The Green Media Show Conference and Expo
Conference Update
SINGLE DAY TICKETS ARE NOW AVAILABLE
If you can't get away from the office for two days, check the conference schedule and sign up for the day of your choice.
DISCOUNT CODE - $95 OFF
1847:100 for Day One
1950:100 for Day Two
Register now for FREE EXPO
October 1-2
Boston, October 1 and 2
Workshops, September 30
Keynotes
Michael Harrison, Timberland Joel Makower, GreenBiz.com Tyler Elm and Don Carli Don't miss the Carli Horizon Report
Anticipate Risk
· Get the keys to an effective sustainability strategy. Learn how to Grow, Expand and Defend your Brand.
· Learn to measure and report your sustainability metrics.
GET TOOLS. GET ACTIVE.
GET REAL.
SPECIAL WORKSHOPS:
Design for Sustainability
Sustainability 101
Important Hotel Information
ACT NOW for DISCOUNT
and to secure your room
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| Attention Please: The Marriott has extended our discount rate.
Reserve your room today!
Use code "SustainCommWorld" for special $269 rate at the Boston Marriott Copley Place.
Over 60 World Class Conference Speakers
from companies like:
ValueNews Network
Corporate Watchdog Radio
IMC2
Consumers Union
Terrachoice
Greenseal
Core77, Inc
Umbria Inc.
SRI World Group
Fortune Money Group
Advertising Age
Praxair
The Carbon Disclosure Project
ArcWire.org
MediaPost
Leo Burnett USA
Credit360
Draft FCB
Horizon Media
Roughstock Studios
Aberdeen
Change
Ogilvy
Harvard University
Discover Magazine
Mullen/MediaHUB
The World Bank
Environmental Defense Fund
CERES
TrinityP3
US Government Printing Office
Ethical Markets Media
REGISTER NOW
Use Discount Code 1545:100 and get $500 off full conference price
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| Greetings! |
Today, everyone knows we have to go green, but increasing profits by doing so? Is that realistic? Yes, it's true both in small ways and very big ways. Mutual funds that group companies that best manage sustainability are regularly outperforming others. There has never been a greater need to understand the risks associated with rising energy prices and outsourced energy, to know about how climate change legislation will impact media supply chains and to learn how to do more with less money and build brand loyalty by applying green supply chain practices.
After some thought and consideration it has become clear that sustainability brings with it a host of new product challenges, particularly in fuels and basic materials.
Fossil fuels - oil and coal primarily - when burned produce green house gasses and those gasses are half the
problem behind global warming. There will be immense financial rewards for alternative fuels/energy sources and the devices that can utilize them.
Switch to sustainable fuels we must and switch we will. My hope is that much of the basic technologies and innovations will come from American ingenuity and employ American workers.
For centuries the "best" products were those that stood up to time. The idea we developed was "this product will last forever," as we went about designing products and providing materials for our innovations. The problem today is getting rid of those "forever" products. Recycling is a valid but only partial solution. Recapturing aluminum cans, once they've been distributed globally, has had limited success.
Huge rewards await the labs that can develop additives or new materials that can be used in products that decompose in a controllable way. We call this 'concept to compost" product design.
We think it
possible to create and produce products that have a known useful life. Particularly single use products like soft drink containers. The container degeneration process might be triggered by opening the can and taking a week to complete. Once the liquid is consumed, the container breaks-down into basic elements that would be appropriate for compost.
Mohammad Yunus (Grameen Bank) told a great story when he came to visit us last year. He spoke of a discussion with the head of Danone. They had agreed to create a plant in Bangladesh to provide cheap nourishing yogurt for the children. After obtaining agreement to build the plant, Yunus questioned what would happen to all the plastic containers? They don't have waste management services where these children lived. He suggested to Danone that they work on creating edible containers to provide additional calories and remove the waste problem. That's sustainable thinking!
The rewards for new fuels,
new materials and new devices to utilize them will set off the largest set of growth industries in the history of mankind.
There is profit in sustainability and it is immense.
