eROI Days Email Agency

Here is an email that I’ve been sending to my entrepreneur friends in Portland today:

Tom Szaky is one of the hottest, most dynamic, young green / sustainable entrepreneurs in the country.  I’m writing you because I know you’d love meeting this amazing entrepreneur who is coming to Portland b/c of its green, sustainable presence (and because I asked him after getting to know him at the past two Inc. 500 conferences).

Tom Szaky is an absolutely amazing speaker (up there w/ President Clinton as another keynote at the Inc. 500 conference last year).  I invited him to fly out here from Trenton, New Jersey to speak to 45-60 entrepreneurs at eROI and he’s able to be here on Sat, Nov 15 at noon (free lunch). This is a Starve Ups event - thanks to John Friess and the Starve Ups member companies for making this happen.

He really is an amazing guy (27 years old and running a $15 million green / sustainable company called TerraCycle where everything about its product and packaging comes from waste) – please consider coming to this.

Here is my past blog post and a Danny Deutsch video:
http://eroidays.com/2007/09/10/amazing-inc-500-conference/

Please let me know if you are interested.  Thx.

Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, is a 27 year-old, game-changer, in the world of green products and the world of beautiful waste. Here are my notes from his Inc. 5000 Breakout Session:

Traditional Green perspective - The more eco-friendly, the more expensive
The larger stores like Walmart & Target are leading the way for more than Whole Foods, etc.

Bottles (Plastic)
Revsed Virgin 30% Recycled Compostable
$0.02 $0.05 $0.07 $0.15

Our products must be: Better, Cheaper, Greener

Pre-Consumer/Post-Consumer (overprint CDs/DVDs), 75% of gift cards never leave warehouse

70lbs waste was produced to make 1lb of waste

99% of what you buy is waste in 6 months

Waste is America’s biggest export

Key is to separate waste

CapriSun- 4.5 billion drink pouches per year

Terra Cycle gets paid to collect the waste (profitable) becauses it is branded

Sort, Sanitize, Waste in Trenton, NJ – then gets flown to Mexico & gets sewn there

Revenue: 3M -> 8M -> 15M

What are the solutions for retailers for greent?
Working with big brands to create creative solutions

You have to evaluate on first two- Better, Cheaper (prove ROI) BTW-it’s Green

Do NOT sell on the virtue of being green. Green is the assumed baseline now. It’s the gravy on top.

Recycle Bank- give credits/$ coupons for recycling more. They’ve increased recycling rate from 20% to 90% in some small cities.

If I can collect enough of 1 thing, it creates value. Lock up I own these waste streams.

BILL McDONOUGH- Cradle to Cradle (Upcycling vs. Downcycling)

Natural Foods Tradeshow, Expo West, Expo East
• Tiny consumer products & companies inspire to be in Whole Foods
• People who are authentically green who don’t work with big brands/retailers

Question: In Germany, charge a lot for garbage to consumers and retailers

Clorox – Green Works – owned the market by being same low price and green

All purpose cleaner- same exact stuff as all the other stuff

Imagine no longer. Car-free streets will become a reality this weekend. This is an email forwarded from a close friend at Wieden+Kennedy:

Hi everyone,

Pardon the intrusion, but this is pretty cool… CAR-FREE STREETS in Portland! Details are below.

Come and check it out. Or volunteer even!

Our friends at the Community Cycling Center are putting it together, and they’d love to see you (and your families) there.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Greetings CCC Supporters,

Sunday Parkways is a day of car-free streets, where 6 miles of North
Portland roads will be closed so that the community can bike, run,
skate and celebrate the outdoors together. The Community Cycling
Center is hosting a bike activity center at Peninsula Park and we need
your help in staffing these different activities. Our bike activities
include.

Free demonstrations (fix a flat, safety checks)
Basic bike education for children and adults
Free mechanic repair and safety checks for kids’ bikes
Information about the CCC and our programs, shop and volunteer opportunities.

To volunteer, please read on for more information

What: Sunday Parkways - Six miles of local streets in North Portland
will be closed to traffic from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The circular route
will give Portlanders a chance to get out and be active right in their
own neighborhood. Participants can walk, bike, run, stroll, and roller
blade along the route to activities in the parks as well as to nearby
shops and businesses in the vicinity.

When: Sunday, June 22nd

Where: Peninsula Park, 700 N Portland Blvd, Portland, OR

Shifts: 7:45-11:00am; 10:45am-2:00pm

Positions and Skills:

Demonstrations: Intermediate mechanical aptitude
Bike Education: Experience teaching bike safety to children ages 6-15 years old
Mechanic: Advanced mechanical aptitude
Tabling: Ability to represent the CCC in the community by effectively
communicating the mission, vision, values, and programs of the
organization.

TO VOLUNTEER: Email Volunteer@CommunityCyclingCenter.org

and please provide the following information.

