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.

“Adding Value through Branded Recycling Solutions” – a business model of TerraCycle that OMEGA Global Initiative can adopt

The article was written by Tom Szaky – CEO of TerraCycle.

TerraCycle can provide a branded recycling solution, while most of other companies are struggling for recycling by themselves. Tom Szaky suggested that by integrating this branded recycling solution into the value chain, a company can effectively create more values for itself and even for customers. With a branded solution, the company can communicate their brand more effectively than just doing by themselves.

For instance, that fact that Henkel partnered with TerraCycle in offering a recycling solution for anaerobic adhesive packaging did help Henkel itself communicate to its customers about its brand DNA of supporting responsible practices. Moreover, “Offering a custom, branded recycling solution adds value for current and potential customers by communicating that solving for its difficult-to-recycle anaerobic adhesive containers is part of who they are.”

Tom Szaky also advised that “When companies attempt to integrate sustainable enterprise into their branding strategy, transparency is essential.”

Such way of working with the partners of TerraCycle can be a good example for OMEGA Global Initiative. Because in fact, OGI is offering a sustainable system of water source preservation that other companies who are concerning about sustainability are also struggling for new solutions for recycling their water source. 

Adding Value through Branded Recycling Solutions

Did Trump pursue a responsible marketing strategy for his presidential election?

He may have a strong marketing plan based on the number of popular votes and electoral votes given to him. Or we may say that because his election run had encouraged a considerable number of White working class going to vote, he was successful in influencing his target “customers”. However, is it a responsible marketing strategy?

Looking into how he persuaded his “LRTC”, what he did were that he turned his back on most of the policies of previous presidency, broke the credibility of media in residents, evoked the hatred of a considerable part of American on their own political system. Furthermore, his populist, protectionist approach in his policies, certainly, will have negative influence on other countries. For instance, his viewpoints and policies related to UN climate change programs will have considerable bad impact on the planet, American environment for most. Becoming US president, along with his racist, xenophobic attitudes, he seemingly represents for some negative values which are rising now not only in America, but also around the world, giving them more evidences to believe in the rightness of such approaches, at least in this period. Apparently, Trump with his election run, has contributed much into dividing the society deeply, Republican party itself already showed some signs of separation. He had created a mess, and now when he has become president, how can he improve the situation with most of his policies changed incredibly during his presidential election, or just following the framework of Democrat Party in combining with his protectionist approach and his "unique" personality?

Comparing and contrasting Clinton and Trump http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/nov/01/comparing-and-contrasting-clinton-trump-johnson-an/

Trum and Clinton on the economy http://graphics.wsj.com/elections/2016/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-on-the-economy/

 

Changing Consumer Habits for Environmental Change

Saw this Terracycle article regarding environmental change: http://www.edie.net/news/5/We-can-t-recycle-our-way-out-of-the-waste-crisis--says-TerraCycle-founder/

Terracycle argues that the main source of environmental issues is consumerism. Therefore, we have to change the way we consume to avoid having businesses trying to meet our demands which end up exacerbating environmental problems.

This poses a huge challenge for educating consumers for "better" buying choices and also having them participate in closed-loop systems like what Terracycle aims for. I don't know if it would be more effective for consumers to be "forced" to participate in said closed-loop systems or for a very strong incentive program that allows consumers to be willing to make the "extra effort" to think beyond their immediate needs. It seems the majority of campaigns are not so effective where even many of us in class are not willing to give up our current habits for the sake of convenience.

What will it take for consumers to change their poor buying habits and effectively participate in environmental change?

Presidential election

The main intrigue of this week was president election in USA. It was question number one for all countries in the world. It looks like that such election in USA is even more important then all domestics problems. 

Both candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton were untypical for candidate of the president of such huge country as USA. Trump winning was unpredictable for everyone. But Professor Sugai told us that Trump had very strong marketing plan. Very clear and direct messages for the specific categories made it  possible. This case proved democratic principles in USA. When the possibility to capture the majority of minds dominates the rationality.

