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You can say what you want about the “green” movement, which has as many political overtones as a Dixie Chick concert, but some aspects of it are great.  MountainSmith, a well-known manufacturer of outdoor gear, has recently announced the arrival of two new lumbar packs that are made from recycled plastic water bottles.  By their estimates, it sales of these products will keep approximately 1.1 million bottles out of the landfill each year, which is great news.  The sad thing is, the technology to achieve this isn’t really anything new, so I’m grateful for the political firestorm that’s yielding things like hybrid cars and recycled fabrics.  Most outdoor equipment manufacturers know that they cater to an environmentally-conscious crowd, so innovations have been abundant (and well-promoted) for years, but now utilizing such techniques can generate a very real ROI from an increasingly aware public.

Of course, I didn’t see a lumbar pack recycling program mentioned anywhere…yet =).

Anyone who knows me knows that I am almost always drinking water from a plastic Nalgene bottle. It’s good to stay hydrated at work, and in my opinion it’s really good to do so from a reusable container.

I read something on CNN.com this weekend that really excites me: the mayor of San Francisco has signed an executive order banning city deparments from buying bottled water. The mayor cited the overall financial costs and the subsequent environmental impact as major reasons for the ban…I think this is really a great initiative and should be applauded. In fact, in America and other developed countries, I hope that bottled water will one day go the route that smoking is today - banned in most places.

Does that seem a little extreme? Americans already have some of the cleanest water in the world. In fact, the water discharged from waste water treatment plants must meet stricter guidelines for potability than municipal water supplies in the developing world. I’ve read in several places (but can’t find them currently to cite them) that if the world spent on international aide what it spent on bottled water each year that we would be able to provide clean drinking water to everyone on the planet.

And then there’s the environmental impact. Just take me for example. I’ve been using the same bottle for the past 4+ years, and it’s still going strong. Let’s say I had instead used a throw-away bottle every day for the past 4 years. That would mean that I would have placed over 1,400 bottles of plastic into the landfill by myself! Americans buy enough bottled water in a year to give an 8-ounce serving to every man, woman, and child in the country. But that’s really nothing compared to all of the other costs. Check out this Wikipedia article (it’s properly cited and footnoted) for more information…it’ll blow your mind.

I’m glad that Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco is taking such a bold step forward. I hope other towns will see the cost benefits and follow suit.

I’m an outdoor enthusiast, and I enjoy hiking, backpacking, camping, caving, etc. It’s no secret that I’m as obsessed about having the right gear as I am about the actual activities, so I’m constantly scouring discount outdoor gear stores online in search of the next great thing that I didn’t know I needed. One of those sites is moosejaw.com, a very reputable dealer that has its marketing talons firmly embedded in the 16-30 year-old market, as their website design clearly indicates. I saw a promotion on their site that made very little sense from a product standpoint, but was a brilliant idea from a promotions standpoint:

“WOW!” I thought. What a great hook to get that twenty-something male to part with $60 in dispensable income for some sandals. A real ninja star, just for buying shoes! I can picture the masses of young men who would otherwise never own a ninja star becoming very excited about buying some sandals in order to have one. However, when you click on the promotion…
… you get to see how “real” it really is. It’s a cheap plastic star. As if that wasn’t safe enough, moosejaw thoughtfully included a plastic safety ring as well.

What a crushing disappointment. And worse, how useless! What would you do with such an insignificant trinket? Now I know, there are thousands of good reasons for not sending a real metal star with sharpened points. Thousands of reasons that lawyers with good intentions of protecting their company posed in the conference room where this ninja star promotion was probably dreamed up. But in doing so, moosejaw ends up delivering something to their customers that is worse than nothing - an empty, misleading promise.

Maybe I’m from a different school of thought than most people, but I think that warning labels that are just that, warnings, do little to deter consumers unless accompanied by a logical explanation. For instance, the warning label on my son’s can of powdered formula states, “WARNING- DO NOT HEAT BOTTLE WITH NIPPLE ATTACHED.” No explanation. I must confess, as a result of either urgency or laziness I have often disregarded that warning, to no ill effect. Positively nothing wrong has happened as a result.

Now consider that level of communication vs. this that of a warning label on the back of a bottle of drain cleaner, or other poisonous chemical. Phrases such as, “will cause severe burns”, “may cause blindness”, and of course “contents extremely flammable” clearly demonstrate the risk of misusing the product. However, so many other products contain warning labels such as those on a bottle of shampoo, “for external use only”, that have no rational explanation as to why downing a refreshing bottle of Head & Shoulders after a hard day’s work may be a bad idea.

Okay, so that last example was a bit silly. But the point is this: in the Information Age, consumers expect to know why, and in as conversational as a tone as possible. If my son’s formula said, “Do not heat bottle with nipple attached, because it might reduce the nutritional content of the formula” (I’m making this consequence up here) I’d be a lot more apt to follow it.

Just for fun, here’s a website that lets you create your own warning label:

http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

Enjoy!