Lisa Wellman
CEO, SustainCommWorld
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PRODUCT WATCH: DEGRADABLE PLASTIC
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A British company called Symphony Plastics Technologies plc - Click here for more information - has announced a solution to the persistence of plastic products with their additive called d2w®.
Information on their website indicates - "Our d2w® additive put into the plastic at the extrusion stage will make the finished product "oxo-biodegradable" so that it will degrade and disappear in a short timescale, leaving no fragments, no methane and no harmful residues." Their claim is that all other characteristics of
the plastic remain intact.
Should this break-through prove applicable over a wide range of plastic bags, containers, packaging and products, we will have taken a very constructive step toward a more sustainable landscape.
The approximate number of plastic bags consumed this year:
347,700,865,060 (as of 8 p.m. September 10, 2008)
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Virgin vs Recycled Fiber: An Unnecessary Comparison for Sustainable Printing
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By Guy Boucher
Vice President of Sustainability, Domtar
A well-managed forest provides renewable resources, respects biodiversity and brings a wealth of socio-economic benefits to its neighboring communities, including employment for its people and social activities.
Third-party certification is the only way to ensure that sound forest management practices are implemented and that all environmental and social aspects of the forest are considered before harvesting takes place. In North America, trees are harvested primarily for wood products (lumber, furniture, etc) - and the byproducts
are used to make paper. Only third party certification ensures that the virgin fiber used to make paper and wood products originates from sustainable forests.
Fibers from recycled paper cannot make this claim. Which is not to say that recycled fiber should not be used to make paper. Paper in itself is a versatile product and, as is the case for other materials such as aluminum, plastic and steel, can be reprocessed into raw material for making new products. Paper products, whenever practical, should never be sent to a landfill site. According to the American Paper and Forest Association (AF&PA), in 2007, 56% of the paper consumed in America was recovered for recycling.
(Note: There are intrinsic limitations to the use of recycled fiber that make the need for virgin fiber inevitable. These include the loss of yield and strength during the re-pulping and de-inking processes, as well as increased yield loss as the fiber is
recycled again and again. Generally the same fiber cannot be recycled more than five to seven times. And, not all papers can or will be recycled. 7% of all papers used in North America are lost in the disposal of tissue and other non-recyclable paper, while another 7% is lost to long-term retention (books and archives). Overall, at least 14% of paper cannot be recovered for recycling.)
Both recycled and virgin fibers have their purpose and justification. Life cycle management concepts can be used to determine where and when it is appropriate to use recycled fibers in paper. The paper industry, as a whole, can accept all of the recycled fiber delivered to it. The recycling industry and the virgin fiber industry are all part of the same cycle.
In 2006, Metafore, an environmental non-governmental organization (ENGO), carried out a Paper Life Cycle study showing that if printing and writing grades were to be made exclusively
of recycled fibers, production would cease due to a lack of fiber in a matter of a few weeks. This time is longer for grades such as newsprint or tissue, but still measured in months, not years.
This independent assessment demonstrates that making paper from 100% recycled fiber, while technically feasible, is not sustainable and that the input of fresh, virgin fiber into the paper stream is essential. It's a question of balance.
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WHY FOCUS ON GREEN MEDIA?
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According the media analyst firm Veronis and Suhler, communication media expenditures for advertising, marketing, publishing and entertainment represented close to 950 billion dollars in economic activity in the U.S. during 2007. 950 billion dollars is roughly 7 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity, hundreds of gigawatts of energy, hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions and tens of millions of jobs.
The lifecycles of print and digital media both require flows of information, energy and materials. According to the
U.S. Energy Information Administration the papermaking industry consumed 75 Billion Kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006, and data centers and servers consumed 61 Billion Kilowatt hours of electricity. These uses are only a small part of the total footprint of communication media but they represent the fourth and sixth largest industrial uses of electricity.
Advertising and media supply chains are in the path of a rapidly growing wave of change emanating from the boardrooms of the largest corporations and investment funds in the world. It is not a question of if, but of when communication carbon footprints and other aspects would come under the same scrutiny as core business functions and tier one supply chain functions. With attention focusing on Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, it appears that the time is now.
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