 For my opinion the election's result is the same as Brexit. Countries with strong economy are trying to isolate from globalization process in oder to safe their magnitude and influence. Different kind of units as Soviet Union and European Union appeared to be ineffective. The history will show us the results in a while.   

Uniqlo's clothing recycling program

I went to Uniqlo this week and found this on my receipt:

Due to my limited Japanese, I guess the meaning of the small paragraph is that, Uniqlo will like to deliver its recycled clothing to refugees,  and if you have any unneeded Uniqlo clothing, please recycle it through the box in its store. It would help Uniqlo fulfill its responsibility.

According to Uniqlo website, it has been doing this recycling program since 2017, and in total have donated 16.32 million pieces to people in need.

I guess this is at least a good way to demo Uniqlo's extended producer responsibility, to retrieve its 'waste' back and reuse it. However, this is still not close-loop. I wonder what would happen after the clothing is worn and refugees throw it away. There is really still a long way to go for real responsibility realization.

http://www.uniqlo.com/en/csr/refugees/recycle/

Tissue Culture Beef

Tissue Culture Beef

High technologies are very interesting for me. I'm sure that it helps us in many industries such as automobile and medicine. It really makes our life easier. But what do you think about such technologies in food.

I read Ketzel Levine about Lab-grown meat.

This article is from 2008 so we can see that this theme interested people since a long period. And not only one company working in this direction. 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90235492

Under progress it'll be possible to grow just meat stakes. Man-made meet will be grow in the laboratory not on the farm. It'll be meat without bones and fat, therefore healthier and diet. Such idea is interesting for vegetarians and animal -friendly people. It's a way to create something new and useful. I think it will be great thing but in some 50 years. Right timing is a very important indicator.

In our century, we prefer hand made things and fresh products from environment friendly farm. In era of high technology people is ready to pay for goods which are natural and have soul. The same thing with meat. Natural way created fresh meat is still delicious because of the fat, bones, muscles and smell. It's traditional wild way to get food. Of course, real man is not hunting on mammoths any more but there is something really attractive to eat grilled steak on bone!

Living Green: Loving Halloween but hating the waste

People celebrate Halloween, but they get haunted by the waste they produce and this has to change. Tesla suggest ways to change this, from changes the types of products sold in terms of packaging etc. However, people need to change their behavior as well. In Tokyo, even the seat of a toilet was found (the washlet technology) in the waste. There are many cities that get haunted by the waste the spirits of Halloween create. Are they evil spirits? Trash or treat! http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161031/p2a/00m/0na/015000c

Voluntary EPR vs. Mandatory EPR

Found this article that shows the debate of companies wanting voluntary EPR vs. mandatory EPR. Currently in California, there are talks about creating a mandatory EPR system on packaging. This stems from recycle officials running out of ideas to incentivize manufacturers to do EPR in a way that achieves their goals. However, on the manufacturer side, many believe EPR is not financially sustainable and are pushing against it.

It seems to me that EPR would only be really effective if it is mandatory. However, I wonder if this would force companies out of business, especially SMEs who lack the resources. The long term benefits of EPR are obvious, but it doesn't seem to be taking off quite well at least in this case.

What do you guys think?

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/09/15/calrecycle-pushes-extended-producer-responsibility-to-reduce-packaging-waste/

Larfage Africa seeks Adoption of sustainable waste management initiative

It is really great to see that Africa is also taking action on this front. It's been said that Africa will be unable to continue or emulate the industrial activities of the developed countries because of the negative contribution these active have had on society. The only way Africa will grow is if they focus on activities that will lessen the negative impact on society, they have the potential on being leaders in this path of greening initiatives.


http://guardian.ng/business-services/lafarge-seeks-manufacturers-adoption-of-sustainable-waste-mgt-initiative/