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News
Business Presentations and Eco-Friendly Marketing – Not Anymore!
If you are preparing a business presentation or marketing program, there are some new issues you might wish to be concerned with. Just the other day I was listening to a business presentation where the young 20-something entrepreneurs kept talking about how environmentally friendly they were. Great, but can they prove it? Indeed, I asked them if they have empirical data backing up those statements, and they said; No, but – and then explained why they “felt” they were environmentally friendly. Sorry folks that ain’t good enough anymore – let me explain.
The Federal Trade Commission is indeed considering new rules and restrictions on the use of phrases such as; “Environmentally Friendly” because they believe aggressive marketers have abused it. Which is true, some have. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission put forth a very large report on the matter, and it is now asking for public opinion and comments. Whereas I am certain that some entrepreneurs somewhere, or some group of individuals has tried to promote something that was not environmentally friendly as being so, I have some reservations about all this.
Still, I think this is a huge mistake by the FTC and believe it will actually hurt the environment. It obviously started from Industry associations trying to certify themselves and leave out rogue members or those who didn’t join their association and follow their devised protocols, so they complained to the FTC. This will hurt eco-innovation in industry, and if an entrepreneur cannot use their environmental innovations in marketing, they are liable to save themselves the money and not try – thus, everyone loses, even the little fish and rain forests. See that point?
Indeed, I think the FTC is really not thinking this through. Although I am now retired, I looked at all my former websites in the various businesses I had created, and I searched the words and phrases; “environmentally friendly” and what I found is that I had used the words and phrases many times. And thinking back, I had often gone out of my way and used my own money to develop special apparatus and equipment that was environmentally safe, above and beyond the call of duty or what was required by EPA regulations or laws.
Why did I do this – for a couple of reasons; one, because it was the right thing to do; and two, because it was good public relations. Indeed, we often promoted our expenditures and new innovations in environmental operations in our industry and promoted it with our customers. If an entrepreneur is not allowed to promote the fact that they have spent a good deal of money going out of their way to be environmentally friendly, then why should they do it at all. In other words, it is against their best interests for making a profit to spend extra money to be environmentally friendly.
They are doing it because it is the right thing to do, and because it is a push currently in our society to conserve energy, recycle, and to live within a low carbon footprint. If the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t want to promote a clean environment, this is a great idea, but I think their concept of regulating the use of those words will do nothing more than prevent entrepreneurs, small businesses, and even large corporations from doing anything extra that might help the environment. In other words, this will hurt the environment. In fact, I’m quite certain of it. And, I’d like you to please consider all this.
Are Global Warming, Environmentalist Academics Preventing Innovations in Other Sectors?
Indeed, I believe it is quite dangerous to funnel all your research and development dollars into only one sector of our economy. It is important to develop new innovations, inventions, and concepts in every sector, and our government should be funding pure research for certain things, as well as encourage innovation in all sectors. It doesn’t make sense to put all of our eggs in one basket, because any entrepreneur knows that innovations can come from anywhere. Apparently the academics and the politicians, and those in the flow of money with all their crony capitalist friends didn’t get the memo. Okay so, let’s talk for a second shall we?
If everyone is focused on global warming and environmentalism, then all of our R&D money is being spent in that sector, rather than other places we need it to be, and that’s a travesty. The most pressing issue of mankind is death. Every human that has ever lived has died. We talk about curing cancer, AIDS, and some of these other diseases but shouldn’t we really be trying to prevent human death? There are 7 billion people on the planet, and they are all going to die. Shouldn’t we be solving that problem first and foremost?
Sure we should, but right now we are so focused on global warming, environmentalism, and eco-friendly solutions that everyone seems to be dropping the ball, and engaged in short-term, shortsighted thinking. I thought academics were supposed to be good planners and efficient with resources – apparently not, not even a little bit – of course, I only bring this up to be dramatic, what I really mean to say is that; if everyone is focused on only one thing, and only a few people will ever design anything which will be a major breakthrough, then we have hundreds of millions of Americans wasting their time, when they should be focusing on and working on all the other pressing matters.
It seems every engineer coming out of college wants to work on alternative energy. Yes, that’s all nice and good, but what about everything else? Not long ago, I talked to a human resource director from Boeing, and she mentioned to me that many of the young engineers coming to work for the company wanted to work on new fuel-efficient aerodynamic and aircraft designs. But none of them really wanted to come to work to design landing gear systems, latrines, or brackets which go inside the aircraft which are being manufactured.
Those are also very important jobs. Are you beginning to see my point here? What I’m saying is we’ve gone overboard on all this alternative energy, global warming, and environmental religion. Worse, we are forcing massive amounts of taxpayer’s money into only one sector, and we’ve had rather dismal results, considering how much money we’ve spent. And now we have lots of kids graduating from college with engineering degrees, at a time when we have a shortage of engineers, and they are all going into the same field.
There aren’t enough jobs in alternative energy, we’ve blown up yet another big bubble, and wasted a tremendous amount of resources. It’s just really poor planning as far as I’m concerned. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Energy Efficiency Examples For Your Business
A recent report by the Pew Center for Global Climate Change places emphasis on the need for organizations to be proactive in doing energy efficient practices, with the conclusion that financial benefits are generated consequent to the positive attitude on energy use and good reputation. The Center emphasizes that companies need not wait for such initiatives to be imposed by the EPA, for their own benefit.
Organizations should consider examples of energy efficiency as they seek to improve their market position. Pew suggests that companies which have strived to reduce GHG emissions as an important part of their strategy have reaped cost savings and other consequent benefits. So long as clear goals were established and the system was set up to collect data and manage the outcome, clear results could be demonstrated.
The Pew Center for Global Climate Change underlines why organizations should be proactive when seeking energy efficiencies and not wait for federal legislation or regulation to be imposed by the EPA. A recent report that was issued by the body offers a clearer picture. Firms studied by the Center cited a number of significant benefits including financial, reputational and attitudinal.
As energy use can account for one of the largest costs in a business operation, cost savings on energy consumption can be a very hot topic in the board rooms. Decision makers in various organizations are finding energy efficiency examples are realizing that targets that are easy to achieve would actually result to financial savings which might be difficult to duplicate anywhere else.
Organizations are now seeking options for energy efficiency like ceiling insulation, having efficient doors and windows, installation of motion detectors, upgrading of lighting systems, among other energy efficiency examples, as a way to help generate savings through power use reduction which consequently helps curtail carbon emissions and.
Those who are taking early actions in their commitment to energy efficiency could also help in leading to maintenance cost reductions. These improvements, if communicated well to staff, lead to an uptick in morale. In short, the organization wins all the way down the line and can maneuver itself into a position to enhance its reputation.
Building stock typically lasts for an average of fifty years and many companies find themselves occupying buildings that are far from efficient. In this case, retrofitting of existing appliances and assets is the first priority and the federal government is making grants available to help finance these moves.
Companies must become more aware of the growing move toward carbon regulation. Carbon, being a byproduct of fossil fuel produced energy, is a direct contributor to global warming and the majority of scientists agree is responsible for accelerating climate change. By becoming more energy efficient, an organization can help to avoid any potential direct carbon taxation in the future.
There are many examples of energy efficiency in action and plenty of reasons for the typical organization to conform. Management must make sure that they are in possession of accurate and up-to-date information, generated in real-time, so that they can ensure that all assets are operating to peak efficiency, cutting back their raw energy costs to a minimum.