Session 2: Measuring Your Social Footprint Mark McElroy, Executive Director, Chief Sustainability Officer, The Center for Sustainable Innovation  Every once in a while I feel like I’m back in school. This session was thick with black-on-white arial-font powerpoint slides, complex theories and TLA’s* (*Three Letter Acronyms), unfortunately scheduled during my usual afternoon digestive nap-time. Before […]

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Monday June 2, Session 1: Desirability & Sustainability: The opportunity for brand and design Steve Bishop, IDEO – Design firm based in Palo Alto – 8 offices, 500 people www.ideo.com Green Briefs readers who wanted to send me to this event: 27.3% (first place in category)   This session started off right away with a brainstorming […]

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Thanks to everyone who answered the survey on what I should see and blog about from Sustainable Brands 08. Here are the winners. (Stay tuned to see if I actually listen!) Monday June 2: Morning: Desirability and Sustainability: the Opportunity for Brand and Design – 26.1% Afternoon: Measuring Your Social Footprint – 13.1% Tuesday June 3: […]

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So what would YOU choose to go see at Sustainable Brands 08? The issues are broad and diverse: Sustainable design, the social footprint, retaining talent, green building, de-commoditizing, re-branding, sustainable packaging, green wine, greenwash… how to decide? What the heck, unlike most North American Governments, I’m willing to try democracy. I elect YOU, my fearless […]

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I began my pre-trip journey on the Carbon Footprint calculator, adding up the emissions for my various travel options from Vancouver BC to Monterey CA. Distance: 2,810 km CO2 emissions if traveling by air: .67 tonnes CO2 emissions if traveling by car (@ 9L/100km): .586 tonnes CO2 emissions if traveling by rail: .169 tonnes (about the weight of my carry-on) This made […]

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When I presented at an OpenDialogue conference in Toronto last year, I did a fair bit of research into green consumers. Turns out they are just like everybody else: completely different. From the deep green RAW NUTZ (Righteous And Willing Nature Unspoiling Total Zealots) to the fuzzy MOSS (Masses Of Sustainable Starters) and even the […]

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The Green Party of Canada, and Deputy Leader Adriane Carr came to Unicycle Creative looking for help with handout materials for a by-election in Vancouver Quadra. They had a large amount of climate change data and a fresh platform document from Ottawa posted on the national Green Party web site. The Insight With our agency […]

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Reviewing a number of green consumer studies, I discovered a majority group the types into five basic categories. Do researchers use the same software? Or do we simply like things we can count on one hand? Whatever the reason, we here at Green Briefs Department of Gross Oversimplification saw a golden opportunity to offer our […]

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When the public thinks of advertising, they often have a polarized point of view. 1. They hate advertising and it never works on them 2. They love and remember a certain ad and it’s usually a funny one. Yet not all campaigns are ripe for humour. So where is it most effective? Use humour to: […]

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This article originally appeared in Marketing Magazine June 11, 2007 – These days it seems you can’t swing an endangered sea turtle without hitting an article, news item, book or celebrity endorsement of the world’s new-found environmental awareness. But when the green-tinted dust settles, what will it all really mean to our global economy–and more […]

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