Saving the Planet with Advertising

The persuasive and clever designer can move through empathy & emotion.
As a visual communicator I feel an ethical responsibility to deliver authentic, real advertising that doesn't bend the truth or greenwash a product.

This WWF campaign (Ogilvy and Mather) is a true testament to great visual rhetoric.
Honest, real, and emotion driven. Well done!

Earth Day Gifts for Clients

Today, in honour of Earth Day, 2011, we donated fruit-bearing trees on behalf of 20 great clients. I purchased the trees from Trees for Life : a great non-profit whose mission is to help end world hunger by planting fruit trees in the developing world. They plant native species that can thrive, and that can eventually feed the person who takes care of it. I like the way they think. Each person that is helped is asked to share seeds with two other people and to teach them what they have learned. It's great companies like this that we want to connect with. Tackling social justice, education initiatives and global warming issues in one shot (via first world donations in small, payable amounts) is pure genius. 
Maybe we will contact them someday and offer to promote their great cause. I'd love to create green designs for them, and their donation certificate could definitely use a facelift. Hmmm. That's fruit for thought. 

Check out Pixelbrand's earth day emailer-to-landing page tree gift!

Walking the Walk

Yesterday I was locked out of my house. A simple slip up and a wonderful moment in my week. The sun was out, I had my laptop, so I walked to my local coffee shop for my fair trade double-double.

{{ This is actually noteworthy 
because I never walk to the coffee shop.}}

The walk gave me time to think.
It gave me time to breathe.
It gave me time to let the brain create.
I was literally whistling as I step-stepped down the road and I realized that I was, for the first time, really walking the walk. My zero carbon footsteps took me where I needed to be, and that realization left me quite rattled. It had been so long since I had walked - well anywhere, really - and it's such a simple thing to do.
Here I am, working hard to use recycled papers and solar-powered websites, and I am missing out on the simplest idea of all.

Walking!

It's healthier, it's cheaper, it's non- polluting, and there's no excuse not to do it.
I'm making a goal this summer to walk.
If you see the red beetle booting around town feel free to give me the thumbs down. 
Red thumbs-down buggy no punch backs.

I love when designers use their talents to speak their minds

The website My Logo My Way  is running a contest for a bp logo redesign. We all know they will need an image revamp after the disastrous mess they have created... and the designing minds around the world have come up with some good solutions.  

See the full set of entries at My Logo My Way

Turning garbage into landscapes - CD art by Bruce Munroe

Artist Bruce Munroe has created a shimmering sea of polycarbonate wonder - the over 600,000 discarded disks are placed on the ground to create this unusual art installation. The disks reflect the sun and the moonlight from the 10-acre display at Long Knoll Field in Wiltshire.
The "CD Sea" will be on public view for a full two months, after which the the cds will be sent to the recycling plant and given a new life.

The eerie yet strangely beautiful scene really proves the old adage - one man's garbage is another man's treasure. 

Posted by Anupam

Um Purses made with recycled organic felt to carry it all

Josh Jakus' Um Bags are made of one flat piece of dense wool felt (organic leftovers from industrial processes) and the unique design makes the most of the materials.

Strategically placed zippers create the form of the bags, when zipped closed, and the line lies competely flat when opened up. Great design to hold all the doo-dads that designers tend to carry around. (Make sure your exactos are locked shut)

How to Offset Carbon

So your office is sort of green- you use the right printers, buy 100% recycled paper, but you would like to offset your carbon emissions that you produce by getting to work in a car, or maybe your business is an energy guzzler and want to reduce carbon through carbon credits. Here's a basic overview of what it means to purchase carbon credits. Stay tuned for the next post on where to purchase, and how much they cost.

What is a carbon credit ? What does it mean to offset carbon ?

When people reduce their environmental footprint by buying carbon credits, they may not be actually decreasing their own wastes and carbon footprint at their immediate location. What they are doing is putting money into clean, responsible, and sustainable carbon reduction somewhere on the planet, (and perhaps not really changing the way that they do business at all. ) Now, I am all for carbon reduction, and I am a firm believer in the carbon credits industry as long as it is run responsibly.

If you think about carbon reduction at the individual level or business level, putting money into a sustainable project in another country might seem like an easy way to make your company look greener. If you, however, start to think of the earth as one entity, interconnected and dependant - then purchasing carbon reduction credits in South America does affect the overall state of the planet and, indeed, the less carbon we produce as a UNIT the better off we all are.

When a company offsets their carbon, what they are doing is making a reduction elsewhere, in order to bring their polluting practices down closer to neutral.

Carbon Reduction versus Carbon Offsetting: hypothetical situation 

(Let's substitute "number of trash bags" for "tonnes of carbon dioxide", and pretend that the number of bags of trash on the planet could affect our climate.)


If I, for example, make 100 bags of trash per week, and I want to reduce them, then I could look at my own spending and purchasing and examine my lifestyle to reduce my waste. I may recycle to become more sustainable, and in this way I reduce my weekly trash bag footprint.
(Reduction) Great. I am directly affecting how much trash bag waste I produce - in my own home or business.

If I then, realize, that even after doing my very best to reduce my trash bag footprint that I am still producing 20 trash bags a week, and I want to go "trashbag neutral."

I don't want to be responsible for changing the climate with my trash bags, but I can't exist (or keep my lifestyle) without have some trash bag emissions.

I can then pay to offset my trash bags. I can find a company, for example, that has a high production of trash bag waste. Every week they produce thousands of bags. I can pay them to change over their machines, and because of the machine I purchased, they now make 400 trash bags a week less. I have "gone trash bag neutral."

I have offset 400, and I only produce 20 - so my own trash bag waste is actually non-existant. (Not really, but the math works out that way if you add it all up, globally.)

