In Women We Trust

Women are Working to Change Our Plastic Ways

Bettina Wassener summed up the brutal facts about plastic in the NY Times this week. (thank you Bettina)

"About 300 million tons of plastic is produced globally each year. Only about 10 percent of that is recycled. Of the plastic that is simply trashed, an estimated seven million tons ends up in the sea each year."   full article here.

As daunting and disappointing as that number is, she also flagged that starting in September there will be a Plastic Disclosure Project. 

Naming the problem is always the first step to a solution, then when many companies measure and disclose their plastic ways we can begin taking steps to reduce it. We'll be watching and reporting on its success. 

It's a big deal as eventually everything ends up at the bottom of the "hill" and that would be the ocean which no one nation takes responsibility for cleaning up. 

Beth Terry first brought it to my attention when she started blogging on MyPlasticFreeLife (formerly Fake Plastic Fish). 

And that's how all these changes are happening, one person blogs, others comment, more gather data, additional groups report on it. And now business is doing something about it. In September we'll have a formal system for Plastic disclosure in in the way that water is tracked or greenhouse gases. This is what corporate social responsibility looks like. 

Note that governments are side liners in this movement. A quick check of the Plastic Coalition team tells the tale of which gender is pushing for this change. The majority of the worker bees are women.

Staff 

• Daniella Dimitrova Russo, Executive Director (contact Daniella)
• Dianna Cohen, Art Initiatives and Creative Director (contact Dianna)
• Julia Cohen, Coalition Manager (contact Julia)
• Lisa Kaas Boyle, Esq., Legislative Policy Director  (contact Lisa)
• Michaelanne Petrella, Publicist (contact Michaelanne)
• Manuel Mansylla, Regional Organizer, East Coast US (contact Manuel)
• Mark LeRoy, Web site (contact

Co-founders

• Lisa Boyle, Environmental Attorney
• Dianna Cohen, Visual Artist
• Manuel Maqueda, Environmental Strategist
• Daniella Dimitrova Russo, Business Leader and Entrepreneur

It appears that the Plastic Disclosure Project has two guys (Doug and Erik) at the helm and that seems to be the pattern for social change these days -- women activate and men formulate. Women flag the problems and and give it exposure and men find ways to make it work with business. It's a true co-creation partnership of synergies.

You can't finish what you don't start, so thank you to all the "Beths" who are in activation mode. Let me know what you're doing and we'll feature it on In Women We Trust.

Online Women or Location, What Drives Green Spending?

Amazon put out a green dot survey correlating the purchasing of green sector products. It's fascinating if you like tracking trends. [Go here to read the entire article in Green Biz.] One chart tracks energy products, another water, and another (below) parenting. 

The article draws the conclusion that financial or locational needs were driving the purchasing for energy and water, but when it came to green parenting what was driving that?

Why is there a green dot in the NW corner of the lower peninsula of Michigan? It's not exactly where you'd expect to see a green dot, San Francisco or the East Coast sure, but upper Michigan? 

The Amazon research was based on number of green items a parent purchased off of Amazon, such as Green Baby  and Toys.  One reason more green products are being purchased and mailed to Northern Michigan could be Sommer Poquette based in Petosky, MI. She's been a green mommy blogger for years on her Green and Clean Mom blog. Sommer has been so successful, that she's turned it into a business. 

Can I give Sommer all of the credit, probably not, the Great Lakes Bioneers conference spearheaded by Sally Van Vleck and Bob Russell holds their meetings just around the bay in Traverse City each October. For years Sally, Bob, and the Bioneers have been raising green and sustainable awareness. There are even green baby stores in Traverse City.  

But the Amazon article was based on purchasing from Amazon and specifically, they looked at items for "green" babies and children.  That takes an online champion, which makes me see Sommer as a larger influence. Her blog averages 6000 unique visitors a month according to Compete.com. Whether she links to Amazon or not isn't as important as that she is a constant voice for online readership and from there, Amazon is a click away.

I would like to see more research on this topic. When you look at all the maps, one thing is clear, if purchasing is an indicator of culture, the nation is beginning to put their money where their values are -- and that starts with pockets of people who are talking about and buying the solutions. 

Thanks to all the women (and men) who keep the drip, drip, drip of conversation going. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tweet, Post, Blog Your Way to a Better Word (Big Business is Tracking YOU!)

Can being mindful of what you write online change the world? Six years ago everyone wondered where the women were because guys ruled the tech world and by it's extension, the social media world. Today, men may still rule the tech space, but women rule the social media world. 

In Johanna Blakley's TED video, (thanks WOG) she shows how women surpass men in every age group. Women are not only dominating social media, but are also more "engaged," which is the holy grail of modern marketing. Companies value sites that keep people on them more than 1 minute. 

Great, we are in the power seat. We now have the means to activate change besides buying products we believe in. We can vote with our dollars, but we can also jigger "the primary" before we vote by helping companies see what we want before we want it. 

Companies are measuring everything, I'll give a list of examples in a minute, we need to do to change the way companies work is TELL THEM in your own words, what we like or dislike about our world.

Don't like your kids being sick from some floor cleaning chemical? Write about it and mention the company/product by name that caused the problem. 

If bad-mouthing companies makes you feel bad, then take the opposite approach and tell everyone what you loved about a product/service you bought or saw online that resonated with you. Be specific. 

NAME DROP the name of the company and the product or service. Companies are scanning for every mention. If you give the name along with the pro/con comment you'll end up in a marketing report along with all the other remarks people are saying around the web. 

The following are just a few of the places your comments are being tracked. If our Social Media "votes" are being tallied, isn't it time we learned how to stack the deck and co-create the world we want?  

#1 is Facebook (and Facebook types) Yes, EVERYthing we write is being tallied and fed back to advertisers. Leverage that power to your advantage and name drop the companies/products/services you love/hate and watch the world of business start to bend to our collective will. 

#2 Google (#1 in Search, but not in social media)

#3 Twitter

4. LinkedIn (more for B2B info)

Back in November 2009, David Berkowitz tallied the following list to help business get a handle on what to track. Original article and his contact page here. If business is tracking your thoughts, isn't it time that you knew how that was being done and use it to your advantage?

1.     Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts

2.     Amount of buzz based on number of impressions

3.     Shift in buzz over time

4.     Buzz by time of day / daypart

5.     Seasonality of buzz

6.     Competitive buzz

7.     Buzz by category / topic

8.     Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)

9.     Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)

10.  Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available to embed, which is used more)

11.  Mainstream media mentions

12.  Fans

13.  Followers

14.  Friends

15.  Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends

16.  Rate of virality / pass-along

17.  Change in virality rates over time

18.  Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and friends exposed - by people or impressions)

19.  Embeds / Installs

20.  Downloads

21.  Uploads

22.  User-initiated views (e.g., for videos)

23.  Ratio of embeds or favoriting to views

24.  Likes / favorites

25.  Comments

26.  Ratings

27.  Social bookmarks

28.  Subscriptions (RSS, podcasts, video series)

29.  Pageviews (for blogs, microsites, etc)

30.  Effective CPM based on spend per impressions received

31.  Change in search engine rankings for the site linked to through social media

32.  Change in search engine share of voice for all social sites promoting the brand

33.  Increase in searches due to social activity

34.  Percentage of buzz containing links

35.  Links ranked by influence of publishers

36.  Percentage of buzz containing multimedia (images, video, audio)

37.  Share of voice on social sites when running earned and paid media in same environment

38.  Influence of consumers reached

39.  Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)

40.  Influence of brands participating in social channels

41.  Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels

42.  Demographics of audience reached through social media

43.  Social media habits/interests of target audience

44.  Geography of participating consumers

45.  Sentiment by volume of posts

46.  Sentiment by volume of impressions

47.  Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs

48.  Languages spoken by participating consumers

49.  Time spent with distributed content

50.  Time spent on site through social media referrals

51.  Method of content discovery (search, pass-along, discovery engines, etc)

52.  Clicks

53.  Percentage of traffic generated from earned media

54.  View-throughs

55.  Number of interactions

56.  Interaction/engagement rate

57.  Frequency of social interactions per consumer

58.  Percentage of videos viewed

59.  Polls taken / votes received

60.  Brand association

61.  Purchase consideration

62.  Number of user-generated submissions received

63.  Exposures of virtual gifts

64.  Number of virtual gifts given

65.  Relative popularity of content

66.  Tags added

67.  Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand's perception of itself)

68.  Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g., Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)

69.  Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application, mobile application, SMS, etc)

70.  Contest entries

71.  Number of chat room participants

72.  Wiki contributors

73.  Impact of offline marketing/events on social marketing programs or buzz

74.  User-generated content created that can be used by the marketer in other channels

75.  Customers assisted

76.  Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)

77.  Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with each other

78.  Impact on first contact resolution (FCR) (hat tip to Forrester Research for that one)

79.  Customer satisfaction

80.  Volume of customer feedback generated

81.  Research & development time saved based on feedback from social media

82.  Suggestions implemented from social feedback

83.  Costs saved from not spending on traditional research

84.  Impact on online sales

85.  Impact on offline sales

86.  Discount redemption rate

87.  Impact on other offline behavior (e.g., TV tune-in)

88.  Leads generated

89.  Products sampled

90.  Visits to store locator pages

91.  Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews

92.  Rate of customer/visitor retention

93.  Impact on customer lifetime value

94.  Customer acquisition / retention costs through social media

95.  Change in market share

96.  Earned media's impact on results from paid media

97.  Responses to socially posted events

98.  Attendance generated at in-person events

99.  Employees reached (for internal programs)

100.  Job applications received

 

This is What Green Economic Co-Creation Looks Like

When companies get it right and customers are happy, then the testimonies and word-of-mouth advertising begins -- Seventh Generation is one of those companies and Women's Voices of the Earth is one of millions who talk them up. 

