, this really shocked me. I don't think that I live a very frivolous lifestyle. I'm a poor college student. Buy only what I'm going to eat or need. Only on occasion buy new clothes. I would like a little more information on what 'services' means and what that category includes.

After doing this once for my current lifestyle, I was curious what my eco footprint was when I lived in Panama for two weeks in a location with no running water and no electricity. I filled out the quiz with the information for this lifestyle for both a South American country and the United States with very different results which leads me to believe that here in the United States we have many more amenities and services that we do not consider and that this quiz factors in itself.  

My goals for this quarter are to:
1) Take the stairs all quarter (no elevators),
2) Buy a few more locally grown or organic fruits and vegetables,
3) Cut back on how many quick trips to the store I take by either taking the bus or carpooling with friends
4) Be really conscience of what and  how much packaging I'm throwing away every week and try to reduce the waste and recycle more.

The fourth goal will force me to maybe research a type of packaging that I didn't know I could recycle. I think my mobility is really an area for improvement but I do my best to drive minimally without someone else in the car. Since I live with two other people, I'm also hoping to educate them on some of these energy and waste reducing activities and encourage them to do the same! This class has also got me excited to learn about which companies have adopted sustainable business models. I know that I'm cynical when it comes to believing that companies want to be environmentally friendly, so I'm looking forward to learning about sustainable practices that business can adopt. As I am looking to the future for a job, it will be nice to have a list environmentally companies. One of the main problems with sustainability is ignorance. Most people do not know that their lifestyle is sustainable or how to change it. I am among these people so I'm hoping to learn about sustainable options for me or at least where I can go to learn more.