Ecopreneurist

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

GreenWare cups resemble clear plastic cups but are made from a resin derived from corn called Natureworks® PLA (polylactic acid) resin. If you are a business, festival, music event, stadium or other venue selling drinks in cups, please consider these as a alternative to petroleum based plastic cups.

These cups are 100% compostable and environmentally sustainable as PLA resin is naturally recycled in the Earth.

Other environmental benefits include:
~ 20% - 50% fewer fossil resources used than with petroleum based resins.
~ No ground water contamination because the cups break down into natural lactic acid and metabolites which are recycled into the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Post: This is the second guest post by Jennifer Kaplan who teaches a market research course at Marymount University in Arlington, VA and is a partner in the marketing consultancy, Greenhance LLC. — Leah

So you want to get consumers to tell you what they will buy, when they will buy and why they will buy? Market research is the way. With a little time, and little to no money, you can gather consumer information that will connect you more directly to your customers.

Step 1: Sign up for a no-cost account with a company like SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang or QuestionPro that let you create free online surveys using their web servers. You can use a template (some are free, some aren’t) or you can easily create your own. If you’ve never written a survey it will pay to take a quick online tutorial.

Step 2: Develop an email list. Start with the customers and contacts you already have. If your list is small, don’t worry. It may not give a complete picture of the marketplace, but it will provide you with important baseline information.

Join listservs, like Yahoo! Groups, where your potential customers hang out. Be upfront about why you want to join and disclose the name of your business. For example, when researching children’s clothing customers, I tried to join a dozen listservs for local moms, letting them know I wanted to post a link to a survey. Most declined, but one group, MomsInTheCity let me join and post an invitation, thus bumping up response by 25%.

Your invitation should include six key items:
1. Why you want people to respond to your survey;
2. The name of your business;
3. How long the survey will take;
4. Any incentive for answering;
5. A link to the survey; and
6. A thank you. Read the rest of this entry »

Call it green fatigue or green over exposure or green noise. Whatever it is, consumers are starting to feel it and react. At first, it’s just throwing plastic water bottles in the trash, and then it’s using bleach and hot water to really get those white clothes, white.

Valerie Davis, president of Green Canary Sustainability Consulting. wrote a funny article at Environmental Leader titled Are Consumers Falling Off The Green Wagon, And Should We Care? that examines what we, as green business leaders should do about it.

While it appears that the green movement has finally reached a tipping point, the inevitable over-exposure is not far behind. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

The world often perceives marketing as a wasteful practice. However, it is still essential in every business.

The good news is that companies like ours, proformagreen.com are manufacturing with greener, more resourceful printing processes and materials now more than ever. Mugs, pens, tote bags, the list continues to grow of items that are both eco-friendly and/or promote eco-friendly lifestyles.

My name is John Simonetta and I want to let businesses know that they really can go green. From packaging to uniforms to promotional items to printing needs, there are cost effective marketing solutions that allow businesses to lower their impact on the planet without sacrificing the quality of their brand.

In my posts I will highlight some of the new promotional and print solutions that are now available to businesses and organizations looking to Go Green with marketing collateral.

Photo Credit: spoons at Flickr Under Creative Commons License

Read More About Marketing:

Eco Libris: Le Mailing Vert - the French Green Version of Direct Marketing

Natural Marketing Institute, Nielsen Value LOHAS Mart At $209 bn

Creating a Web Site for Your Green Business

I’m Krates Ng, cofounder of mokugift. I’m delighted to become an occasional contributor here on Ecopreneurist.

I have always considered myself environmental. I care. I drive a hybrid car. I recycle religiously. I minimize the use of electricity, paper and water. I even cut down the amount of meat I eat (started with no meat 2 nights a week) with the intent to reduce the amount of live stock it takes to support our lives.