We wear green on St. Patrick's Day to be part of a tradition; by sharing green all year long we start a new tradition that rewards companies who are doing it right and ignoring or starving out those who just-don't-get-it. Thanks Women Voices, for all you do for promoting the right products and companies. For a full list of their accomplishments, go here. 

Women Leaders Break the Silo Ceiling at the Same Time

For the first time, women lead the top Organic Food organizations announced a press release this morning, "With Maureen Wilmot named to the executive directorship of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) in January, four leading U.S. organic food and farming advocacy organizations are now headed by women for the first time. Joan Boykin is the executive director ofThe Organic Center, Christine Bushway is the executive director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), and Peggy Miars is the executive director of the Organic Materials Review Institute.

"Because women are the backbone of most families in America, it is not surprising that women lead key organizations in the organic community. Women have led the way in buying organic for our families, advocating for production practices that protect the environment, and ensuring that organic laws and regulations uphold the integrity of organic products. As a baby boomer, I remember when women's rights were still young, so it is very gratifying to see this leadership transformation in organic," said Ms. Miars."

This is an historic event to have all four organizations run with a women's touch and priorities. It will be interesting to track and see if having women leaders will make a difference in how the movement moves forward. They'll be meeting together on March 10th to begin that conversation. 

Congratulations to you all!

 

Congratulations to Margaret Gordon, Purpose Prize Winner.

Margaret Gordon is proof that you don't need money, education, or position to get things done -- what you need is passion and commitment to a purpose. Margaret is a housekeeper who learned about the high amounts of cancer and asthma in her bay area from her work with an environmental family. Up until then she hadn't made the connection that greener cities mean healthier kids. 

She then connected the dots between the cause -- transportation gases; and the effect -- high asthma rates in children and worked to correct the problem. 

Thank you Margaret, for making the connection and then doing something about it and thank you to the Purpose Prize organizers for drawing attention to many puposeFULL people.

Earthster makes being socially responsible and transparent, easier

This blog is about co-creation -- women are doing many things to change the world, but if the world of business doesn't change at the same time, we're in a world of hurt. The Earthster system is the beginning of providing accountability to business that women will love. 

At this morning's webinar, Wal Mart, Seventh Generation, and Earthster (sister site Social Hot Spots) announced that they have teamed up with governments and companies to create a new law of the law -- the law of sustainability -- in a play-nice/be-transparent sort of way. 

Earthster is the public, open source backbone and keeper of the data in the same way that Wikipedia anchors community input to it's site. In Earthster's case, it's gathering third party approved information that comes from millions of supply chain contributors. Think Story of Stuff can now point to everyone and everything in the supply chain.

Below is a screen shot of what this visually looks like as products are tracked from their source to the store shelf. The common software and methodology will be available in multiple languages to encourage global participation. When the webinar link is available, I'll post it here.

Wal Mart will be testing the system more completely in the first three quarters of 2010 using the supply chains from ten vendors and rolling it out to the rest of their 60,000+ vendors at the end of the year. What happens at Wal Mart, doesn't stay at Wal Mart -- other big box stores will be using the same system and that's a good for everyone. 

Earthster is agnostic in its design and is more of a clearinghouse for all information, not a standard that determines which information gets more credit than another. It creates that layer of transparency that has been missing in green products.

Earthster also changes the green marketing attitudes from "OMG We better not say the wrong thing or we'll be accused of greenwashing", to "We're doing the best we can and here is exactly where we are doing it."  Even the EPA is getting behind Earthster during a time when there are 300+ sustainable standards vying for the top slot. Standards mean nothing if the information isn't verified as accurate. 

What women will want to cheer about is that this move will speed up accountability on toxic materials, social equity, energy globally and many more issues. We won't have to hold political rallies to get rid of brain altering chemicals in our carpets. Earthster and the market competition will take care of it.

This new transparency will not only foster safer products, but infuse trust back into an economic structure that has to operate with/outside of all political systems -- and do it at a price point that small business can handle. Sites such as Good Guide will have a common way to rate their products. 

This gives me great hope, for people, planet and profits!

"Living Downstream" - the Documentary Every Parent Must See

My thanks to Karen Hanrahan for flagging this important film Living Downstream by scientist, Sandra Steingraber Ph.D. 

