A few weeks ago, Canada’s Evolution 107.9 radio station featured Sustainability Is Sexy on a short feature called Our Planet Earth. The station let us run with the script – our conversation jumped from the environment, to coffee cups, to what makes sustainability so sublimely sexy.It’s a great clip.
Besides being entertaining, this radio show was personally inspiring.Interviews like this one help revive the roots of our group, and remind us why our campaigns are so effective.It’s easy to run a program to promote reusable coffee cups, but it’s much more difficult to host one that’s successful and achieves a real impact.Simply put, boring campaigns with underwhelming messages and banal tactics just don’t work.
Earlier this week, I spent some time trading emails with a student group who was interested in promoting reusable coffee cups on their campus, and they landed on the same thoughts I was having throughout the radio show:
“We don’t just want to use posters or invite speakers - IT IS BORING.We want people to join us and have fun, we’d like to talk to people and help them understand their impact on the environment and their responsibility.”
Now I think posters and speakers can be great – but it has to be the right posters and the right speakers.After all, plenty of bands still use posters and speakers to fill concert venues.Encouraging coffee drinkers to practice eco-friendly habits can only be done with engaging, exciting ideas that exhibit raw energy – just like a good rock and roll band would do.
For close to two years, this group has been declaring that sustainability is sexy. Unfortunately, our website was not. With Earth Day is just around the corner, our team decided some serious house cleaning was in order. The end result? A 3 minute video titled “What’s So Great About Reusable Coffee Cups?“.
Besides the new powerpoint show, our online store has been updated as well. We finally caught up to 1999 and added a shopping cart system, so cups can be ordered online. FYI, all shipping fees, taxes, and other nickle ‘n dime charges are included in the listed price. If you’re looking for an eco-friendly, well made, and sustainably sexy coffee cup - then we have it!
A Quick Note: Last week I was invited to be a guest speaker during an Earth Day event hosted by a group of students at the University of Kansas. The group - Students for Bar Recycling - is making some amazing progress on instituting a serious recycling program in their city. I’m still putting my notes and thoughts together, but a re-cap will be coming shortly.
I’ll be the first to admit - I spend a considerable amount of time on the internet. Some may say it isn’t healthy - but how can I give it up? The internet has become my number one resource for learning and staying connected. It serves as my phone book, my newspaper, and even now is replacing email and telephone time as a new way to interact with people.
There’s a lot of sites that connect eco-minded people and organizations. Unfortunately, it’s hard to test the waters without finding yourself submerged in a mess of networks, websites, and links.
One site I particularly like is GenGreen. It has a growing network of businesses and people, but their real strength is helping people find everything eco-minded. Think of this site almost as Google Gone Green. From their site, you can find Green Events, Coops and recycling centers, Green Business, and everything else. Best of all, your search is narrowed down by the state and region you live in. It’s nice.
The folks at GenGreen recently decided to place Sustainability Is Sexy as one of the featured businesses in Washington. If you’d like to check it out, here’s how to find us:
Go to gengreen.org
On the left hand side of the page, there is an image that says “Find.” Use the drop down menu to select your state, Washington.
From the Washington page, scroll down to view our “buttons” and select the button that says “Featured Businesses”
This page will display all of our featured businesses and organizations for the Western Region…. Sustainability is Sexy should be on the list!
If you do decided to join the GenGreen network, don’t forget to add Sustainability Is Sexy as a friend!
Sustainability Is Sexy packed up its bags and went back to it’s roots for Earth Day last week. The University of Washington hosted Seattle’s biggest Earth Day fair - and SIS was there to spread the message about coffee cups and waste.
It’s been close to a year since I graduated from UW. Returning to a familiar place from the past can be a bit nerve-wrecking. Would people still care? Would my message be taken seriously? Because I’m a “real adult”, would anyone listen?
The answer to those questions were overwhelming. We were hit with a stampede of interest even before our set-up was finished. Maybe it was the new “Sustainability Is Sexy” coffee mugs, or maybe it was the brilliant bright green all around. But no matter what the draw, everyone wanted to know what SIS was all about. Most importantly, everyone wanted to be a part of the solution. We went home with empty boxes, as most of our new cups and info packets were in the hands of eco-informed coffee drinkers.
Perhaps even more amazing than the amount of people we spoke to was the huge range of people interested. We spoke with everyone from students in Birkenstocks and faculty in suits (and of course, suited students and faculty in Birkenstocks). The message of saving the world with reusable coffee cups is something in which everyone can participate.
If you don’t believe students are active in today’s world, then this event would have blown your mind. Thanks to the guys from Your Revolution for organizing such a big event - you guys rock! If you’d like to read about the event and the groups which participated, you can find an article by The Daily at UW here.
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