Category: Sustainable ideas for your business

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Glib green marketing gets sustainability crowd all frothed up

A digital ad campaign for Clorox Green Works mocked people who are conscious about their impact on the environment and the products and services they buy. If you’d like to see the ad, check it out on the Internet.

While many sustainability professionals are calling for boycotts of the product, perhaps what needs to be looked at more closely is the publicity people. They need to be better informed about what eco-friendly products are really all about. Continue reading “Glib green marketing gets sustainability crowd all frothed up”

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It’s people like this that give sustainability a bad name

I’m itching to tell you this story. But before I talk about it, I’d like to get some things out of the way.

Let me confess, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in sustainability projects. But like others in the business to be professional and successful in sustainability, I’ve had to sweat out worrying nights, put in hard work against skepticism, cynicism, resistance and even ridicule in selling sustainability and sustainability projects.

And it’s not only been from start-ups and small business…

With that out of the way, let me tell you a story. Continue reading “It’s people like this that give sustainability a bad name”

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Horsing around with meat is one thing but investigators should crack the whip on carrots

There’s more than meets the eye in this horse meat scandal. The shortcuts that large food producers are taking casts a spotlight on the shady practices that have been kept from public view. Substituting horsemeat for beef is despicable but finding no meat in a beef pie in Iceland is another thing. Smell a vegetarian conspiracy here?

All the fuss about substitution of beef products is important because we want to know what we are eating and paying for. But what about other foods such as bread, grains and fruit and vegetables? Continue reading “Horsing around with meat is one thing but investigators should crack the whip on carrots”

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Will energy costs break your business?

I just got back from holiday when I saw something wrong in my local shopping centre. There it was: another empty shop. A business that had run smack into the wall. It was the video shop. Now, video stores have been under threat for a number of years. A whole chain went under administration in the UK recently (528 stores employing 4,000 people). But I’m not here to talk about the reasons why video shops are collapsing (hint: the rise of e-commerce) and retail chains going under (50 folded last year in the UK alone).

Ever-rocketing energy costs didn’t force that business to close. But not caring about it may have been just one of the many indicators of laxness in the business. For example, I never once saw the owner ever in his store. Says something, doesn’t it? Continue reading “Will energy costs break your business?”

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Sustainability is a symphony, not a grouping of raving solo acts

When I was a youngster growing up near the fishing harbour at Kalk Bay, if any of us became too big for our boots or foolish, one of the boys would catch us unawares and jet chokka (squid) ink into our face.

I won’t talk about the ungenteel language that spewed out so even the seals below would look up (wondering what the commotion was all about).

Although you can’t do that sort of thing in the adult world of business – whatever the size of your business – one sometimes one feels so frustrated by what happens in practising sustainable solutions that you’d like to spray some obnoxious fumes towards all the people who are falling all over the place doing their own thing. Continue reading “Sustainability is a symphony, not a grouping of raving solo acts”