It’s Not Easy Being Green

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

Most of us have read similar pleas at the bottom of our e-mail communications. I cut my own marketing teeth in e-mail and naturally thought the metaphysical world of zeros and ones environmentally superior to the physical world of ink on paper. The truth is, there are many shades of green where marketing is concerned, and there is much more to consider than the output medium when environmental impact is measured.

Visions of clear cut forests, rows and rows of stumps, are what often come to mind when thinking about the paper industry. Yet we have no such visions of barren gardens when we consume bags of carrots or buckets of popcorn. Carrots and corn plants, like paper trees, are grown specifically for the purpose of consumption. Thanks to industry groups like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), our forests are better tended to than ever before. Coupled with the use of recycled paper in napkins, coffee cups and more and it could be argued that much of the paper used both personally and commercially is actually quite beneficial to our planet and not the terror it’s been portrayed to be.

By the same token, our electronic communications may not be as green as we’d like to believe. Our computers, on which we compose our messages, the server farms which route them and the networking cables which transmit them all require electricity, the source of which is primarily fossil fuels. Outdated devices which can’t be refurbished or donated and reused are piled high in digital graveyards that are anything but metaphysical.

In other words, “being green” truly is a matter of perspective. So if you’d like to be both an effective marketer and a steward of this place called Earth, visit us at EngagePace.com to find out how we can help you create messages that have a greater impact on your audience than they do on the planet.