The Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, commonly referred to as the “green” guides, were first published in 1992 to help marketers and advertisers avoid deceptive and far-reaching eco claims without proof or qualification. The final revisions were released Monday with a press conference outlining the changes. 

“The introduction of environmentally friendly products into the marketplace is a win for consumers who want to purchase greener products and for producers who want to sell them,” stated FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “But this win-win can only occur if marketers’ claims are truthful and substantiated. The FTC’s changes to the Green Guides will level the playing field for honest business people and it is one reason why we had such broad support.”Continue reading...

Coca-Cola ♥ the Olympic Games. After all, the soda maker has been lapping up the Olympics for every bit of marketing goodwill it can get for more than 80 years.

Now this year’s Olympics are in full swing and Coca-Cola can see the light at the end of the tunnel of its Move to the Beat campaign with singer Katy B and producer Mark Ronson that kicked off ahead of its sponsorship of the 8,000-mile Olympic torch relay. It's been a busy year with a variety of London 2012 marketing tie-ins.

And now Coca-Cola is extending its musical chops in a just-announced partnership with will.i.am to launch a sustainability-collaboration platform for brands dubbed EKOCYCLE, which is partnering to produce greener Beats by Dr Dre headphones — a brand that isn't music to the London Olympics organizers' ears.Continue reading...

It's a battle of Philistine proportions.

SodaStream, purveyor of DIY soft-drink machines that turn water into soda with carbonation and flavoring, has found itself in fisticuffs with Coca-Cola. In a classic David and Goliath confrontation, the world’s largest beverage maker — reigning Best Global Brand, market value about $170 billion, 228 times larger than SodaStream — is threatening to sue to shut down the smaller brand's sustainability campaign — one that is based on attacking at Coca-Cola.

"Every day, approximately 1 billion bottles and cans are added to our parks, rivers, oceans and landfills worldwide — almost 400 million in America alone. We must not allow Coke, or anyone, to silence this unfortunate truth,” said SodaStream CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, in a press release about the brand's launch of a Facebook Cage Challenge after the beverage giant tried to shut down its anti-Coca-Cola environmental cage exhibits.Continue reading...

Apple has pulled out of EPEAT, a global non-profit eco-rating service sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and will no longer label its electronic products according to their environmental impact as a result.

In stating its disappointment at the move, EPEAT noted that its certification program is "more than simply a product rating – it is also a community effort by all interested stakeholders to define and maintain best practice in environmental sustainability for electronics."

Tech Week Europe sees it as "a setback to Apple’s green campaign and may have come about because of difficulties in dismantling and recycling new MacBook products."Continue reading...

Sixty six percent of UK citizens collectively consumer 165 million cups of tea every day, making it that country’s most popular drink, and most of those tea bags end up in landfill bins. 

Now Unilever UK, maker of PG Tips and the largest tea buyer in the world, purchasing close to 12% of the world's supply of black tea, is looking to make a more environmentally friendly cuppa.

Already committed to sustainable farming, partnering with the Rainforest Alliance in 2008, the company has just joined forces with two Essex councils, Brentwood and Chelmsford, and with Wrap, the U.K. government's advisory body on waste, to encourage Brit tea-drinkers to compost their teabags with their food waste.Continue reading...

UK retailer Marks and Spencer is an old hand at creating snazzy outfits, such as the official suit that Team England is sporting at the European soccer championships.

But it's also committed to doing so sustainability while helping those in need, which is why M&S has been working with Oxfam for the past four years. That effort has brought in more than 10 million pieces of clothing for Oxfam's "op shops" throughout Great Britain, and now the company is taking its good work to another level.

M&S is expanding the collaboration with the launch of London’s first Sustainable Fashion Lab, a pop-up concept that will open on Thursday April 26 and close on May 9. The idea is to get designers and stylists together with sustainability thought leaders to spark a conversation about how the fashion industry can be more sustainable, while also giving the retailer a platform to highlight its Plan A commitment to become "the world's most sustainable major retailer."Continue reading...

Proving that not all eco-efforts have to happen on Earth Day, Honest Tea's new eco-centric campaign, The Great Recycle, launches on Monday April 30th with the goal of boosting recycling awareness and activity across America in general, and consumer recycling of all of Honest Tea bottles by 2020.

It took 10 people to inflate the 30-foot-tall 100% recyclable recycling bin (at right) that will be placed in New York's Times Square on Monday in a bid to collect at least 45,000 beverage containers in a single day, approximately the same number of Honest beverage bottles typically sold daily in New York in April.

The company generates about 20 million glass bottles and 60 million plastic bottles each year, just a sliver of the total Americans used in 2010: 38.6 billion glass and 71.9 billion plastic, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

Hard statistics on U.S. recycling activity are hard to come by, although the Environmental Protection Agency estimates about 33% of glass bottles and 27% of plastic bottles are currently recycled.Continue reading...

Starbucks likes to present itself as a company that’s a leader in making decisions that take environmental concerns into consideration. So it must have been a bummer in the boardroom when they figured out that they couldn’t meet one eco-goal that it was aiming for.

The plan had been to have 25 percent of all of its drinks served in reusable cups such as mugs and tumblers by 2015, offering customers a 10-cent discount for bringing their own coffee cup or tumbler.  The Seattle Times hears that number has been downsized that goal to just five percent.

It's dismaying news for eco-conscious consumers and sustainability watchdogs, especially coming from a a company that holds an annual "Cup Summit" that invites "industry leaders (to) discuss innovative ways to make cups and food packaging more recyclable."Continue reading...