Environmental Marketing

What is Environmental Marketing?

Environmental marketing refers to a broad range of activities designed to emphasize to the consumer and to other businesses that a company's activities and products are sustainable or environmentally friendly. Several companies have proactively implemented environmental marketing programs to improve their business offerings in several different ways. Some recent notable examples are as follows:

• British Petroleum (BP) has committed to spending $350 million on energy efficient products over several years and is aggressively promoting its environmental awareness programs.
• General Electric (GE) is spending $1.5 billion on its Ecoimagination campaign, which aims to research and implement less-polluting technologies and to promote them as emblems of GE's environmental concern.
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• Starbuck's announced the donation of $10 million over five years for clean drinking water around the world through the sale of its Ethos bottled water. The company already offers coffees that offer fair pay for growers and environmentally sound cultivation.
• 3M encourages employees to participate in its “Pollution Prevention Pays” program, which seeks to reduce pollution through means such as product redesign and modification, and recycling. Since 1974, the program has offset over 2 billion pounds of air, water, and solid waste pollutants from the environment.
• The largest home and garden center chain, Home Depot, discontinued the sale of wood products from endangered forests in 2002.

In addition to firms, major global bodies, such as the United Nations, have promoted green practices for municipal governments, and even buildings, for example, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, advertise that they were built using environmentally friendly construction. Several industry-based associations actively encourage green marketing programs. For instance, the U.S. Green Building Council is responsible for certifying and promoting environmentally responsible and high-performance buildings, while the Green Seal organization awards green seals to products that meet rigorous environmental standards, which in turn helps consumers identify products that are environmentally safe.

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