Marketed as being ‘green’:
Poland spring water bottles: decreasing the amount of plastic used to make the water bottles. I would rate this a 4 because they are actually changing the amount of plastic they produce in each of these water bottles, but they are still a company that produces PLASTIC, a material that is not easily recycled. 
The one on the left has a smaller cap because it is marketed as reducing plastic.
Fiji water bottles are a different example of a product that is not marketed as green.
The Poland spring bottles are priced $7.49 for a 24 pack, while the Fiji water bottles are priced at $22 for 12 bottles. I will rate this a 2 because the bottle seems thicker compared to the Poland spring water bottles, which means they are using more plastic. I do not think this is environmentally friendly either.
Please photograph 1 item you see in the world that is marketed as being ‘green’ or ‘good’ for the environment. Then photograph a similar product that is not being marketed as green.
The goal of this post is to critically evaluate marketing. When does something REALLY address an issue? How do you TRUST what a company says? When is marketing TRUE?
TO DO: Please photograph 2 similar objects and compare their ‘greenness’ and price. Then upload to your Learning Portfolio (LP, make a folder called Sustainable Systems, Please check your preferences so I may be able to access them) and submit a link to your LP Post HERE on canvas.
Briefly assess both products, on a scale of 1-5 (1 is poor -an example of greenwashing!; 5 being excellent- a ‘game-changer’), whether or not you think 1/both/neither of your products is environmentally friendly.
Here are some terms.
Think of 1 as being ‘greenwashing’: disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image. An example is the recent volkswagan scandle, where the car was equipped with software to scapegoat emissions testing: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/business/energy-environment/social-responsibility-that-rubs-right-off.html?_r=0
Think of 5 as being ‘game-changing’: 1. A person/product that is visionary. 2. A company that alters its business strategy and conceives an entirely new business plan. This type of company switches up and forms a new business strategy in order to compete directly or indirectly with competitors. A game changer changes the way that something is done, thought about or made. For example, one might consider CITI-Bike, bike share to change the role of bikes in cities (no lugging bikes up to store in tiny apartments, no worries about it getting stolen, can go 1-way instead of roundtrip, and the bicycles are in constant use, as opposed to those few times you take the bike out, it is a game-changing SHARING economy).
Formal Definition: “Green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe.Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, sustainable packaging (Links to an external site.), as well as modifying advertising. Yet defining green marketing is not a simple task where several meanings intersect and contradict each other; an example of this will be the existence of varying social, environmental and retail definitions attached to this term.”
About Learning Portfolio – Please visit this online guide: http://portfolio.newschool.edu/studentsupport/