While we face the dangers of climate change and not enough water, this film demonstrates the issues we face in the water we have left -- even our fresh rain, falling from the sky, contains chemicals other than H2O, resting water has up to 66 chemicals.

That's not good for us or the planet. It's why we all need to understand and support sustainable standards around how our products are made throughout the supply chain. 

 

If a Consumer Complained in a Forest about Climate Change, Would Anyone Hear Her?

The bigger question is, Would anything change because they did hear her? 

If a company takes a step towards sustainability do we applaud loudly in a blog post, or just let our dollars do the talking? Recently, a third option surfaced when Frito Lay took their compostable Sun Chip's bag off the shelves because of "customer complaints" regarding the noise.

Really? We have nothing more to do in our day than react to a crackly bag? Apparently over 44,000 did so on Facebook and that was enough for Frito Lay to back peddle.

Wow.

These postings weren't highly considered decisions, like the pro/con list that Beth Terry wrote about on Fake Plastic Fish, the Facebook posts were twitter length, gut reactions -- enough of them that Frito Lay pulled a production line. Do you have any idea how much money they must be losing to pull an entire production line?

Holy smokes, the bigger story isn't that they pulled the line regardless of its eco-friendly intentions, but that they LISTENED and then pulled the line. Yes, it was a wimpy move and no doubt will be cited as an example of packaging gone wrong in college courses and they could have turned the noise into, "the sound of doing the right thing" BUT AT LEAST THEY ARE LISTENING. For that, reason, I'm excited and have hope for a co-operative future. 

Today 350.org is holding a 10.10.10 party for Climate Change.  Climate Mama is hosting the Green Mom Carnival on the subject. While we took a step backwards for sustainability, let's take a moment to understand the new-found power in this moment.  We no longer have to go through the political system to evoke change when we have a direct connection to corporate decision makers at our fingertips. 

Think about the ramifications of that in a co-created capitalistic universe? What would you ask corporations to do to bring down Climate Change or...

Co-created Ready-to-Wear that's Good-to-Wear

This month's Green Mom Carnival topic is on sustainable clothing [defined by the Global Organic textile Standard]. It's held on Diane's Big Green Purse and is a painful subject for me--it's hard enough to find something that is professional and flattering; adding the organic requirement makes it almost impossible to locate anything other than T-shirts and hoodies. 

I love yoga-wear, clothes that work with your body and made from hemp or cotton, but I can't wear them to work. We have to get beyond hoodies, T's and pants. Sweetgrass is a step in the right direction, but still has nothing that I'd wear to a board room. Maybe, that's the problem, we need more boardrooms with looser dress codes...

Then I found Mountains of the Moon, which puts form into fashion and bridges the gap between comfort of the gym and the brashness of a boardroom in a fresh, transitional way which any age group could feel comfortable wearing. The prices were reasonable as well, and the products are said to be made in a sweatfree, USofA shop. Most are of a hemp and cotton mix. 

This is exactly what I have been coveting, a dress that fits in a carry-on suit case, can be personalized with necklaces or scarves and I didn't have to stop eating for a month to afford or fit into them. I hope the fashion industry takes note. For the record, I'm the demographic that has money to spend. 

Still, as excited as I am for ready-to- wear that is also good-to-wear, I'm not seeing proof on their site that they are truly eco-friendly. 

Coral Rose posted an excellent introduction paper following the path of how a T-Shirt is made and all the impacts that simple garment has on the environment. GOTS mention above is the law of the free-market land for organic textiles, even Wal Mart pays attention to it. [See Coral at the Lenzing booth at LA's Textile show.] 

As a member of the business community, the decisions we make in our personal lives are just as important as the ones we make in our professional lives. China sends us billions of dollars of cotton clothing, 45% of the cotton it uses comes from the US, unfortunately it isn't green cotton. Who knew that the US and China were so woven together. Both sides are sinners in this exchange--the US for using so many pesticides on their fields and China for allowing their dyes to go directly into the watershed. Both sides can also be saviors, as decisions by individuals make the difference in co-creating a new, global market. 

Case in point, Coral was a change agent for green cotton while she was a Sr. Buyer for Wal Mart, her organic decisions were part of the reason that Wal Mart started down their path to sustainability. But her decision to put organic cotton yoga-wear in the stores would not have created such a stir in Wal Mart's boardroom if the other "buyers", women consumers, didn't purchase them.

We are all co-creators in this green market movement--we are the designers, the Sr. Buyers, the sellers, the consumer buyers, and the writers of sustainable textiles; a multi-billion dollar industry with global impact. What we do at each stage makes a huge difference in changing the world's economy into one that is good for us all.

Go girls. Walk the talk and wear it well.