It was recently announced that Wal-Mart is requiring its suppliers to measure the environmental cost of making their products so Wal-Mart can calculate and post an eco-rating for each item.

Since the government is not able to move forward on green initiatives of any consequence, this move may be the turning point in forcing manufacturers to go green. For those that have stayed on the sidelines, this ambitious program will certainly force companies to redesign products, including clothing, electronics and detergent.
This program will be phased in several steps.

In the program’s first phrase, Wal-Mart will be asking its suppliers to answer about 12 questions about such topics as water use, according to Jay Golden, a professor in the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University and co-director of the consortium of about 12 universities working with Wal-Mart on gathering scientific data and setting new design standards.

The next phase involves creating a database and metrics for sustainability, Golden said, and the third is to translate that information into a ratings system consumers can understand.

Like its stand with RFID and other labeling requirement, Wal-Mart is leading the way for change, due to its economies of scale. These are welcome changes for the environment and should help to educate consumers about the carbon footprint of products, from manufacture to distribution.

Watch for package sizes to be reduced, the rise of more local supply of products or regional manufacturing hubs and concentrated formulas for food and drink.

These standards will probably be picked up universally, as manufacturers try to standardize their labeling and packaging.

Kudos to Wal-Mart for spurring the change this country needs.
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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

Business people who spend money on advertising and marketing will be surprised to learn that advertising one’s name on a reusable tote bag is over 15 times less expensive per impression than any other form of advertising.

People who receive an imprinted reusable tote bag use them an average of 9 times per month, according to the June/July 2008 survey of 618 businesspeople on behalf of the Advertising Specialty Institute. Since the bags have a large imprint area and are displayed in a visible location, the advertising message will be seen an average of 1,038 impressions per month; nearly 12,500 people will see that message each year –per bag. Give out 500 imprinted bags, and in one year, over 6.2 million people will have seen your imprint.

At an average cost of $3.00, a tote bag imprinted with a logo and message on it will be viewed 12,000+ times in a year –making the cost per impression (CPI) only $.00025, which is about one fifteenth the cost of an average city billboard ($.003), and 1/28th the cost of an average cable TV commercial ($.007) and the 1/76th cost of an average half-page black-and-white newspaper ad ($.019).

Because imprinted bags, such as totes, are a useful item, they are kept for an average of 9 months, according to the survey. It also points out that 53% of those who received an imprinted tote bag indicated that their impression of the advertiser had become either significantly or somewhat more favorable after receiving the item.

Reusable bags are good for the environment—as they prevent plastic bags to be used. Those made from recycled materials or from natural cloth or jute, are even more eco-friendly. Plus, they are traveling billboards for your message. Imagine the impact of 500 or more people carrying your mini-billboard around –wherever they go.

Reusable imprinted bags are both good for the environment and good for your budget—it is a winning combination.

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Notes:
1) The ASI survey was a series of interviews conducted in June/July 2008 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users’ purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media. Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the non-wearables sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older. Research provided by the Advertising Specialty Institute, Copyright ©2008, All Rights Reserved.

2) The CPI of billboards and cable TV rates came from Los AngelesMobileBillboards.com and the CPI for the other forms of advertising came from The Nielsen Company for 2008.
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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

The results are in… and the June/July 2008 survey of 618 businesspeople on behalf of the Advertising Specialty Institute prove that imprinted promotional products return the best return on investment of any advertising medium.

A summary of the conclusions of the report are:

• Instant recall: More than 8 out of 10 (84%) respondents remembered the advertisers of the promotional products they’re received.

• Very impressionable: 42% of respondents had a MORE favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving the item. And nearly a quarter (24%) said they are MORE likely to do business with the advertiser on the items they receive.

• It’s all business: Most respondents (62%) have done business with the advertiser on a promotional product after receiving the item.

• User-friendly: The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

• Staying power: More than three-quarters of respondents have had their items for more than 6 months.

• Bag it!: Among wearables, imprinted tote bags were reported to be used most frequently with respondents indicating that they used their bags an average of 9 times per month. They also deliver the most impressions: Each bag averages 1,038 impressions per month.

