Consumers are cutting back everywhere these days, but one 2009 study shows they intend to buy as green as ever. According to the Cone 2009 Consumer Environmental Survey, 44% of US consumers say they are making the same green purchases as when their stocks were flying, and 34% are actually more likely to purchase green […]

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This was one of those ideas that made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it. You have machines to sell aluminum cans of soda and plastic bottles of water, so why not offer the same convenience for recycling your empties and getting any deposit back? Turns out a Norwegian-based company called TOMRA is all […]

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One by one, news stories are surfacing that are waking consumers up to the fragility of the globalized manufacturing chain. In China, melamine-tainted milk was responsible for six babies dying and some 300,000 cases of kidney infection. In Canada, the federal government recently placed on its list of toxic substances two silicon-based chemicals widely used […]

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These days, many corporate web sites are fairly bursting with well-intentioned fair trade, certified organic, sustainable supply-chain certification symbols. Looks great, but what does it all mean? Last week I got an e-catalogue from local clothing company Eco Apparel that answered that question. Eco Apparel is a Vancouver-based clothing manufacturer who really puts their sustainability […]

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We’ve all seen the stats. Millions of tonnes of CO2 here, billions of plastic bottles there. Pretty soon it’s all just a sea of number soup. Until you see the work of Seattle photographer Chris Jordan. The image above, for instance, looks like a forest of conduits or ductwork – until you realize that it […]

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You’ve printed your brochure on 100% post-consumer recycled stock. Your factory buys energy from a renewable supplier. Your fleet runs on biodiesel sourced from oil that was only used to fry organic, locally-grown potatoes. Now it’s time to do your media plan. This is no time to hang up your green values, but where do […]

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It’s a product whose time has come. Overdue, actually, if you consider how many restaurants, foodservice establishments and food packagers are still stuck in the world of plastic and Styrofoam. Vancouver based BSI (Biodegradable Solutions Inc) has been steadily growing in this market since 2002, and they now offer a whole line of 100% biodegradable […]

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It’s a war of words out there, even in the green world. We all know that search engine optimization (or SEO) is a hot topic  these days, with everyone competing to get their sites onto page one of a Google search. So what are people searching for when it comes to all things green and […]

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The logical vs. emotional question has been debated in smoky ad agency back rooms since back room smoking was actually allowed. So what does this have to do with marketing a solar-powered beer fridge? Well, that’s really just a fake product ad I created to illustrate a theory I discovered in a recent online article […]

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June 25, 2008, Canada’s Federal Government announced new regulations for the labeling of goods making environmental or sustainability claims. As many products and companies are stampeding to the Green Frontier with nothing more eco-friendly than their slogans, we at Green Briefs took a closer look at the 63-page PDF document entitled ‘Environmental claims: A guide […]

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