Friday, September 26, 2008

The Top Three Questions People Ask Us

Issue 1: What about Electronic Waste produced by cell phones?

E-waste is definitely an issue today. Electronics manufacturers continue to produce “newer” and “better” technology and market the bleep out of them to encourage our consumer driven society to constantly upgrade and buy new equipment, when their older technology still works just fine.

This is a real problem. One of the reasons we designed GO Paperless!™ to leverage text messaging and email is because this technology is basic and exists today and does not require the user to upgrade or buy new phones. It works on all cell phones, you don’t need to upgrade to use it, which also means that it is not as sexy as applications made for the iPhone or new Google phones.

Does this give GO Paperless!™ a disadvantage in today’s market? Absolutely. We are true to our principles however and believe in leveraging what we already have to be able to do more, instead of encouraging more consumerism and waste. We believe in using things for their entire useful life, getting multiple uses out of our existing infrastructure and encouraging others to do the same.

If you are interested in proper disposal or recycling of E- waste you can check out the following link: http://www.epsc.ca/

Issue 2: Sourcing of technology especially cell phones and mining practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

This is another big issue. It is true that cell phones as well as laptops, computer chips, stereo equipment and VCR’s all use an ore called coltan. This ore comes from many places around the world including Canada, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Unfortunately, like the diamond mines in Africa, rebel groups in these regions exploit the mines and their workers and use the profits to fund even more war and suffering. Due to the increase in global demand for technology, these rebel groups have discovered that they can exploit this resource too.

It makes me very sad. Should we stop using computers, cell phones and all other electronics because of this problem? That seems to be the real question. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that tracing of sourcing in a global market place is extremely difficult, therefore how do we know if our equipment uses coltan from Australia or Africa?

The UN is working on it and I hope that we can eliminate this issue by investigating the sources and forcing technology manufacturers to be open about where their supplies are coming from so that consumers can make ethical decisions when purchasing their technology. Do I think that GO Paperless!™ is adding to this problem? No I don’t.

Issue 3: Are the founders of GO Paperless!™ capitalistic, opportunistic, frauds?

One of the major roadblocks that we have in solving our environmental crises is the disconnect between the environmentalists and the average consumer and businesses that drive the current market.

That is where GO Paperless!™ comes in. We, the founders, are in our late 20’s early 30’s and for most of our lives been brought up in the main stream tract of consumerism. But thanks to the environmentalists, that have done a tremendous job bringing the issue of the environment to the main stream, we are informed and passionate about change.

As a result, we have opted to leverage our knowledge, education and experience to help bring about solutions to help rectify our environmental issues. And we have opted to do this by building a family business together that according to our understanding of the market, will provide a service that will not only provide a commercially viable alternative to paper marketing but will also be an attractive alternative for the main stream marketers and advertising agencies so that they are encouraged to embrace change.

A solution like GO Paperless!™ attempts to achieve a balance between business, the environment and the privacy of consumers, so that we can work towards innovation that is good for the triple bottom. People, Planet, Profit. Because without profit, it will be next to impossible to get those in power to adopt change.

We provide a solution that lets marketers leverage technology, add interactivity to their advertising, get better metrics through measurement and provide consumers with real valuable information about their products and services so that consumers can make informed choices.

I encourage you to take some time to read through our website and hopefully you will begin to see what we are trying to achieve. We wrote all the words, made all the graphics, programmed the whole website together, as a family, to tell our story.

Please know that we cannot achieve this change without your support.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Not 'Green' Enough


Last week I had an inbound call from a concerned woman from Ontario. Her contention was that there was an environmental impact from phone towers that adversely affected the birds and the honey bees. She wasn't very happy with what we were offering because I think she thought we weren't 'green' enough. I was a little taken aback, because I thought we had been transparent and honest with our audience about what we are trying to accomplish and why we chose to start GO Paperless!

I have to admit, I enjoy these calls, because these are the ones where as a human being you have the most opportunity to grow. You can handle these calls in many ways: become defensive, pass it off to someone else, or just 'put them in their place'. I don't like any of these options so I chose another path. I wanted to engage her in intelligent discourse and try to learn from it.

So we talked for about 10 minutes and had a conversation around what we were doing and why we believe that Paperless Marketing can help our society. I told her about how we need to leverage our existing technological infrastructure and maximize it's potential instead of trying to build new technologies that need natural resources to be developed, deployed and distributed.

