Earth Friendly Shopping

We are always looking for ways to lessen our impact on the environment, and to improve our health.

It turns out that you can do both at the same time. Lowering the carbon footprint of your diet will also result in a healthier, lower fat, and lower cholesterol diet.

The problem is significant. Food now travels the globe in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

There are estimates that up to 30% of greenhouse gases are a result of the food system.  Among the key contributors

• Methane gas produced by cows and sheep
• Nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizers and animal waste
• CO2 from the processing and transport of food

Transport, at this time is a small, but growing portion of the total.

The European Union, the world’s leading food importer, has increased imports 20 percent in the last five years. The value of fresh fruit and vegetables imported by the United States, in second place, nearly doubled from 2000 to 2006.

The increasing mobility of food has brought many  benefits, more varied diets, better nutrition, and income to some of the poorer areas of the world.  Not only that, but as consumers, we enjoy fresh fruits and vegetable available all year.   Kiwi fruit are now grown in New Zealand, Italy, or Iran.  The result? Kiwis all year.

But the mobility of food, comes with a price tag, pollution and increased emissions of  greenhouse gases.   Transporting fresh food usually needs to be done by air, which is the least fuel efficient method of transport,  and often require refrigeration, adding to the carbon footprint.

The problem is being attacked in several directions.

• The EU is considering a number of moves, such as including freight carrying flights into and out of the EU in their emissions trading programs
• Tesco, and other retailers are looking at providing carbon footprint information about their products
• Economists are advocating the elimination of the tax exemption on fuel used for air or sea transport of freight (the result of a 1944 treaty designed to help the fledging airline industry)
• Non profits such as the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) are working on techniques such a Life Cycle Assessment  to

… address the environmental aspects and potential environmental impacts (e.g. resource use and environmental consequences of releases) throughout a product’s life cycle from raw material acquisition through production, use, end-of-life treatment and disposal (i.e. cradle-to-grave)

If you would like to assess the impact of your diet,   check out Eat Low Carbon - they have a fun tool to calculate the carbon emission of your meals.

The Contra Costa times provided this list of tips for reducing the carbon footprint of your meals.  Overall they lead to a healthier diet as well

• Increase your intake of fresh, seasonal vegetables. Avoid hothouse-grown vegetables.
• Reduce your intake of meat (particularly beef, lamb, and sheep) and consume less dairy. Eat them less often and/or in smaller amounts.
• Buy and cook only enough to eat. More than 30 percent of food that is purchased at markets is wasted.
• Reduce your total food miles. This includes buying local food but also how often you drive to go shopping. Shop for the week, not for the day
• Avoid eating processed and packaged foods
• Plant a garden. Nothing is as carbon friendly as something you grew yourself!

Just a quick shout to say Happy Earth Day to your all.

Make every day Earth Day!

We just got this email in from Mark Hexamer of Swap Tree – We thought it was intereesting, so we passed it along.

In honor of Earth Day this Tuesday, Swaptree.com, the website where you can trade the books, DVDs, CDs, and video games you have, for the ones you want, for free, will be donating $1 dollar for every trade made on Earth Day to The Sierra Club.  So if getting a free book, DVD, video game or CD was not enough, now by signing up and doing a trade, you will also be donating to America’s oldest and largest environmental organization on Swaptree’s dime!   One of the main reasons we started Swaptree was to promote the idea that we should all recycle more and throw away less.  After all do we really need 20 million copies of each of the Harry Potter books?  Can’t we just trade and share a few hundred thousand?  In recent studies, it was estimated that every book contributes 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, while every CD or DVD contributes 2.2 pounds.  Furthermore, 100,000 pounds of CDs and DVDs (and their nasty chemicals) are deposited in US landfills every month, while the book industry chops down in excess of 19 million trees yearly.  Pretty frightening numbers I am sure you’ll agree.  Obviously reducing the consumption of these items would have a positive impact on the environment.  On Swaptree you simply list the items that you have to trade and the items that you want and Swaptree’s two and three-way trade algorithms instantly shows you all of the items you can receive in trade.  Swaptree even simplifies the mailing process, by providing you with a perfect postage label that can be printed right from your computer, so you never have to go to the post office.   Anyways, I encourage you to take a look at Swaptree, and if you like what you see, spread the word about our Earth Day promotion to your readers, friends and family.  You’ll be helping the earth in more ways than one.  Below is a link to a two minute video that shows you what Swaptree is all about.

http://www.swaptree.com/video/demomovie.html  For more information about The Sierra Club:  http://www.sierraclub.org  Thank you for your time, and let me know if you have any questions or would like to learn more. And keep up the good work with Earth Friendly Shopping.

Best Regards,

Mark Hexamer

The Ecopreneurist (gosh, that’s a mouthful) has a great article today on using psychographics to find and appeal to green consumers.   As they rightly point out, Demographics, one of the old standbys of marketing, is of limited use when targeting this market

Notice the decided lack of information on demographics. Both drifters and LOHAS might live in upper middle class neighborhoods. A college degree may be held by both the Unconcerned and the Naturalites. Income? Well, we do know that green products tend to be on the more expensive side but, a true devotee just cuts in other areas.

And so targeting green consumers gets messy. Identifying which segment of the green market is most likely to purchase your product is the first step. That is, your product fills a particular need…which segment feels the need the most? Now how can we use psychographics to locate the appropriate media and promotional tools to reach that segment?

Good question – There are a lot of environmental web sites, blogs, magazines, etc.  are these necessarily the right place to advertise?  In one sense, they are,  as readers of any publication that focuses on the environment (including this blog) would tend to be open, at least to hearing the message about green products.

But how do you get through to others who might be interested in your products, but aren’t actively seeking “green”?  We spoke to Kate Amon, owner of Kate’s Caring Gifts, a leading eCommerce site focusing  on eco-friendly gifts.    “It isn’t easy” Kate tells us.  “And many of our assumptions have been wrong.  When we started, we had assumed that our target market would be located mostly on the west coast and in the North East, you know, blue states.  but as it turned out, we have customers all over the country, and many from other countries. ”

“What we have found is that there are multiple motivations for people buy green products.  For example, we sell a lot of organic chocolate.  Now organic chocolate just tastes better.  It is often grown with more care.  So people who care about the quality and the taste of their chocolate, may buy organic, even if they aren’t as concerned about the environmental aspects.

We have also seen a lot of interest from people in the health aspects of products like natural – chemical free sunscreen,  and stainless steel water bottles.  These products appeal to people looking for health and safety irrespective of where they live or their political leanings.”

So where does Kate advertise?  “All over.  A lot of environmental and progressive web sites and blogs, and some others that are more mainstream”  Even though Kate believes advertising is necessary for success, she recognizes that there are limits.    “The best thing an advertisement can do is get people to your site.   With the amount of advertising people are subjected to, even that is a challenge,  but beyond that, once they are on the site, we have to get them to buy, and then,  we need to keep them coming back for more.  It means we have to deliver, because repeat customers is our whole basis for success.”

The folks at Huddler.com have recently launched a Greenhome community site.

I am not exactly sure how to describe or categorize the site. It appears to be an attempt to help build the green community, with the opportunity for community members to contribute and exchange ideas, experiences, etc.

There is a wiki with green topcis – such as how to avoid greenwashing (of great interest to us) as well as product reviews for a number of different products.

It looks interesting – the Huddlers still acknowledge it is beta, so there is more work to do, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be back