While to some, this type of offsetting seems like "not really going neutral" - it is a great way to make an industry of a "step in the right direction." Carbon offsetting all of a sudden becomes "chargeable", and we all know that it's the money-green and not the planet-green that makes the world turn. Carbon offsetting is a unique marriage of the two worlds.

While the first company is still producing 20 bags of trash - they have also made a drastic reduction elsewhere, and if we begin to think of the earth as a globally connected entity with one atmosphere and one climate, this sort of offsetting begins to make sense. It's not so much about the "individual business" and the change that they have made, it's more about the "greater good" and the overall change.

Who can argue with a motivating factor like that ?

Recycled Wall Planters Breathe Green and Seethe Style

First shown at the 2009 Milan Furniture Fair, Maruja Fuentes "green pockets" are made of recycled ceramic and they literally bring life to functional green design. The pockets, when many are used, serve as an air filter as the plants release oxygen into the air. At the same time, the stylish fish scale shape allows interlocking and unique placement so that each person that uses the pockets can tailor the look to their tastes and create a unique pattern with plant and tile. 

Eco-Conscious Design that counts trees

This amazingly simple tissue box design by Korean designer Lukas Koh makes a bold statement by simply being. Every time you pull a tissue out of this box, it challenges you to rethink your consumption habits.
As you see those tissues declining, the filled in area of the tree decreases, and it forces one to remember where the tissues came from and what the environmental cost of those paper hankies really is.


Bold, simple, and eco-aware.

Instructions here:

Puma's Clever Bag Packaging Makes me Swoon. (Eco-Awe)

Fantastic and creative environmentally-friendlier packaging is hitting the mainstream retail world by a storm. Puma's Clever Little Bag (by Yves Behar and fuse project) cuts out extra tissues, laminated printing, and instead of using a full box inside of a big bag, the box has become the bag. Or, ehh... the bag has become a plastic box- sort of. The outer bag itself is 100% recyclable, and it has been heat fused rather than stitched. (It uses less materials in its production.) I love this bag. It's a huge step in the right direction for mainstream retail.
The box-bag gives us both things in one, and for the consumer that forgets to carry an organic cotton shopping tote, it cuts waste in half.

Colourful, thoughtful, hip - when a package makes you want to run out and buy a pair of shoes you know the company is doing something right. Inspiring !

  

Ecosia Search Engine Saves the Rainforest

What is Ecosia ?

We just found out about Ecosia, one of the coolest environmental initiatives that we have read about in awhile. Ecosia is a search engine, and like Webcrawler, Yahoo, Google and Bing before it, Ecosia offers a list of sites based on your searched keywords. (Nothing new here yet, but keep reading.)

Ecosia is our new favorite favorite. Its uniqueness is that 80% of its advertising revenue is donated directly to rainforest programs - eighty percent ! They have partnered with Yahoo, Bing and the WWF to protect rainforest in Juruena National Park in the Amazon region of Brazil.
(By WWF we mean the World Wide Fund for Nature kind, not the Hulk Hogan kind. )

Considering that the industry leader Google ranked 34 on the Fortune 500 list of most profitable companies, there’s a lot of possible advertising dollars to be scooped up by Ecosia and put into saving the earth’s oxygen powerhouse. What a breath of fresh air !

Some people will roll their eyes at the fact that Ecosia is partnered with Yahoo and Bing. In Februrary , 2010, Wired ran an article about the two companies search-swapping in an attempt to gain more market share.
It may seem like a cheap-green washing attempt at gaining a slice of the ad-revenue-search-engine pie. And it might be just that. These companies must have been looking for some solution to Google world domination.

Enter Ecosia...

...a small, unknown company from Germany. A company willing to give 80% of their revenue away for the greener good. (WWGD? What would Google Do? Keep Reading - they do more than you would think.)

It only makes sense that Ecosia jump into bed with the larger guys. Bing and Yahoo give them search results, and advertiser's links. Ecosia works like a portal into Bing or Yahoo, and sends back results from both. So, why use Ecosia ? How does it work ? How does Ecosia save the rainforest ?

If you look at their site, they have it all broken down for us. The sponsored links are pay per click links. (This is the same as all the major search engines.) If you click on a sponsored link, the owner of that "advertisement" link pays the search engine a certain amount of money for every person that lands on their site.
Even though most people don’t click on sponsored links when they are searching, some people do. Ecosia averages about 0.13 Euro cents per search. Ecosia then uses 80% of those profits and puts it towards the WWF’s initiative to protect precious rainforest area and ensure that it is not cut down.

How much rainforest is saved each time you search on Ecosia ?
Roughly 2 square meters with every search.
YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT ! 2 SQUARE METERS SAVED PER SEARCH !

Simple. Amazing. We feel good. They feel good. We love it.

What we love even more is that as more people jump on the Ecosia bandwagon, the more pressure will be put on Google (and the Bing and Yahoo companies themselves) to go even greener. They are already doing some great green things over at Google. Google has been a leader in the eco-friendly initiative and they are not lagging behind.

You, me, your friends and their friends (aka the general public) have a great opportunity here to passively do our part. In the case of the search engine green-off... the simple act of conducting your internet searches elsewhere can not only save green areas, but it could also force larger companies into doing even more for the planet.

If it’s "green" that will move searchers from one search engine to another, and eco-green that ultimately means money-green, then the great strides that have been made in the past few years in public awareness are finally paying off. Big time.

It's amazing to see large companies respond to public demand for change.

I have a feeling that we will be seeing much more of these "who's leaner and greener" campaigns. At the end of the day, this type of positive pressure to leave a size 2 carbon footprint can only have a positive outcome overall.

LET THE GREEN WARS BEGIN!