New technology innovation costs a lot, takes a long time to get to market, and consumes a lot of natural resources to accomplish. We believe we have the global infrastructure and interconnected technology in place that when maximized for optimization and efficiency can solve a lot of problems for us.

When we decided to start GO Paperless!™ we didn't know anything about the 'green' industry or 'green' washing. We were Green at Being Green™. I wouldn't say I was a green convert and lived a wasteful life before. In truth, a lot of my actions and opinions were sustainable even though I didn't understand the concept of sustainability until recently.

And that's how I started the conversation with the woman from Ontario. I told her that I didn't know about the environmental effect of radio towers. I also told her that it was really hard to keep up with everything going on in the new green-conscious world. I try to keep up the daily news but there is a lot of information out there and most of it is really confusing.

I don't know what 'green' is but I do know how I can be more sustainable with the choices I make. And I think I'd rather be sustainable then green.

I told her that it comes down to choice. We all make choices in our lives, and when it comes to paper we don’t' value it enough. Out of all the natural resources we consume, trees are our front line defense against global warming. Why do we still cut them down? There needs to be an alternative that brings better value to the world using our existing technology.

She was very happy about my responses because there was the awkward moment when she realized that I wasn't 'green' washing but was just part of a new generation of sustainable professionals. I thanked her for her call even though she felt uncomfortable being thanked for calling to complain. I explained how these engagements are valuable because we can learn how to be more sustainable and make informed decisions.

Every decision you make in business has an impact on the environment. Traditionally the equation was simple, people and profits. Now the Triple Bottom Line makes us reevaluate the whole equation and work out a whole new set of rules to make it balance. It's an exciting time because new innovation is the driver of a new sustainable society and we have the capacity to change our habits towards a better future.

GO Paperless!™ is the choice we offer our world. We simply provide the choice between Paper or Paperless™, and ask which would you choose for your sustainable life.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

It Starts with the First 'R'

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - It Starts with the First 'R'

When I was a kid I was introduced to the 3Rs in school. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It was a mantra that was etched into my brain. I was told that the first step to managing our waste was to first reduce the amount that we threw out, then to reuse whatever we could, and the last was to recycle everything we could.

I've noticed articles online that are starting to re-order the 3Rs. Some put Recycle first, other Reuse. I wanted to share what the 3Rs mean to me and why they should stay in the order that my grade school teacher taught me.


Reduce

What it means: To reduce our impact on the environment, we need to first reduce the amount of natural resources we consume. Short product life cycles increase our waste, while long life cycles prolong when we have to send products to land fills.

Why it's first: At our current pace of consumption of natural resources, we are on the fast track to using up all of our natural resources. The price of commodities have risen, and will continue to rise as we use more oil, minerals and metals in our quest to produce everything for everyone.

The Focus: Stop consuming wasteful products. You don't have to go into a store and buy something, anything because you are there. Don't buy that pretty little bracelet that is the same as the 15 previous pretty bracelets in your drawer. How many do you really need.


Reuse

What it means: If we have to use a product it is our choice when the product life cycle runs out, that is, when we throw it away. Extending a products lifecycle is our choice by sharing it with others, saving it for later or using it for something it wasn't intended for.

Why it's second: We have to consume resources to survive. We have to eat, heat our homes, make a living and build and run our society. Whatever we do have to use, we should reuse until it is not practical anymore. To help manage consumption, we need to get every pound of value out of products and not throw them away early because they aren't new.

The Focus: Think about your purchases and what values drive your purchases. Buying things that will last you a long time and are versatile enough to be used for different things is much better than buying something that will only be used once and then thrown out. Stop buying things that are disposable, and start to choose things that are reusable.


Recycle

What it means: This is the extension of reusing, simply reusing the raw materials. Choosing recyclable products can help to provide us with renewable resources that can slow down the consumption of our planet's natural resources.

Why it's last: By this point we should have only consumed products that were essential to our living and have lasted a long lifecycle. They've been reused until it was unusable. Now it is either going to be recycled to renew the natural resources in it, or throw away into a landfill.

The Focus: When choosing what to buy, find products that can be recycled easily. The first thing we tackled in the global sustainability push was to start recycling programs for the various products that are consumed and sent to landfills. There are now recycling programs for most products, and choosing the products that use recyclable materials is the responsibility of the individual as much as the company producing the product.