However, I hadn’t thought about pairing business with the environmental initiatives until we started mokugift the end of 2007. In this post, I’ll write about how we transformed from entrepreneur to a ecopreneur. Read the rest of this entry »

So you’re starting a green business. Congratulations! Now that you have a dream, a business name, and a plan, how do you go from the initial idea to making that first sale? If you’ve done your homework, you probably have a marketing plan for your business (it’s wise to make it part of your business plan). One of the most important pieces of your marketing plan should be your company web site. Your web site will be the first impression many of your clients and customers have of your business, so it’s important to invest the time and money necessary to create a well-designed, informative, easy to use, and sustainable web site.

Not only does your web site offer you a chance to market your company, it’s also an opportunity to exercise your commitment to sustainability. One way to green your marketing is to make the web your primary advertising focus. Through e-mail newsletters, online ads, and promoting your domain name on all company correspondence, you can drive traffic to your web site and cover a lot of marketing ground without having to waste paper. Focusing your advertising efforts on the internet means less printed advertising, which means less paper waste and fewer pollutants released (the printing process and ink pigments create a lot of them). Read the rest of this entry »

A new study, “Greenfluencers” by Porter Novelli points to a significant new change in the way eco information is disseminated and who’s paying attention…to whom.

Now that green has gone mainstream, it seems everywhere you turn there are eco friendly products, organic choices and green claims. Consumers are well on their way to embracing the eco lifestyle. Every major manufacturer, it seems has found a way to capitalize on the green movement and while green experts cry, “greenwashing”; consumers just cry, “help”, as they try to sort through the claims.

And they’re finding it, from green bloggers like those of us here at Green Options; from leaders of trusted environmental groups; from influencers on social media sites like Facebook and from friends passionate about the green lifestyle. Read the rest of this entry »

When is a soda bottle not a soda bottle? When it is a messenger bag. A tote. Or a laptop sleeve. Last year, the founders of Shoreline, an established maker of laptop jackets and sleeves, decided they would blend their environmental concern with the now practical alternative to petroleum based fabrics, recycled PET (aka plastic soda/water bottles) fabrics.

And they succeeded, after much persistence, coming out with what would be the replacement for their current line, called Act2GreenSmart. A brave move for a company making a comfortable living on their existing line. Everything, save the zipper and the strap, was made from recycled PET.

They could have stayed this safe, practical course, transitioning from one core to the same, green version. But since then. they’ve continued on, deepening their knowledge, and expanding their line, to include a broader range of users. An unexpected treasure that came out of them being frequently asked green related questions at the college bookstore conventions they presented at is their GreenSmart Glossary. From “compostable” to “petroleum derivative” they not only define these terms, they give both an optimist’s and a cynic’s perspective on each term.

This is reflective of the founders, who take a hopeful yet practical look at each consideration when it comes to their products. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re Japanese, European or heavily involved in natural foods, nutraceuticals may be a regular item on your shopping list. But for the average American, nutraceuticals or functional foods are virtually unknown. That’s about to change.

A new report, 2008 Culinary Trend Mapping Report on Emerging Health & Wellness, from Packaged Facts based on research from the Center for Culinary Development finds that have nutraceuticals have reached a tipping point in North America. That is, the adoption curve is speeding up and we can expect increased interest in this category from both retailers and consumers…soon. Read the rest of this entry »

This post was originally published at the Eco-Libris blog on Wednesday, July 9, 2008.

I wrote few times in the past about direct marketing and its environmental impacts (check here and here). This is definitely an issue where an innovative approach combining creativity, green basics and visionary thinking is required to make things better and greener. And we’re happy to update you that someone is actually doing it!

Springwise reports that Paris-based direct marketing agency TBWA\Excel launched its Mailing Vert service (Le Mailing Vert) in partnership with envelope maker Manuparis, Vincent Printers, Groupe Moselle Vieillemard printers and direct marketing/sales logistics firm Diffusion Plus.

Excel is an agency of TBWA group that specializes in fundraising and commitment to social service associations, foundations and corporate citizens. I believe the idea behind the Mailing Vert service is to provide Excel’s customers, many of whom are non-profits, with a greener offer that will enable them to have direct marketing campaigns, promoting their causes with as little environmental impact as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »