sustainability

Examples of Green Marketing: 7 Ways to Support Sustainability Seekers with Content

Examples of Green Marketing: 7 Ways to Support Sustainability Seekers with Content

“Look for opportunity amongst adversity,” reads the 9th piece of advice from a Harvard Business Review article. In this way, we’re also looking for opportunities to help others switch gears, finish new projects, and re-pivot to meet demands. A great example of this is the social video platform Kuaishou which partnered with the Ministry of Education to launch a national online cloud classroom. These are the creative ways to support and educate those seeking sustainability.

Here are 7 digital actions an environmental business can leverage right now to build a more solid fountain for marketing and sales.

1 – Write a whitepaper on your eco product or service

Eco-focused CEOs are underrepresented when it comes to environmentally-focused white papers. Now is a great time to change this and increase the level of knowledge on various environmental solutions and why they were created and placed on the market. Blockchain startups have taken the white paper to be a standard. The Environmental Business Sector can learn more from this example. White papers are an excellent opportunity to spell out the background and functionality of your environmental solutions. Power Ledger gives an excellent example of how it’s done. See the Power Ledger Whitepaper.

Write a whitepaper on your eco product or service

2 – Build your library of eco case studies

A great educational tool can be case studies. Case studies help deliver on the proof of concept for environmental solutions. Case Studies guide B2B and B2C buyers to the successful outcomes they’re looking to achieve. A simple formula for drafting your case studies is to highlight the client via 1) the situation, 2) the impact, and 3) the outcome. Great case studies tell a story and can quickly help readers adopt the offered environmental solution. The frequent publishing of case studies also supports excellent SEO. FloWater serves as an excellent example of the use of case studies. FloWater highlights the impact made for improving wellness and quashing single-use plastic bottled water. Way to go, FloWater (and Lululemon)!

Build your library of eco case studies | A.R. Marketing House

3 – Finish that book on sustainability the world has been waiting for

During significant change lies an opportunity for eco-founders to take their ideas and spread them while the world is open to new ways of living and working. Whether it be a reuse revolution or renewable energy education, environmental leaders deciding to pick up the pen is more a matter of opportunity, inspiration, and timing right now. Spending a couple of hours a day writing a book that supports the ecological movement forward could be an excellent trade for commute hours.

An example of a coupled must-read book and subsequent solution to our cradle-to-grave problem is Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by Michael Braungart and William McDonough and the Cradle to Cradle Certification Website.

cradle to cradle | AR Marketing House C2C Certification | A.R. Marketing House

4 – Develop that resources page on your website

If your team has always thought about developing resources housed in a helpful section of your website, it’s a great time to build your website resources page. Whether you offer calculators, checklists, or any collection of useful downloads or links, having one centralized place where this information is stored will vastly help your audience grab the info they need quickly. Even if your resources page is downloadable, readers can keep it with them and have quick access on their desktop; your brand will be top of mind each time a user finds its value.

An excellent example is a resource guide created by Youth and Environmental Europe for Uniting Youth for Ecotourism.

Uniting Youth for Eco Tourism | A.R. Marketing House

5 – Advocate and educate policymakers for a sustainable future

Think your voice doesn’t make a difference? Think again; as a sustainable business, your voice is critical because you represent the bridge for environmental policies and commerce. With more entrepreneurs taking charge of solving social and ecological issues with market solutions, the lobbying force for environmental issues supported by businesses is immense. A great example of that is the American Sustainable Business Council, which serves public policy interest for 250,000 responsible companies. As laws rapidly change, now is a great time to get involved with public policy to help guide those changes on the right course, whether through direct policy influencing or through a firm that assists with these efforts.

One shining star in the world of retail meets activism is Patagonia. From their homepage, you can see what is most important to the company in four simple menu options: Shop, Activism, Sports, and Stories.

patagonia activism | A.R Marketing House

When you dive a little deeper, you can see that Patagonia is working on issues that lead its target audience into education and action, showing its genuine interest in making the world better. Patagonia is working beyond making clothes. Highlighting Environmental justice issues like oil drilling in Los Angeles communities of color to a level of importance is not often seen in sustainable luxury brands. The environmental policy team at Patagonia understands that if we aren’t working together to protect each other and solve environmental problems together through political action, we won’t get very far.

Are you inspired to make environmental and political action a more significant part of your business? Get inspired by participating in Patagonia’s activism page. Contact our team to help strategize a plan tailored to the environmental issues your company wants to elevate, sway, and build a movement for.

Patagonia Activism | A.R. Marketing House

6 – Develop your forward-thinking app

In light of recent circumstances, every business has had to adjust, revise, and pivot toward a new future. Undoubtedly, digital innovation for sustainable brands will be vital for future growth. The world could use more apps that help people make better choices, get easy-access education, and keep things moving for a healthier path.

A fantastic app that helps keep environmental reporting organized and up to speed is Wildnote, created by Kristen Hazard.

Wildnote environmental app | A.R. Marketing House

7 – Engage your Team with tailored training on sustainability

While your team may work a little differently these days, sustainability initiatives are forging ahead. The most important topic on the mind of sustainability directors is how to support employees in their journey toward environmental literacy.

support employees in environmental literacy | A.R. Marketing House

Sustainability Executives asked, and the A.R. Marketing House Team listened. We are currently developing a helpful resource to assist employees on their sustainable journey to support the successful accomplishment of sustainability initiatives. If you’d like to stay updated on the best way to engage employees to support sustainability initiatives. Sign up here!

If your eco-business is ready to take action and flex your digital content muscle, we’re here to help. Growing your sustainable brand’s online presence through creative, helpful, environmental content is a move for solidifying a long-term hold. While there are many forms to explore, starting with a strategy and education on your website is vital. Connect with our team, and we’ll make your content journey exciting and effective.

Posted by ARMarketingHouse in Blog, Environmental
7 Circular Economy Innovations that Solve Food Waste

7 Circular Economy Innovations that Solve Food Waste

Raising awareness and education for solutions to food waste

Creative minds are seeking opportunities to make things right when it comes to the absurdity of food waste. Some social entrepreneurs are looking to implement efficiencies as they come across waste in their particular areas of concern. Others are looking for solutions to waste issues that they stumble across and feel a calling to solve.

At A.R. Marketing House, we work with companies making a difference with much needed innovations that seem so obvious; you wonder why you didn’t think of it first. Their ideas allow for unique ways to profit from a mission to reduce waste and help the environment in various ways.

Here are some food waste solutions bringing real change to our world.

 

Food Waste

LOOP Mission food waste solutions | A.R. Marketing House

LOOP Mission are the creators of cold-pressed juices and unique beers. They also supply high fiber pulp residue that eventually becomes doggy snacks.

 

LOOP Mission food waste pioneers | A.R. Marketing House

 

LOOP works on the concept of capturing blemished, stock imbalanced, or rejected vegetables and fruits to create a variety of juices that are put through a process called pascalization (sterilization via pressure) rather than the common use of pasteurization (sterilization via heat). Oh, and they even use day-old bread for making fruity spirits and sour beers.

The components for LOOP products are collected before companies like Mucci Farms in Ontario and Courchesne Larose in Montreal, Canada is forced to send perfectly tasty and healthy yet imperfect looking produce to landfills.

LOOP Mission is based in Montreal, Canada. LOOP is a favored name for other companies using similar concepts regarding circular economic business models and concepts. So keep LOOP and Mission together when searching the company. These entrepreneurs saw the massive waste in the agricultural industry and came together to do something about it. Thus was born the “Rescue Squad” looking to save those fruits and vegetables that food banks couldn’t handle and turn them into cold-pressed magic.

The creative minds at LOOP Mission and their “Rescue” concept are having a positive environmental, as well as an economic impact. Older shared statistics show LOOP Mission’s impact as follows:

  • 2,580 GHG emissions avoided
  • 271,160,022 liters of water saved
  • 835,466 slices of bread rescued

Now LOOP is rescuing potato scraps to make a lime and ginger gin as well as soap from, guess what, “rescued” overstocked vegetable oils.

 

LOOP is a circular economy project | A.R. Marketing House

 

This is an idea and a company that needs to spread across the Americas and the world.

 

Solving Social Waste

 

Wize Monkey stabilizing those many coffee farms | A.R. Marketing House

 

Wize Monkey is based in Vancouver, Canada looking to resurrect and spread the use of coffee leaves to make a healthy award-winning tea. Their waste is more socio-economic than the usual waste saving model that we generally think of. Wize Monkey’s project revolves around rescuing human lives, minds and stabilizing those many coffee farms where we get that nice jolt of joe.

Wize Monkey found a wonderful surprise – coffee leaves make a tasty, healthy beverage. Coffee with leaves? Not exactly, these are leaves being brewed to give a variety of wonderful flavors like tea like Jasmine, even Earl Grey. You get a nice subtle kick. But you get more with Coffee Leaf Tea, and we don’t mean just an AWARD Winner, you get a concept that keeps workers in the fields year-round. You get stomachs saved from near starvation as families migrate, looking for ways to put food on the table when the coffee harvesting season is over. Children get a chance to grow in a stable home and have more fulfilling lives. Best of all, you support help reduce waste and “stabilize” economies in coffee-growing countries.

Wize Monkey started in 2014. They now have customers in 35 countries. Not bad for what actually started as a business class assignment.

They are based happily in the wonderful city of Vancouver, Canada. How do they get coffee leaves in Canada? Good question – Wize Monkey currently teams with a major coffee grower in Nicaragua in Central America. From this farm, the plants are grown, cultivated, processed, and then the leaves are shipped off to Vancouver.

After discovering the benefits of using the leaves from coffee plants for tea, Wize Monkey is looking to turn the seasonal nature of coffee farms into year-round operations, stabilizing life for farmers and the workers who supply this valuable bean to the world. Now, this innovative product can help overcome fluctuating prices that coffee bean growers regularly encounter. Putting the leaves to use gives the farmers a new source of income, adding an important socio-economic element to this struggling country.

Next comes getting the 25 million coffee farmers worldwide on board. Imagine if they too had flat rates for their leaves? Imagine if these producers and workers got a fair share of their piece of the action? Imagine drinking one of their tasty teas and thinking healthy thoughts. For more info, refer to the Wize Monkey impact page.

 

Repurposing and partnering with Nonprofits

Big Wheel Burger fryer oil converted to biodiesel | A.R. Marketing House

 

 

Big Wheel Burger. What a great thought, french fries that fuel. The name is not an indication of the size and shape of their burgers. It’s a reference to something much cooler – the company’s fryer oil that gets converted to biodiesel by another local company Cowichan Biodiesel.

Actually, Big Wheel’s main point of pride is making delicious food. They have taken a hint from the climate crisis and look to have a positive impact on the environment while still making great fast food.

From their home on Vancouver Island, the influences of trying to create a circular economy are strong. Big Wheel Burger refers to itself as Canada’s first carbon-neutral fast food restaurant. Their quality classic American Cheese Burger comes with a twist. They try to surround it with compostable containers and a commitment to keep their area trash free. They have partnered with Food Eco District (FED) that works with local restaurants to reduce their impact on the environment. They try to see that those pesky single-use items get to become compost in the FED garden.

Big Wheel Burger was committed to becoming carbon neutral from its inception. Their kitchens were set up with high-efficiency appliances, fryers, and fridges.

A tasty operation. Check out their site. Tell me, could your city use a sustainable and innovative burger business that helps fuel vehicles?

 

Upcycling an East Asian winner

Renewal Mill flour Superfood | A.R. Marketing House

 

Renewal Mill is an Oakland, California based company looking to introduce the American public to a flour that could be termed a Superfood. Yes, they want to reduce global waste by upcycling the soybean pulp left after tofu and soymilk are processed. Okara, an ancient child of the soybean, so prominent in East Asia, has long been given a second life. Renewal Mill is looking to take this poor cousin and turn it into a variety of tasty and nutritious items with multiple levels of benefit. How about that? Upcycle what might be waste and bring on a healthy impact while you are at it.

Renewal Mill captures and dries the pulp left in the tofu process and makes a healthy, flexible flour that challenges the food waste syndrome and upcycles the former burden into a valuable product.

Farmers, the original creators of the circular economic system, never let anything go to waste. Renewal Mill has captured this concept to find a sustainable use for this “shell” (pulp) and repurposes the pulp of the soybean by drying it out and converting the Okara into a flour.

Renewal Mill is looking to expand on this ancient East Asian product and other products that can be salvaged from the waste stream and turned into a valuable and healthy benefit to society. What is most unique are the plans to grow and spread this concept of repurposing food by-products. Starting with a partnership with another Bay Area company Hodo Foods; spreading the idea of how good their flour is with Chocolate Chip Cookies and looking to spread a business model, Claire Schlemme founder and CEO of Renewal Mill calls “co-location” which is a “plug and play model” with tofu makers around the country. Watch next, for pancake mix and pasta hitting shelves near you.

 

An Upcycling Team Member

Hodo Foods a partner of Renewal Mills | A.R. Marketing House

 

Hodo Foods, a partner of Renewal Mills, is an organic tofu maker and pulp supplier for Renewal. They are known for their top quality organic plant-based hand-crafted food and as masters of wonderful tofu.

Like Renewal Mills, Hodo hopes to save 100% of their raw material and have this burden turned into upcycled tasty edible alternatives. This Oakland, California neighbor was giving 5 to 10% of their leftover pulp to Renewal Mills, and that should grow since Renewal Mills pays far more than they get for animal feed at local dairies.

Check out Hodo and their great tasty plant-based foods. They are strong supporters of a circular economy and look to put quick, tasty food on your plate via upcycling a concept that needs to grow.

 

Repurpose and Upcycle

Regrained Repurpose and Upcycle | A.R. Marketing House

 

Regrained is a product that blossomed from a couple of adventurous and some creative minds. No doubt, they said, “whoa” when they found that the grain used in the brewing process to make beer takes out the sugar—leaving behind protein, fiber, and micronutrients that could be made into a flour called “SuperGrain+” and incorporated into snack bars. Repurpose. Don’t waste. Upcycle.

Yes, Regrained is a great concept. Their nutrition bars are as they say “upcycled grain” that crushes food waste. Grains leftover from the beer brewing process get made into healthy, tasty, and delightfully flavored bars and puffs.

These young food entrepreneurs, discovered as college-age home-brewers, that researchers had found brewer grains actually had wonderful nutritional value. Imagine all the breweries creating a magical supply ready to be rescued “ left-overs” or as they like to imagine “harvested.” Another upcycle winner. The beer-making process leaves 1 lb of nutritious grain for every 6 pack.

This company from California’s Bay Area grabs those spent grains from the beer brewing process and turns those fibers into a food source that just happens to promote digestive health.

Regrained got help from the USDA and an innovative patent-pending process that creates flavorful, nutritious snacks. Regained is finding a way to reduce waste while handing out a Superfood to those interested in keeping the old gut happy.

 

A Needed Rescue Operation

Copia is a company looking to make hunger, history | A.R. Marketing House

 

Copia is a company looking to make hunger, history. They strive to make healthy food more accessible to people in need before it ends up getting wasted. In their eyes, food waste is a logistics problem, and they are there to help businesses and nonprofits redistribute high-quality excess food to people in need.

Copia takes a slick approach to find food for those in need. Copia says we waste three times more food than there are mouths to feed. This is shocking. Their game is rebalancing food distribution. Organizations have banquets, meetings, etc. and extra high-quality food is left unused. Copia’s unique idea is executed via a Mobile APP. The donating company or organization contacts Copia when there is excess food, and Copia ensures that perfectly good food gets to nearby nonprofits. Technology helps to make amazing things happen when driven by companies like Copia.

At its core, Copia rescues food from going to waste, but they actually do much more. The technology can help what tax deductions might be available from their food donations. Restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and even corporate cafeterias can link with Copia to see their donations efficiently transferred to areas of need.

They have been centered in the San Francisco Bay area, but are hoping to take their model nationally, even internationally.

Copia is a for-profit, conscious business that hates waste like the rest of us. Copia was created to smooth the way to reduce waste and hunger by seamlessly feeding communities in need.

Conclusion:

These are just a few companies using ideas to solve concerns and go far beyond a profit motive.

Marketing sustainable solutions through education are incredibly important to the promotion and implementation of food waste solutions. The more we educate on various waste issues we face today, the greater we open the creative gap for innovations to be sparked and supported. When people are more informed on these key environmental issues, the more influence important companies such as these will have. There is power in education and power in the numbers that are educated.

As a team of environmental science and marketing professionals, we carefully vet and partner with environmental solution-based companies high on the sustainability spectrum. Having a hybrid of experience in understanding the science behind environmental solutions coupled with a marketing and education perspective we discovered that marketing for green businesses looks and feels different, and when put into action brings environmental content marketing approaches bringing ROI to a higher level and can open doors for new innovation and industry change.

 

Looking for support for your marketing team, breaking down your solutions to add power to your message, we’d love to chat.

 

 

 

References:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/15/470434247/these-27-solutions-could-help-the-u-s-slash-food-waste

https://www.refed.com/downloads/Restaurant_Guide_Web.pdf

https://www.refed.com/?sort=economic-value-per-ton

https://medium.com/social-good-of-silicon-valley/introducing-komal-ahmad-copia-poverty-9c61589a181c

Posted by ARMarketingHouse in Blog
$1 Trillion Market Share for Companies That Educate on Sustainability

$1 Trillion Market Share for Companies That Educate on Sustainability

A Lesson in Environmental Education-Based Marketing

“A $1 trillion market opportunity exists for companies that can successfully explain their sustainability efforts to consumers, according to a study from Unilever.” – Baldino, 2017.

 

Often, companies separate educational efforts from marketing efforts. These two things are seen as part of different “buckets” or departments. What happens when a green business who truly offers sustainable solutions doesn’t implement Environmental Marketing? They fail. They fail to realize that in order to have a successful marketing campaign; they will need an educated consumer/buyer. They fail at utilizing the one asset uniquely placed in their possession worth literally $1 trillion dollars (current market gap) that bigger greenwashed brands can never compete with. This is, the ability to be transparent, the ability to tell the truth, the ability to educate.

 

Education-based marketing is not a new concept; it’s something that has been done in the early years of John Deere and other companies that saw the value in a people-centric movement and discovered where their brand could create that connection, a connection which keeps on giving and thus, lasts. These companies who’ve invested in people, in educating them, in engaging them in a genuine way beyond a basic ad, beyond a PR stunt, beyond an influencer campaign, or even beyond traditional marketing itself, have been in business for nearly 200 hundred years. They were built on the idea of community enrichment, offering the best solutions, and ultimately support and education.

 

Environmental Marketing goes far beyond the greenwashing efforts we see today that fall flat in every way possible. People, especially Millennials, are not buying the plastic pitch anymore, no matter how hard coke tries to spin plastic jeans into an environmental campaign. There is no real movement of people because there is no real movement; turning plastic into jeans as a “green campaign” is merely greenwashing. Say that three times quickly. Try as they may, greenwashed corporate brands are a) falling flat on their promises and b) tanking trust with consumers on green efforts.

 

 

armarketinghouse environmental marketing

 

 

Market value for B2B and B2C sustainability solutions exceed the trillion-dollar mark. In the summer of 2019, the largest living generation switched from the Baby Boomer Generation to Millenials, who value sustainability at a rate higher than any other generation thus far. Millennials are the most educated generation in U.S. history, and therefore pay great heed to brands that help them learn more, uplift their quality of life, and lower their impact on their environment.

