Today's Marketers in Responsible Marketing

Today’s marketers should concern about possible impacts of business and marketing on all stakeholders, not only customers but also employees, community, partners and the planet for particular as living entity. Based on these considerations, marketers should search for possible solutions that can help create more positive values and/or reduce negative values on these stakeholders.

There are many approaches for marketers to adopt the concept of responsibility and sustainability in their marketing strategies and tactics.

The case of TerraCycle and our project for OMEGA Global Initiative offers an approach of partnership with branded recycling solution or branded sustainable practice that can help create more values to customers and the planet for companies.

The case of Tissue Culture Beef is quite unique in teaching us about the sustainable idea coming from the product itself which is made in a sustainable process. That also leads to the idea of making products from more responsible and sustainable materials, that can be developed into various approaches. It can be Cradle to Cradle. It can be working with partners to have similar “Reimagine” projects of Patagonia to regenerate sources for materials.

A company can also work with third party to supervise how they reduce impacts on the environment through carbon footprint chronicle (Patagonia) or something like that such as Environment Profit and Loss (StellaMcCartney).

Some cases such as Patagonia, TerraCycle also teach us about orientating consumption among customers. Consumption needs the intention of companies because as Szarky of TerraCycle said about his business model “We can’t recycle our way out of waste” and finally, “big business was designed to "mirror" consumer habits and if consumers don't demand durable goods, businesses won't provide them”. Look at what Patagonia did in Worn Wear campaign in Black Friday and how they are encouraging their customers to “buy less but buy well”.

One more thing, as we usually think about marketers as those who tell lie. It is time to keep mind on greenwashing in all of marketing tactics. Business should be consistent between what they say and what they do, or else it may trigger business disaster such as the case of Fiji Water.

However, we can not say all business should follow similar approach following responsibility or sustainability. For each business in their context, there will be different approaches along with limited opportunities to adopt responsible and sustainable practices in their own business. Most of all, it is necessary to keep in mind that it is time for "responsible economy" and business along with marketers should be those to lead this period of time.

There is more than one way to turn waste into useful resource. Here are example of waste turned into construction materials. The good thing is that all of them are cool things.

Trump's Threat to the Environment

Under President Obama, America and many businesses have made huge strides toward addressing environmental issues. However, with the current President elect, Mr. Trump, there will be huge setbacks as revealed in his first 100-day action plan:

* FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

* SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure

According to this blogpost from Business Insider, these are the 7 biggest threats Trump's presidency will have on the environment:

1. Backing out of Paris Agreement
2. Killing the Clean Power Plan
3. Eliminating the EPA (Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency)
4. Appointing climate change deniers to lead EPA and Department of Energy
5. Cut all federal spending on clean energy
6. Avoid creating any regulations on methane
7. Open federal lands to oil and gas spilling

As you can see from these, the incentives set in place for companies to achieve a triple bottom line and be conscious of the negative externalities they produce is likely to diminish. 

Hopefully those 4 years of a Trump presidency won't create a big enough setback on the environment to the point where it's too late...

Are Zara's sustainable clothing line a part of greenwashing?

Fast fashion industry are a huge contributing factor to negative environmental issue. Apart from using organic cotton, Zara now uses 100 percent recycled cardboard and teaming up with designers, etc to turn recycled boxes into chic DIY projects with tutorials and lastly recycling old zara clothes.
However, that is just one collection, it does not account for all of zara clothes that uses organic clothing.  Critic are saying that this small collection is nothing in the grand scheme of things for a company that produces more than 900 million garments a year. If Zara is serious about producing sustainable clothes, i feel that most of its clothing line should use organic materials instead of just one collection. What do you think? How can a fast fashion brand like Zara and H&M be truly sustainable?

For our Class discussions today 1) About Terracycle 2) Recycling Revolution: Al Jazeera 2) Eliminating the idea of waste 3) Outsmarting the idea of waste (1:30:00) - Long

Tohokubu Clean Center

Last Friday we visited Tohokubu Clean Center, a solid waste treatment factory. A cute place among the mountains. Very clean and with a lot trees. If do not know what this building is really stands for, you will never guess that 700 tons of wastes in “yellow bags” are processed here daily. No disgusting smells and even no smoke from the chimney. Each detail seemed to be thought out. Turning garbage into electricity production is very clever idea. Even ash could be used to “build” the islands, increasing the constrained territory.

I know that the problem of waste treatment is actual for my country. For example, in Moscow and its suburbs only 17 % of waste are cycled. All other garbage is just stored on open space in Moscow region. There are several factories inside Moscow, but it's not enough. The technology is poor and therefore it's not environment -friendly and it's really annoying for Moscow citizens.

Tohokubu Clean center showed that there is a real example of solving such problems. Such factory aims at sustainable and clean waste treatment with changing wastes fuse into energy and harmonizing with surrounding environment. Combination of high technologies and great designing standards makes such project adaptive to every country. I sent the information about such factory to Moscow region government in my home town. Probably it'll be interesting for them. Since the relationship between Japan and Russia becomes warmer recently, one day the problem of waste treatment would be the theme of reciprocal cooperation between these two countries.

TerraCycle: Recycling won't solve the waste dilemma, but consumers can

CEO of TerraCycle’s suggest consumers to think about their shopping habits with aim to promote durabke and used products in closed look systems. According to hi 5% of the global packaging was recycled and 25% was dump in to oceans and 70% was burned.

Consumers understand sustainability based on low carbon economy and companies that focus on environmental and societal issues and have are becoming leaders in the market. The process of these companies is as follow:

In addition to this article, another article highlights that in case if consumers face with challenges in the waste industry, it is the responsibility of industry and professionals to teach consumers about practices and environmental and economical values. Due to these reasons some companies starting educational programs for consumers.

Based on these articles, it seems that Patagonia and Terry Cycle have similar goal and they can be competitors to each other.