Cheers
HH
www.gopaperless.ca

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Event Recap




Earth Day Canada Tree Planting at Downsview Park - Toronto, Canada
What could be more glorious than enjoying a nice Sunday afternoon with good friends and family, your community and your spouse at your side. Throw in some kids and you have a pretty fun party.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, a great day for tree planting at Downsview Park. It was a celebration of Earth Day with food and drinks, music and entertainment, tree planting, and lots and lots of learning for all ages.

We talked, we laughed, we sold some Kids T-shirts, and it turned out to be an amazing day. Kids really are the inspiration to GO Paperless! since it is their world that we are responsible for shaping and passing on.

To see kids of all ages running around with the "I want to GO Paperless!" stretched across their back was quite a sight, and I'd like to see it a lot more.



I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported us at the event, and we look forward to seeing you at the next one.

Love
Haris & Sonia

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Conference Recap

Social Responsibility Forum - April 15, 2008 - Toronto
www.strategymag.com/socialresponsibility/2008

This week I attended my first Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility and it was a great learning experience. It was put on by Strategy Magazine and was hosted by two engaging social marketing veterans, Marc and Peter.

So after a few fun barbs between the MC's the stage was set for the first presenter.

The Story of the Victoria's Secret Catalogue

The Story of the Victoria's Secret Catalogue was a great way to start the day. First you have to know that Victoria's Secret sends out on average a million catalogues a day. That's more than 365 million catalogues that are printed every year. I haven't seen the catalogue since I was much younger ;) but I remember it had at least 15 glossy pages. That's almost 5.5 billion sheets of paper a year for just lingerie.

The story begins with ForestEthics, an NGO that is fighting to protect the Boreal Forests around the world. They identified direct mail catalogues as a key culprit to the huge loss of trees in our old growth forests (those are forests that haven't been tainted by human development). They took the fight right to Victoria's Secret doorstep. With an aggressive marketing campaign, they used some ingenious guerilla marketing practices to raise the awareness of consumers of this travesty and used market pressures to get Victoria's Secret to the sit at a table and deal with this unsustainable issue.

In comes Tom of Limited Brands to the table. Now Tom tells the story of Victoria's Secret, a company that tries it's best to be sustainable but simply doesn't have the experience in sustainable practices to understand the impact of their business to the climate problem.

This is the part that I love about the story. Tom and his company sat at the table with ForestEthics and worked together to understand the issue from both sides. Limited Brands makes a good portion of its income from that specific marketing practice and could not stop sending catalogues.

ForestEthics helped them to understand that there were better practices and helped them identify the best sustainable sourcing options that their suppliers were offering. In the end, Victoria's Secret picked a paper source that was certified and used recycled material. It was a good first step towards building a sustainable marketing practice for the Limited Brands catalogue business.

As a leader in the industry, Limited Brands has shown their leadership by bringing in the ForestEthics to help them make informed paper decisions. My hope is, other catalogue producers will see Limited Brands leadership and start to offer consumers a more sustainable engagement.

Hey Tom, GO Paperless!™ with your Catalogues. Call me. :P

The Panel Discussion on Greenwashing

This was a panel on a topic I was interested in. The idea of greenwashing is concerning for my organization. I wouldn't want any of my users who trust me as a sustainable brand to think I was helping an organization to greenwash.

What makes a brand message greenwashing?

The panel identified what was a sustainable message, essentially what wasn't greenwashing. That was good. It helped me to quantify what a green message should look like.

Here is what a green marketing message should accomplish:
  • Provide a TRUE story of sustainability practices
  • Based on RESULTS and not a new spin on an old feature
  • Show TRANSPARENCY of business processes
  • Build INTEGRITY into the organization’s core values
I thought it was interesting what Frank of LG Electronics said on the topic. The fear for many organizations is that they are currently not completely sustainable and have a lot of business processes to change before they can even start to make a sustainability claim.

I think as a consumer, I just want to know that companies are trying to change, and are willing to do it for me, my children and my neighbours. I want companies to be honest with me and tell me how they are going to try to be more sustainable in the future and that they are willing to do anything to make that happen. And I want them to tell me in-depth information and not glossed over marketing shtick. I want companies that I buy from to be green champions. And a champion is honest, has integrity and produces positive results.