• Most impressive: The average CPI of an advertising specialty item is $0.004; as a result, marketers get a more favorable return on investment from advertising specialties than nearly any other popular advertising media.

With budgets tight this year, doesn’t it make sense to utilize a proven medium to keep your name and message in front of your clients and prospects?

Imprinted advertising specialties, from tote bags, pens, shirts, caps, USB’s, mugs and other imprinted gifts can help you to increase and maintain business during this tough economy. While some of your competitors are cutting their promotional budgets or spending their money on more expensive forms of advertising, your company can gain top-of-mind market penetration for pennies per impression through proven promotional products—delivered in a way to maximize its impact.

Promotional specialties can be used as a gift with purchase, as part of a customer loyalty or incentive program, as a thank you gift or as part of a trade show campaign.

Choosing the right imprinted gift, and the proper distribution of it, can help you maximize sales and gain more referral business this year – at a fraction of the cost of other forms of advertising.

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Note: The survey was a series of interviews conducted in June/July 2008 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users’ purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media. Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the non-wearables sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older.
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Robert Piller, president of Eco Marketing Solutions, is experienced in green marketing campaigns and recycled promotional products.  He has worked with thousands of retailers across the country to get them to offer reusable imprinted tote bags for their customers, to help reduce the landfill waste caused by plastic bags.

His company’s website, EcoMarketingSolutions.com, features over 25,000 eco-friendly promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find biodegradable, organic and recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame.

You can also reach him by email (robert (at) ecomarketingsolutions.com) or comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com or below at his Twitter link.

Changing people’s recycling habits can take many years, since people have different “levels of greenness”. As I had discussed in my article, “Are all consumers ready to ‘go green’?”, people have different attitudes about both their desire and need to become more environmentally concerned and aware.
Many states and cities are launching recycling campaigns to help educate consumers about the importance of recycling – and to create awareness of the importance of recycling.
Some of the tools used for these go green campaigns are television commercials, billboard ad, radio commercials and eco-friendly promotional products –like recycled rulers, biodegradable pens and pencils and recycled refrigerator magnets –given out to school children during community outreach programs.
But not all campaigns are as effective as possible. How do individual states rank in respect to their recycling efforts? According to the report, “Do Mess With It“, by Steve Spacek, residents of the Northeastern states of Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts do the best job of recycling, as they had the least amount of per capita waste disposal.

Here is the entire list, in order of the state with the least amount of waste to the most wasteful state. The number beside the state’s name represents the daily per capita waste thrown away in pounds, according to 2002 numbers.

1.Connecticut 0.4510
2.Vermont 0.5840
3. Maine 1.0348
4. Massachusetts 1.4575
5. New York 1.5250
6. New Jersey 2.4698
7 Minnesota 2.5871
8. Maryland 2.9465
9. Hawaii 3.6754
10. Idaho 4.4523
11. Missouri 4.6106
12. Washington 4.9711
13. Florida 5.2001
14. South Dakota 5.3127
15. Montana 5.3165
16. Alaska 5.4872
17. Alabama 6.1666
18. Louisiana 6.2151
19. Delaware 6.2535
20. W. Virginia 6.3716
21. Iowa 6.4104
22. Rhode Island 6.6646
23. Georgia 6.6713
24. California 6.7999
25. Nebraska 6.8072
26. Oklahoma 6.9690
27. Wyoming 7.2168
28. Texas 7.2457
29. New Hampshire 7.3430
30. North Carolina 7.4116
31. Arkansas 7.5971
32. Mississippi 7.8556
33. Colorado 7.9048
34. Tennessee 8.2213
35. Illinois 8.4773
36. Ohio 8.7336
37. Utah 8.8063
38. Kansas 8.9314
39. Arizona 8.9871
40. Virginia 9.0122
41. Oregon 9.0161
42. Wisconsin 9.4417
43. North Dakota 9.4650
44. Indiana 9.7873
45. Kentucky 9.9515
46.South Carolina 10.2101
47. Michigan 10.4388
48. Pennsylvania 12.9517
49.New Mexico 15.6367
50. Nevada 16.9415

Let’s hope that the education campaigns continue and both consumers and businesses can work toward a 10% reduction in waste per year—which is very attainable.

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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.