 

This is where the value of environmental education comes in. It’s a much bigger picture agenda and moves beyond the thinking of a “marketing strategy.” It’s an embedded ethos for a green company, their offerings, and is a pathway to make genuine shifts for the betterment of our environment and economy.

 

What is Green Content Marketing? 

Green Content Marketing is a type of content marketing that includes environmental education and awareness as an integral part of a marketing campaign aimed to raise the knowledge level of average consumers about environmental issues; not greenwashing.

 

Why the $1 Trillion Gaps Exists for Brands & Consumers

Environmental degradation is on a steep incline, and so are the news stories that cover issues such as climate change events, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and China’s ban on importing plastic garbage. With this increase in awareness of the environmental problems plaguing our planet, the motivation for solving these problems is also on the rise. It may be challenging to solve such large-scale problems. However, most people realize that many of these issues are human-caused and can be course-corrected with the right choices moving forward. Increasingly, people are beginning to see that their purchasing habits are supporting a system of environmental degradation. The motivation to make changes on these issues comes from education and options to change their ways. However, marketing in the form of effective, transparent environmental education is lacking for consumers to make educated decisions. So, they sit on the sidelines and look away while major brands greenwash. This leaves us with an 80% plus group of eager to buy consumers, unable to get the information they need to make better choices.

 

The reasons consumers are in desperate need for environmental education

  • Consumers are tired of greenwashing and are looking for real solutions
  • There’s a desire to make better choices, without the knowledge to effectively do so
  • There’s a lack of in-depth environmental education in K-12 schools
  • Complacent media that spotlights soundbites, instead of genuine environmental issues
  • Tired greenwashed marketing by major brands is becoming outdated
  • Consumers want to connect with unsung green hero businesses that are truly solving environmental problems
  • Millennials who are now the largest adult population, value education, and value companies who effectively deliver it

 

Plastic Waste Disaster

 

The Value of Environmental Education

  • Uses marketing dollars for education and increases public good
  • Millennials value sustainable brands that can convey their solutions
  • Millennials value education and brands that can deliver a genuine and informative marketing message
  • Uplifts a brand into the territory of genuine problem solvers
  • Goes beyond the confines of greenwashing
  • Can be used as a vehicle for grassroots lobbying efforts
  • Drives down PR and Advertising dollars as consumers begin to seek out and uplift your brand

 

Conclusion: Environmental Problem Solving & Big Returns Go Hand-in-Hand, Every Environmental Company Must Commit to Environmental Education for B2B and B2C Customers

It is not enough for a marketing or PR agency to think you have a “great” product and want to take your company on as a client because they believe in your cause. Often, this is the downfall of many marketing relationships for green companies. Marketers must go beyond the feel-good factor for green products and elevate above sustainability as a sound bite. The bigger picture environmental issues behind a product or service must be deeply and scientifically understood, lest great marketers take on greenwashed products and create the same planetary mess we’re in today. What must be understood deeply are the enormous impacts businesses are having on biodiversity, ecosystem health, weather patterns, cradle to grave, and environmental justice issues, to name a few.

 

Want to learn more?

[su_button url=”https://armarketinghouse.com/form-to-download-the-white-paper/” target=”blank” style=”flat” background=”#dcae1d” size=”7″]DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER[/su_button]

 

We hope this article allows you to consider how your environmentally-focused business or organization can build a pathway to the $1 trillion market opportunity with the utmost integrity. If you are looking for a dedicated team or for help to support your current team, we’re here to build out your journey. Give us a shout and let’s get to work! People and the planet are desperately waiting.

 

Resources

https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2017/report-shows-a-third-of-consumers-prefer-sustainable-brands.html

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rubbish-jeans-levis-plastic-fashion

 

Posted by ARMarketingHouse in Environmental