Don’t get me wrong, LG is a great example of the right thing to do in the marketplace. I respect their responsible choice of not greenwashing, but I also expect future sustainability results when they develop their plan. And when they have their plan, I hope they share it with me and deliver on their promise.

High Voltage - GMs Greening Products and Customer Experiences

David talked about General Motors and their efforts to provide sustainable choices throughout their product line. It was interesting because he touched on something that is important to remember about automobiles.

There is no true sustainable solution for our transportation woes. We have to look at a number of competing technologies to provide the right solution for our lifestyle. We all use cars in different ways and GM believes that developing sustainable choices for the consumer. So instead of various models and features, we’ll have the choice of different sustainable technologies.

They are developing multiple levels of sustainable cars. From cars and trucks that run on electricity, to hybrid technology, bio-fuels and other technologies. Their model is about providing the choice for right type of sustainable car for a person’s specific lifestyle makes a lot of sense. You don’t really need a Hummer in an urban centre. It just doesn’t make any sustainable sense.

I heard a lot from David about the green products, but unfortunately I was interested in the greening of the customer experience and he didn't touch on it. So David, if you can hear me, answer a question about how GM is greening the customer experience.

On a side note, I can see the retrofit of cars to new sustainable technologies will become a big market opportunity for the auto sector. Taking an old car and replacing the gas engine with a sustainable alternative is probably the best way to conserve our resources. I believe in taking existing technology and turning it into new greener options.

It's the second R in the 3Rs. Reuse. Did you ever watch the A-Team or McGyver? They were the masters of reusing old stuff and that is where I got my passion for applying new applications to existing technology.

Paper. My Enemy. My Friend

The next speaker was really interesting to me. Norman Lecours from Cascades Fine Papers provides eco-friendly paper alternatives to the market. What I loved about Norman was he understood that their organization can be more environmentally friendly with their business practices by choosing the right markets to service.

They are based in the East Coast and they recognized that if they were delivering their eco-friendly paper to the West Coast, the transportation and emissions costs were enormous. It just didn't make much environmental sense to ship recycled paper from the East Coast to the West Coast.

They decided that as business they would not ship to the West Coast unless the customer took the responsibility of shipping. They didn't want to be the ones responsible for the carbon emissions of transporting their paper to a market they didn't think was environmentally friendly to serve. That shows class and integrity and enough respect for Norman and his team.

Even though I don't like paper and I'm trying to promote the paperless life, it's important for companies like Cascades to recognize the importance of their role in the climate crises and make business decisions that are better for their business and our environment. Cascades is a smart company and I wish them well.

But really. Down with paper. GO Paperless!™


"Good" en Francais c'est Bon

Now I'm excited to talk about the Cirque du Soleil initiative. They don't have one. They are just a company that tries to do good. It's woven into their brand because it is who they are. They don't try to be good to satisfy customers expectations of them, they simply are good and have the best intentions in what they do.

They have a 50 person Global Citizenship Group that makes sure that Cirque is doing good everywhere they go, and making sure that their employees understand kindness, giving and integrity is part and parcel with being a part of the company.

Good people make good companies. Cirque seems like it is full of good people that use their power for good and not evil. They aren't worried about growth and profits because they know that being good is enough for everyone in their organization to be happy and successful.
Wouldn't you like to work for a company that tried to do good and made you feel like you were doing something worthwhile for humanity?

I had the opportunity to talk to Gaetan at length between sessions. I have to say I just love French people. Growing up in New Brunswick I was always exposed to the French Canadian culture and Gaetan epitomizes the gallantry of our brothers en Francais. If you ever see him around tell him I said Salut.

Lunch Roundtable

Good food, good conversation, good people. It was nice to hear from different attendees about Corporate Social Responsibility. Although I found most of the talk was centred around cause related marketing and not green marketing but I guess that's to be expected.

Most companies haven't done anything green yet to justify green marketing. They've been doing cause related marketing for many years and it's the easiest place to start talking about corporate social responsibility. It’s not their fault, there aren’t many green business options out there yet. (we hope to start a trend)

My fear is that the CSR message in the marketplace with too much cause related marketing will dilute the importance of CSR as our climate change vehicle and will lead us down the wrong objective. Don’t' get me wrong, I truly believe causes are important to our society and supporting charities and NGOs is a noble and good practice and should be continued with more funding and resources.

But.

The climate crisis is the reason that CSR is top of mind. We should never lose sight of that. Humanity has been irresponsible with our business practices and we have been eating away at our planet's resources without any notion of sustainability.

