Comments on: Eco-labeling vs. greenmuting: What’s right for you?

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 01:01:56 +0000

Eco-labels are mostly a scam in my opinion. First, because we have no real idea of the environmental savings they provide, if any. All we have is a set of arbitrary rules and marketing spin. Second, eco-labels means we all get to pay a voluntary tax; a new green tax. Well, not everyone; marketing firms that sell the logo make money. In the end, the “green” movement is all about money. The big boys have found another way to get money from out of our pockets. We’ve been fooled to believe that we need to pay money to “save the planet”. We don’t even care whether or not it’s really being saved or not, we pay out of guilt. Finally, because eco-labels cost lots of money, only the big corporations have a foot in the green door and can secure the market. Very soon, it your product doesn’t have a cute pretty green logo we will not be able to sell. Say bye-bye to the small mom and pop shops. There are many other reasons why eco-labels are flawed. The more you dig the more we’ll find how corrupt it’s become. “Third-party” means nothing! Heck… “third-parties” take money for their verification services. For example, a company pays fees to Terrachoice, a for-profit firm, who will then decide if the company gets the EcoLogo logo or not, according to an auditing process they also happen to manage… Should we trust such a system just because it’s called “third party”.

By: Peter Korchnak

Peter Korchnak — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:51:27 +0000

@Peter: I hear you on the self-righteous greenies who point out environmental shortcomings of everything wherever they go while offering no constructive solutions themselves. The behavior, as well as the misunderstanding of the issues at hand, certainly give environmental sustainability a bad name. Recycle is, by priority, the last rung of the reduce-reuse-recycle ladder. Designing for reuse, well, that’s much harder to do.

How do I get me one of those brochure-frames so I can use it as an example?

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:11:29 +0000

I have a little cc-sized card I use at shows as a give-away/aide memoire.

It came about because i used to have an A5-sized effort by way of a flyer, and some beard and sandals decided its lack of clearly defined recyclability vs. all the other good things we were DOING was critical enough to create a scene about.

There was a sense of sweet vindication when, a few years later, at a similar event, this paragon of eco-priority flustered up to flex his credentials again.

‘What’s this?’ he roared.

“We like to think of it as the world’s smallest brochure,’ I suggested.

Sensing an opportunity, and an audience, he puffed up and declaimed ‘Well, I don’t see any sign that it is recycled’.

It was with some satisfaction that I was able to point out that it was actually better than that; it also had a second use. We’d designed a fun way of turning it into a wallet-sized picture frame to hold and protect passport-sized pictures.

Both an eco-statement and a reward-based, end-benefit driven marketing tool that is nestling in many a reuse-convert’s wallet to this day.

But I am sure his dogmatic, trivial, niche-interest badgering wins many converts to the eco cause too.

By: Tweets that mention Eco-labeling vs. greenmuting: What’s right for you? — Sustainable Marketing Blog -- Topsy.com

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:08:29 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by #SB10, Nikos Sarilakis, Business Coaching, phonebook, Alltop and others. Alltop said: Eco-labeling vs. greenmuting: What’s right for you? http://bit.ly/4seNre [...]