Let's Save The World Together ...
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday July 10, 2008
SOME of the biggest names in corporate Australia are lining up to take part in a collective marketing push to persuade shoppers to go green.
Westpac, NRMA Insurance and Origin Energy, to name a few, have signed up to an initiative called Together, which will go live in Australia within a week. Under the scheme, launched a year ago in Britain by the former prime minister Tony Blair, companies market products and services that reduce a consumer's greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, companies such as Tesco, BSkyB, Marks & Spencer, B&Q, Barclaycard, British Gas, O2 and Royal & Sun Alliance have sold 20 million "solutions" such as cut-price low-energy light bulbs, cheaper insulation for houses and a TV set-top box that automatically goes into "deep standby" at night. Collectively, the campaign has saved more than 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to about 4.6 per cent of Britain's overall reduction. Last month, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and California's Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, launched a US version with Dell, Target, Chase bank and Nestle Waters signing up.Rupert Posner, director of The Climate Group, which runs the scheme in Australia, confirmed the start here but declined to give details of timing and who had signed up. He said the campaign gave consumers practical daily solutions on reducing their carbon footprint rather than just signing them up to pledge action. But a leading consultant on business and the environment questioned the scheme's worth, calling it a "corporate positioning exercise". Robbie Kelman, of the Ecos Corporation, said Together satisfied a need in companies to be "seen to be doing something" but was unlikely to bring increased sales. "If you don't do something then people will punish you, but if you do, they are not necessarily going to flock to your product." Much of the activity was window dressing: the participating companies were not making fundamental changes to their business, Mr Kelman said. He pointed to the mobile phone company O2, which is rewarding people for keeping their old mobile phone handsets by giving them extra credit. "They don't even make phones so I wonder what Nokia has to say about that," he said. "All this campaign is going to do is keep the sustainability people [in the company] happy." Westpac, NRMA and Origin have all confirmed their involvement. A Woolworths spokesman said it had yet to decide on whether to sign up.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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