Is Your Agency Even A Little Green?
February 29, 2008
A commentator on our post about Campwell-Ewald’s new green practice made this comment:
“I commend them for doing what they can. I work at MindShare and we don’t recycle because it doesn’t “make sense.” Why? Because it’s too expensive… 6 floors of about 700 people in total. Think of all those decks. You would think Irwin G. could afford to save a few trees.”
That’s why we’re interested in hearing more about agencies who are recycling and who isn’t within their office. JWT predicted this year that “green” is the new blue, but are they practicing the trends they preach? Publicis acquired Act Now, a sustainable agency recently. Will that have any impact on how they manage their companies and offices? Where do you work and does your office recycle? Let us know in the comments section.
Meanwhile, small branding agency Greteman Group has produced the site Nuts for Nature, an interactive site, which grew out of the agency’s charitable giving this year. Greteman has been donating to Roots & Shoots and have been volunteering to help the Wichita Boys & Girls Club create a nature habitat. To celebrate, the project, they created Nuts for Nature, where you can build your own outdoor wonderland. We don’t know whether the agency itself is green, but the site is pretty fun.
February 29, 2008 at 6:53 pm
publicis is the greenest agency around — nothing but hot air.
ain’t that holistic…
February 29, 2008 at 9:32 pm
The words ‘Ad Agency’ and Green are mutually exclusive.
February 29, 2008 at 10:15 pm
My agency likes to recycle ideas from the 2001 CA Advertising Annual and from the One Show from 1998. Also, I think our toliet paper is made from old PowerPoint presentations.
March 1, 2008 at 1:29 am
I work for an office of JWT and they are definitely trying to practice what they’re preaching. They supplied each of us with a re-usable water thermos and a coffee mug to get rid of all the paper and plastic cups throughout the agency. They also posted signs all over the place to tell people how they can save energy and be less wasteful. Sure, the agency has other problems like any other shop does, but they seem to be taking the “green” thing seriously from what I can tell.
March 1, 2008 at 10:32 am
Did the early nineties just arrive in the states or what?
March 1, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish economist and author of the
Skeptical Environmentalist, makes a suggestion that he says will do more for less effort to slow down climate change toward warming than anything else.
He recommends painting the roofs of all the building in cities white. Painting all the streets and sidewalks white.
Then the disparity between the temperatures in the city and the country will narrow.
Much more valuable an idea than anything since Earth Day, 1972…when the movement first arrived “in the states.”
Major problem in the U.S. is actually aversion to nuclear plants. The old “Atoms for Peace Program” that came to an end at 3-mile Island.
March 1, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I hate to think how many trees are chopped for a single presentation. Every agency I have ever been with in NYC had both recycling bins and garbage bins and they both ended up in the same place at the end of the day: the trash.
March 2, 2008 at 2:35 am
Yeah, my agency is green… with envy, that every other agency is managing to get new business while we keep losing it.
March 2, 2008 at 2:43 am
Another poster said their agency doesn’t recycle because it “doesn’t make sense.” So many companies have this unfortunate philosophy. I think the missing element is having properly motivated people within the company.
Employees at the agency I work for - Spunlogic - assembled a “Green” committee mid-last year (aptly named “Greenlogic”). Prior to this group, nothing about the agency was green. There is now recycled printer paper, bins for recycling paper, the entire office is using compact fluorescent bulbs, a proposal for structured telecommuting was turned in and test group for the plan has been identified. And, because the building doesn’t support plastic and aluminum recycling, they took it upon themselves to order those bins and the employees themselves take them to local recycling centers.
So, I guess my point is: to be successful at being Green, you have to care about the movement for more than just the PR.
March 2, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Cynical as it is, Omar’s bit about recycling ads from old annuals deserves a Webby. On a serious note, our office still uses foam cups for coffee. Not good. SP
March 2, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Advertising Agencies are best equipped to change and challenge human behaivor. And greenwashing can be good as hypocrisy is the first step towards real change. And a company that makes the claim will eventually become accountable and will inwardly make those changes.
Those companies that embrace a model of sustainabilty will be in better shape than those who are forced to conform later.
March 3, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Omar — F’in classic. I’m with Steffan. Hang a medal on that one!
Stephanie is sooooo right. At one client of mine, an ad services agency, one particular employee who was a true believer worked for several months to develop the pick up procedure for company - and the massive, multi-building corporate park didn’t make it easy. Then, getting the people in the company to follow the rules for what can go in which bin was its own separate war that made everybody in the company hate her.
But she succeeded. In the recycling thing, that is, not at the company. Which is not to say that the recycling thing got her fired - she did plenty to help make that happen.
Bottom-line: this company is, and always will be, a strong recycler.
March 4, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I work at Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners. Maybe it’s our bay front location in Sausalito, or our proximity to great hiking and surfing, but we are pretty green. We all have recycling bins at our desk and even the media department tries to be as green as possible with limiting the number of mags on our comp lists. The unwanted mags we do get are donated to medical center or woman’s shelters.
March 5, 2008 at 4:04 am
The last agency I worked for ONLY stocked the kitchen with white styrofoam cups. Being the semi-granola, big-mouthed fool that I am prompted me to send an email inquiring about a possible switch over to re-usable cups, or in the least, replacing the cup stash with plastic dixie cups in an effort to cut down on our carbon “footprint.” Mind you this was week 2 of working at this agency. Boy was that a nightmare… I almost instantly received emails left and right from all dept.’s warning me of the ramifications of the email I had just sent out, something regarding the president of the company “having a thing about his cups.”
That was the most specific response I received until a few days later the president decided to do a “reply all” (hitting the entire agency) with the quip, “hasn’t someone told the new guy about my cups?”
Later it turned out he had some unworked out OCD issues, one of which being that he could only drink from styrofoam cups, and therefore felt it necessary to make it an “unwritten company policy” that the cups were to be used if you did not provide your own. My guess was so that he didn’t feel like some sort of “special case” if he showed up to a meeting being the only one sporting his styrofoam cup of water + styrofoam cup of coffee (he was also unable to have one without the other… yet another trait I would later learn).
That should have been a red-flag right off the bat, but I was too busy trying to brainstorm with the rest of our team about how to promote one of our clients as being a “Green, Eco-Friendly Home Builder.”
March 6, 2008 at 7:00 pm
As part of C-E’s new “green” initiative, they distributed 32-ounce plastic water bottles to all their employees, and asked them to fill them regularly using new filtered-water units installed on every floor — rather than purchasing bottled water from Costco or the like. A nice idea and gesture, indeed. The ironic part? The new green plastic bottles aren’t recyclable.
March 11, 2008 at 5:36 pm
[...] work day.” The video, complete with soundtrack, shows their small push for green living. We asked you guys if your agency was even a little green. The good: “I work for an office of JWT and [...]
March 11, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Nothing to do with being green, I just wanted to get rid of my beer tits:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=je3qnwYbBjA
Williamsburg to SoHo over the W/burg bridge in speedy up format.