[ Thinking Green, Marketing Green ]

With An Inconvenient Truth’s Oscar win, we’ve reached a tipping point. The environment – and man’s effect on it – is on everyone’s mind.

For organizations this means new challenges. Energy providers are being pressured to find alternatives to fossil fuels. In the marketplace, green products have gone from fringe to ever-growing niche, and now they are poised to explode. In all industries, customers are beginning to demand that firms be responsible, sustainable, and carbon-neutral.

So now is a good time to consider how green your organization is. And if you have embraced environment friendly policies, it’s also the time to let your clients and customers know.

Take the burrito chain, Chipotle. While certainly not “fast food,” the restaurant does serve food fast...and in very large, meat-oriented helpings, which hardly make
one think “environmental.”

Yet Chipotle is thinking green, responsible, and sustainable on a number of levels. Its napkins have gone from white to pulp brown in order to reduce their use of harmful bleaches. It’s buying naturally raised pork and avoiding bovine growth hormones that could make their way into the groundwater. Even Chipotle gift cards are made from renewable and recyclable corn plastic.

It’s important to note that Chipotle didn’t make these changes all at once. The company has taken small, affordable steps, building momentum as it goes. But what’s crucial is that Chipotle has kept the customer informed at every step. Signs, cups, and menus at every store regularly update patrons on Chipotle’s progress, essentially saying, “Here’s what we’ve changed, and here’s why we’ve changed it.” It’s green thinking, good business, and great marketing.

To be certain, going green should be its own reward. But these days a sustainable philosophy is a marker to clients and customers of a premium product. And soon it will be price-of-entry in many categories, as it’s already becoming in industries like coffee production and homebuilding.

So if you’ve adopted green practices, it’s to your benefit to communicate that fact clearly to the customers, because they want to know. The green audience is discriminating, involved, and loyal...and if you win them by marrying a good product to a sound environmental philosophy, your organization will be rewarded.

If you haven’t thought about adopting environmentally friendly practices, now might be the time to start...even if your company doesn’t produce anything accompanied by a bleached napkin. A bank can look into new plastics for its ATM cards. A law firm might call a bike courier instead of a delivery van for local parcels. A new facility might be designed to be carbon-neutral. (And while some green solutions are still expensive, many others are not. Wal-Mart is enjoying improved media relations thanks to its move to energy-efficient lighting, but you can be sure they’re going to enjoy the estimated $3 billion they’ll save on their energy bills even more.) Most importantly, if you do decide to adopt green practices, be sure you communicate that fact to your clients, stakeholders, competitors, and local public officials.

Deciding how environmentally conscious to become might well be a challenge for your organization. But marketing your environmentalism is common sense. It will win you a loyal following, please external audiences, raise the bar for your peers, and increase public awareness of green initiatives as a whole. You’re saving the world...so make sure the world notices.