We need to take a good hard look at our own company and office and look at how much we consume and how much we emit. That's the Corporate Social Responsibility that is the most important to our future and that's the problem we need to deal with right now.

What's Next for Sustainability

The next speaker was Chris Laszlo from Sustainable Value Partners a consulting company that has worked with WalMart, DuPont, GE and Unilever. To be honest, I was getting tired. I needed a coffee but the presentation had already started.

I think it was engaging, but honestly there was nothing I really remember from it. So I took the session off. You only get one per conference.


Cause-Related Marketing

I suck. I took another session off. It was cause-related marketing, which has great synergies with GO Paperless!™ but I didn’t hear anything I didn't already know before.

Cause-Related Marketing has been the only CSR programs for a lot of years, so there is not much new to learn. It's simple, a company sponsors a cause. The cause wins with the corporate financial support and the company wins with the association with the cause. Pretty simple stuff. The rest is just creative and logistics.

The reality is that we aren't going to market our way out of this climate mess. We are going to have to change our habits and behaviours in our lives and our work to find ways to be more sustainable with our planet.

So who is the Ethical Consumer?

This was probably the most informative presentation because it was based on hard research and an understanding of what identifies a market and the growth of it.

So who is the ethical consumer?
  • They are generally female
  • They are 35+
  • They live in urban centres
There was a lot of great information presented on these slides and I'd recommend talking to Environics for more information. They know their stuff.

Creative Campaigns

Last session. Woohoo. It was a great conference but I found it was valuable in the morning and light in the afternoon. I'd reached my limit of learning and now it was time to think through all the knowledge I had acquired.

The MCs finshed with some creative CSR campaigns, one that was pretty ingenious. A UK Organic Beverage Company was getting people to knit little hats for their beverages and putting them on the bottles that were available on the shelf. Every time a beverage and hat were bought, they would donate 50 pence to charity.

Pretty cool engagement, except I wonder how sustainable it is. What are they going to do with all those knitted hats? Are their little people with little heads in the UK who's heads are cold? They could recycle the wool, sell them in partnership with a doll company or stitch them together to make a big wooly tiny hat jacket. I’d wear it if no-one else would.

That's the end. I had a great time at the event and it was amazing to meet people with similar core values and informative opinions. These experiences are great for learning about corporate responsibility and it's also a great place to share sustainable ideas and make new friends.

That's the only way we'll get out of this mess is if we work together.

So I only took an 8.5 x 11 equivalent in business cards, didn't hand out any paper, and refused any of the paper that was offered. I didn't need anything since I had the Conference Program on my Tablet PC. Living a Paperless Life isn’t always easy but it can be done.

Thanks for reading my long recap. I hope you found it valuable listening to me drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on… ;)

Cheers
HH
www.gopaperless.ca

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Replacing the Paper Transaction

Paper based marketing transactions are generally of two kinds. Materials may be handed from one person to another, typically in a salesperson to prospect scenario, and secondly, materials may be made available for potential prospects to take away with them for instance from a FSI display or other touch points. Both of these transactions occur in the offline world (as opposed to on the internet) and involve a direct transfer of information upon request.

There are, however, limitations to using paper to achieve this transfer of information. Paper is cumbersome, takes up a lot of space, is non-interactive, difficult to change, difficult to measure, uses a lot of natural resources to produce and creates a lot of waste; especially given the amount of paper-based marketing material that is printed but never put to use.

GO Paperless!™ provides an alternative transaction in which paperless marketing materials can essentially be handed from person to person, or taken away from consumer touch points using a standard mobile phone.

Once a business' marketing materials are stored with us, a salesperson can use their mobile phone to access their materials and have them sent to the email address of their choice. Additionally, consumers can also access a business' materials at their convenience from pre-existing customer touch points.

By focusing on eliminating the paper transaction GO Paperless!™ provides an easy, secure, and environmentally friendly mechanism for the dissemination of marketing materials. Additionally through our Paperless Marketing consultation service, we provide expert advice on how to leverage the many advantages of GO Paperless!™ so our customers and end users can enjoy all the benefits of the GO Paperless!™ experience.

With the elimination of the paper transaction, GO Paperless!™ aims to reduce the paper waste in the marketing industry and to promote the conservation of trees by providing a value packed alternative to replace paper marketing transactions.