16/10/2018

How to Go Green on Your Next Promotion

Eco Friendly Badge

When you use environmentally friendly promotional products in your marketing, you make a very positive statement about your company and your brand. Just how green you make your marketing depends on the choice of products you use and today companies like Redbows offer a very wide selection.

Going greener may be part of your company policies and general commitment to lower your carbon footprint and help to preserve natural resources. Policies covering this could include Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental Management.

Whether your organisation has made a positive and formal commitment to the environment or not we all have an obligation to help preserve our environment. This was recently highlighted in the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC – http://www.ipcc.ch/). The report stated the need for urgent and unprecedented changes within the next 12 years to prevent global temperatures rising above 1.5C.

So how can promotional merchandise help preserve resources and contribute towards environmental commitments?

Firstly, a conscious choice can be made to use eco-friendly products like the ones available from suppliers like Redbows.

The term ‘eco-friendly’ relates to the use of recycled or reclaimed materials or those that are manufactured from organic or sustainably farmed resources. Recycling has a growing role in the UK and many organisations have recycling streams as do most UK households. When materials are put into these waste streams for recycling, they are general grouped in a processing centre into plastics, rubbers, papers, woods, metals, clothing and other materials.

Recycled plastics and the rubber from tyres can be made into a range of promotional merchandise including rulers and coasters as well as plastic mugs. The finished product will have the durability and quality as one manufactured from first-time use materials. Paper can also be recycled and turned into paper pads and notebooks as well as cardboard and other compacted forms. Some plastic forms can be even be recycled into clothing and caps.

Cloth is another material area that can be used as a product base material in eco-friendly clothing and bags. Here organic cotton, jute and hemp can be used to manufacture various types of Tote and shopping bags. Organic cotton can also be used for t-shirts and other clothing items.

Sustainable farm management is another aspect to consider. Forests can be sustainably managed to ensure that they have the least impact on the environment and are managed so that harvested trees are replaced with saplings ready to take their place in future years. Wooden materials like this can be used for a pens and pencils as well as other products.

Other products that can be used for eco-friendly type promotions include seeds and plants. These products can also be used for wellness type marketing programmes.

It is always to interesting when considering eco-friendly type promotions to consider the impact of global consumers and millennials. There is a definite shift in world markets towards societal purpose and social impact and this ca be achieved using environmentally friendly promotional merchandise.

Other ways to impact society and the environment in general is to offer the promotional merchandise alongside a joint promotion. Bottled water could be used at events with an offer to donate a sum to a chosen charity for each bottle returned for recycling. This type of promotion could be used with any other type of promotional product and is therefore not solely limited to those with using eco-friendly materials.

Alternatively ask about shipping costs and origin of manufacture. The closer a product is manufactured to its intended point of use, the lower the shipping costs and environmental impact from transportation. UK manufactured eco-products are ideal for UK promotions. The cost might be higher than ones manufactured in the Far East but their impact on the environment will be much lower.

In terms if imprint most eco-products tend to restrict the number of colours that can be used within an imprint to one or two. Digital may be available but only for a selection of products in an eco-product collection.

Finally, consider the amount of product being ordered for a specific event or to carry as stock for future use. It is always better to have just enough rather than too big a safety stock. All you need is for your logo to change or a gadget to go ‘off-trend’ and you end up with stock that must be recycled.

No matter what type of organisation or business you are, there is always the need today to demonstrate your green credentials and to show your commitment to the environment and society at large. You can use promotional merchandise for this, but care must be taken to choose the right items and ones that fit with both your commitments to the environment and marketing campaign.

Please let us know how we can help you with your next marketing promotion if you want to add a green and eco-friendly product element.