Here’s one great brand idea. Take the 100-Mile Diet concept, and become the online source for finding lifestyle products in that category. That’s the premise behind ShantiGreen. Their booth showed off some genuinely interesting products (who knew there was a local Lower Mainland source for stainless water bottles?) Green Briefs Marketing Thoughts: Great idea, wrong […]

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This booth was staffed by people so friendly the even offered me a piece of their pizza. And overall their show presence was very consistent with their logo, colours and branding. As I was looking for some cleaner, I almost bought a bottle of their concentrated stuff, as the rep gave me a whiff of […]

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This is one of my favourite all-time brands. (At least from a functionality perspective) I have searched for and discovered many treasures there, as well as dropping off numerous items of my own that I hope have found their own second lives with other bargain-hunters. It made perfect sense to me that they should have […]

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This shot has been circulating around the blogosphere for a while, but it’s too good not to share. This is obviously a home-made contraption, and it’s doubtful it would be that effective in its current incarnation, but the sheer popularity of the idea and its catchy name lead me to believe its a product just […]

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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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In 1995, a young diver named Chad Pregracke decided to clean up the Mississippi River – armed with just one boat and a boatload of nerve. His organization, Living Lands and Waters, has since grown into a national crusade, with thousands of volunteers picking up millions of pounds of garbage from America’s waterways. Vancouver-based Hemlock […]

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I was wandering blissfully through my local supermarket when a magazine caught my eye. ‘Junk Beautiful’ it proudly proclaimed. And with its clean, well-styled photography, and a decent design, this magazine/DVD bundle actually does fair justice to its title. What’s more, it has lessons for any company that is facing recession pressure. Now, I am […]

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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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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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The global financial meltdown has hit the green movement hard, right here in our back yard. Everything that goes into your blue box for recycling is sold to mills, usually offshore, who process it and sell it to the factories that make the cheap consumer goods we love. This works well when commodity prices and […]

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