Vampire Energy Costing Us $3 Billion A Year!

Good Magazine has a great graphic depicting the economic implications of leaving appliances plugged in for an entire year. We all know that a minuscule amount of energy is being consumed just by leaving a device plugged in - but, an average consumer with a reasonable electronics collection will waste around $300 leaving all those gadgets plugged in year round. Thats 2,500 kilowatt hours completely wasted!

In a recent research published by the Energy Saving Trust they’ve calculated that if one mobile phone charger per household in the UK is left on standby, the energy wasted is enough to provide the electricity needs of 66,000 homes for one year.

Those of you with a plasma TVs, take notice…

Story via the fantastic PSFK

Earthwatch Volunteer Open Day

Details of the open day provided by Simon Laman from Earthwatch:

Date: Saturday 12th January, 10am - 1pm

Venue: Earthwatch Oxford Offices, Prama House, 267 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7HT, UK

This is intended for those of you who are new to Earthwatch, and/or have never been on an Earthwatch project before. You will be given the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the many expeditions on our programme, chat with past volunteers, and talk through the specifics of volunteering with our experienced staff.

Admission is free, although you should ask for your ticket in advance, as numbers will be strictly limited. Coffee, tea, soft drinks and biscuits will be freely available on the day.

See the Earthwatch website for more information.

For a full programme, please call +44 (0)1865 318856 or email events@earthwatch.org.uk

Plumen: Beautiful Energy Efficient Light Bulbs

Ever asked yourself why what you can call ‘green aesthetics’ are so unimaginative? Best case in point is energy-efficient light bulbs - why are they so generically bad looking?

Well, not any more thanks to Hulger Design that decided to marry beauty, personality and low-energy light bulbs in their Plumen Project. And the result is simply stunning. It’s still in prototype but will soon be available for purchase.

We need more ideas like that!

Read more here:  Kevin Roberts - CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide on sustainable design

Consume Less

Recently I had been sent a e-mail with a link to this wonderful video that explained that as consumers most of us don’t see or see too little of what the big picture has to tell us about what the real cost of what it takes to produce a product in terms of money, content and pollution to create and make a item we see in a store.

There are five steps in the process of creating product. First there is extraction of natural resources next comes the process of production made from the natural resources, chemicals etc. then comes distribution at your local stores which leads people to consume or buy a product and finally the disposal of the product. This short video digs deeper into these five steps in making and distributing from life to death of a product. The short movie with Annie Leonard is about 20 minutes long which you can see at The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard also on their web page you can watch, download the video which is about 55mb in size, or you can even buy a DVD with this video for $10. I recommend this video for everyone to watch especially for the real consumers that keep buying products more than what the average person may buy in a given month or year. Spread the word about this video it may even get you thinking about what you even buy for the holidays, birthdays party’s or even things you buy for your own self.

Guest Editor: Richard Rhodes - Shocking: Why won’t airlines let you clean up your C02 pollution?

Here at e-photoframes, UK photo frame retailer with an ethical twist, we recently produced a shocking report on the response of the worlds airlines to climate change.

They have a penchant for big boys’ toys jammed packed with high tech gadgets; They’re a by-word for safe travel and their concern for your well being is so sincere that they’ll even get a pretty girl to show you how to secure your belt. Why do you think so many guys like to take the plane rather than use the conference phone? And despite the heavy conscience and wizzy technology, they’re helping to fly us to
oblivion.

Airlines are responsible for 3% of global C02 emissions (per the European Commission) and yet of 374 listed airlines in the English speaking world, only 24 offer passengers the opportunity to buy carbon offsets. Self service cleaning (i.e. being responsible for your own CO2 emissions) would be a start but most airlines are happy to clean the gangway and indeed the toilet, so how about the air we breath? Only one single airline in the English speaking world has taken the plunge: A seaplane operator from Canada.

The survey looked at the carbon offset policies published on each airline’s websites in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India. In total 374 websites were reviewed. All airlines without a policy were e-mailed to verify that the data was correct. Only a handful responded. The most amusing of which, gave a full list of duty free products available in flight! Take the US with 175 listed airlines (with websites). Now make sure your seat is upright and you’re strapped in: Only 2 of those airlines sell carbon offsets! The UK is currently top of the class with 16% of airlines offering offsets (including all the big ones) but still fails to attain the pass mark, which should be set at 100%. India has 18 airlines listed without a single offset policy among them. Frightening when you consider the growth in air travel that is now taking place in the developing world.

So what to do? Consider the response to cigarettes, another luxury good that pollutes the air and can have a long term impact on your health. Perhaps labelling aeroplanes with images of pending catastrophe is going too far, and “no flying” signs would pose practical problems, but taxing luxury goods is standard fare for governments. Can it really be that that difficult?

Follow this link to read the full Airline & Carbon Offset report

A Blind Call

This is a bit off the classic green campaign (more of an ethical/charity campaign) but i find it brilliant nevertheless.

We all do it every now and then: forget to lock our phone’s keypad and accidentally call the first person on our contact list. Usually some unlucky person by the name of Asi or Abigail (or Armani if you’re well connected ;-)).

Belgian ad agency Duval Guillaume came up with a clever campaign that turns accidental calls into accidental donations to the Belgian League for the Blind. They’re asking people to add ‘A Blind Call’ to their list of contacts (for those of you in Belgium, the phone number is 070 222260). Every time the number is called, A Blind Call is given a cut of the call’s proceeds. Calls are cut off after 30 seconds, and the cost to the dialler is never more than EUR 0.75.

Not only will the proceeds help the League for the Blind fund useful projects and research for sight-impaired people, every Alice, Alan and Abdullah will be spared a few coat-pocket soundtracks.

Border genius - I wish I had thought about it…

Check it here (In French/Dutch)

Story via Springwise

Buy One Plant One Tree

Innocent is a brand that ‘gets it’ for so long now that we at the marketing planning/strategy community almost hate them for being so good…(na…we’re just jealous we really love them so very much). Unlike so many others that jump on the greenwagon, sustainability is ‘built into’ Innocent products and brand since day one and ever since they keep leading.

And now they’ve done it again with a brilliantly simple campaign : Buy One, Get One Tree

Buy One, Get One Tree is a lovely initiative where they plant a tree for every carton of innocent smoothie you buy and there’s a virtual forest where you can see your trees and a treeometer to see how many have been planted.

There’s even a widget for your blog to show how many you’ve planted by proxy.

From an engagement (one of the hottest buzz words of recent years) marketing point of view it is just oh so smart as you actually need to register the number on the pack to plant your tree, which means that they encourage you, the customer, to actively do some goodness by logging on the website and ‘plant’ your tree.

Kudos to you Innocent!

100 Ways To Save The Planet Video

GreenGirlsGlobal have written about the free 100 Ways to Save The Planet eBook which was written by Adam over at our usual website. As not everyone likes to read we’ve turned it into a video. It’s (hopefully) a reasonably short, nice, relaxing watch and another way to get the message out there. Please feel free to send it to anyone and everyone. The link is: http://www.revver.com/watch/501547/.

Not everyone will agree with the points made and some of them are vague and loose as we couldn’t fit more text on there (and have the ebook anyway), so it would be great to hear your comments and any feedback that you have.

Due to feedback we already have from the eBook, we’re now working on the next generation of the 100 Ways which will be followed up by a new, improved version of the eBook in the months to come - there’s no end to the ways you can go green!