Name
Email Address
Position and shift you would like (first-come, first serve)

Sincerely,

Neal Armstrong
Volunteer and Event Manager
Community Cycling Center

Bike Shop
1700 NE Alberta Street
Portland, OR 97211
Hours 10am - 7pm Tuesday through Sunday
Shop: 503-287-8786

www.CommunityCyclingCenter.org

Bicycles are a tool for personal empowerment and a vehicle for social change.

RmbrME touts the Greening of the world by eliminating business cards. You gotta be kidding me? Of all the opportunity in the world to save billions of trees and reduce the carbon footprint, I wouldn’t start with business cards.

Regardless, let’s talk about the joy you get when you see a really clever business card. That brand experience, when hand-delivered, can be so powerful and positive, why would I want to eliminate that experience. Business cards are an extension of your company’s brand, but more importantly, your personal brand and a pride in both team and individuality. The good business cards I get make me laugh or spark a conversation. There’s a reason that business cards have been around for centuries and it’d be a shame for every technology entrepreneur to continually think that their technology will replace some age-old medium completely. It almost never does. We need to be comfortable with many mediums living side by side in a complementary fashion.

Alright, I’m done with my rant. Now you can read the full article on Sustainable Life Media >>

RmbrME’s Gabe Zichermann: “Ditch the Business Cards”

SLM: So how does RmbrME work?

Gabe: RmbrME is a pretty straightforward service. Sign up for an account and link it to whichever social networking sites you use - LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. (RmbrME supports all of them). When you meet someone you’d like to exchange information with, you simply text “rmbrme” with the phone number or email address of the person you’d like to contact. That person then receives an instant invitation from which they can connect with you on any social networking site that they choose and also access your contact information.

The service grew out of a simple frustration that I had with the tremendous waste associated with paper business cards. I looked at the business card and thought, “Wow, this really serves an incredibly brief purpose. I just take it back to my office and copy down the information into my computer.” People go to conferences and come back with piles of business cards that eventually end up in the trash.

RmbrME was born out of the desire to eliminate that paper waste, making the connection seamless, and also making the experience much more real-time than it is today.

Read the full article here >>

I thought this article from iMedia Connection - “10 Ways to ‘Green’ your Brand” was so significant that I needed to evangelize it and archive it in this blog post. Matt Heinz knows his stuff and puts the overload of green information into an easy top 10 action list.

Article excerpt:
Your green top 10 list for 2008
So you’re ready to get started. Here are 10 more things you can start doing right away, all in 2008, to create a comprehensive, compelling and results-driven green strategy for your business and brand.

Internally
1. Recycling: Surprisingly, not very many of us are doing it, and not nearly to the level that we easily could. Office recycling programs now easily tackle not just paper, but also glass, aluminum, cardboard, catalogs, magazines, etc. — all in the same bin. Think also about how your company recycles office equipment, computer supplies, etc. Much of these tools can be donated or sold to companies and third-world companies that will put them to good use, reducing the need for new equipment manufacturing, which itself creates an incredibly high carbon footprint.
2. Transportation: Encourage and subsidize more of your employees to use group and public transportation. Rethink whether or not you need that business trip, or if a phone call, WebEx or video conference could suffice.
3. Power management: Consider implementing a PC power management solution, such as those described above. This can have an immediate impact on not only carbon footprint, but also operating costs.
4. Office guidelines: Default all printers to duplex printing. Encourage employees to only print what’s necessary and to use “soft copies” for everything else. Encourage and reward activities across the company that demonstrate employees “living the green brand.” You’ll be surprised what unique and compelling green strategies individual employees come up with that can become internal and external sustainability strategies for your business and brand.
5. Supplier & partner guidelines: Encourage or require your partners and suppliers to maintain certain green-friendly operating standards. Several companies, such as Wal-Mart, are already doing this, and are thereby impacting sustainable practices well beyond their own.

Externally

6. Community engagement & activation: Encourage your customers to be green with you. If you’re enacting PC power management solutions within your business, encourage your customers to do the same. Getting them involved and participating with you in your green strategies is an excellent way to build community and create strong bonds between brand and customer.
7. Community participation: Find ways to actively participate in existing community activities, organizations and other efforts to be green and sustainable, especially efforts that align with your company and brand’s core values and brand message. This can be local or national organizations and efforts — focused on employee participation or widespread customer activation.
8. Channel choices: Consider the carbon impact of your marketing channels, and how you read, influence and empower your customers. Participating in a trade show, for example, is a carbon footprint-heavy strategy compared to an online-based, community-based activity that likely can achieve the same awareness or demand generation results. And if you’re making channel choices based on what’s most sustainable, tell your customers and prospects about it. They’ll appreciate the motivation behind your choice.
9. Competitive advantage: If being green is truly a key and possibly new part of your brand message and positioning, lean into it. Make it something that everyone across your organization — sales, marketing, customer support, etc. — is reciting as a mantra in their individual engagements with your customers and prospects. Make your green strategy a true competitive advantage.
10. Endorsements & associations: Partner with Energy Star, buy products from suppliers with strong environmental stories (such as HP for computers and printers), and work with credible speakers, writers and authorities already in the green and sustainable world to align with your brand, endorse your strategy and help tell your story.

(more…)