Category Archives: sustainability

As this is my last post for my marketing class, I want to try and write about something different.  Previously, my posts have been about external marketing, a term that I may have possibly made up.  What I mean is that these forms of marketing affect consumers on their surface; it did not involve any emotions, for the most part.

This year, seven of my friends took on a project hosted by Ernst & Young tocreate an initiative that will impact our local community regarding the environment, entrepreneurship, and education.  My team, called the Community Composters, created and developed the idea to help Vancouver high schools reduce their waste and become more sustainable, in an effort to help Vancouver be the greenest city in the world by 2020.  Winning this competition meant receiving $10,000 to implement our initiative.  Unfortunately, the competition is now over and we have a great idea with no means to fund it.  However, this is not stopping us from figuring out ways to help our community based around the knowledge and passion we gained from this experience.  We will stay on the lookout for any opportunity that will allow us to follow through and improve upon our initiative; I personally would like to see our plan somehow executed in the near future.

How does this relate to marketing?  Well, by the end of this competition, I am even more interested in helping Vancouver reach its maximum potential in becoming green.  As a result of this new passion, I will without a doubt be spreading the word on composting, reducing waste, etc.  Through positive word of mouth, I hope to be able to influence people and make a change to my community, one step at a time.

For the past few years, there has been an increased effort to save the environment and be more sustainable.  These efforts included replacing plastic bags in stores with reusable bags.  This movement first started off with a handful of companies, mainly grocery stores and already green stores like Lululemon.  Once this trend started to grow, the number of companies producing these reusable bags doubled and tripled.  Before long, I found myself overwhelmed with the number of these bags piling up in my basement.  No longer was it just stores who supplied these bags, but big name corporations as well; corporations whose consumers/target audience would not use these bags for their products/services.  So why did these manufactures produce these environmentally friendly, green, good for the environment bags?  For marketing of course.  Because reusable bags are sturdier than the no-longer-commonly-used plastic bags, they can be used for a variety of purposes, like carrying groceries, books, and clothes.  The possible usages for these bags are endless.  And because that is the case, companies are taking advantage of this trend.  Every time a person uses the bag, the company is exposed to a new set of people.  Free marketing right there.

For the environment, there is a decreasing number of plastic bags out there,thanks to these reusable bags.  For the company, the benefits are numerous: Externally (to its target market), the company portrays itself as caring for the environment and wanting to contribute to create a more sustainable future.  Internally (to the company itself), they are gaining exposure to a group of people they normally would not target, and all at no extra cost to the company.

Of course, I’m not accusing these companies of having an ulterior motive for producing reusable bags.  Instead, I am merely pointing out the fact that the desire for our society to be green not only benefits the environment, but companies as well.