MURKETING

Blame Gwyneth

Anya Hindmarch, designer of the cotton tote with the words “I am not a plastic bag” printed on it, which has inspired some consumers to stand in line and in a few cases knock each other down to acquire it, is sticking with her story that if the fabulous people in her customer base blare their eco-concern, the rest of us will fall in line. “There was a time when what was cool was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes,” she tells Time Magazine. “Now it’s all healthy living, and I think fashion had a part in that–people seeing photos of models and celebrities–Gwyneth Paltrow walking around carrying yoga mats and bottled water.”

Bottled water? Wait a minute. I thought that the taste-maker set was against bottled water these days, having figured out that, among other things, discarded water bottles clog up landfills and take ages to degrade. (Just like plastic bags!) In San Francisco, ground zero of anti-plastic government efforts, the mayor has moved from banning plastic bags to barring the use of city funds to buy water in plastic bottles. And according to something I read, some restaurants there no longer sell bottled water, etc. Various articles in the press — such as this much-linked Fast Company piece — have railed against the foolishness of plastic water bottles. And so on.

Despite this, bottled water sales are robust, and now I know why. Because of Gwyneth Paltrow! Those of us down in here in, you know, the herd, we’re looking for signals from her, and last time we saw her she was loaded down with all those yoga mats and — I remember now — bottled water! She looked great, too. That’s when I gave up coffee and cigarettes and decided to get healthy. I bet you did, too.

Anyway, I guess the problem is that there’s nobody like Anya Hindmarch making really fashionable alternatives to bottled water. The Time piece mentions that Stella McCartney has a $495 cotton shopping bag on offer, and LV has one for a little over $1,700.

But who is making the high-end Nalgene alternative that celebrities can brandish? Apparently nobody.

One of these trend-leading designers needs to get it together and offer reusable water bottle that’s made of, say, platinum, and get it into some award-show goodie bags ASAP. To make sure the rest of us get the message, make sure it says, “I Am Not a Plastic Water Bottle,” on the side. Preferably in diamonds.

Related (and possibly useful, as opposed to a mere rant like the above) links:

1. Greener Penny overview of reusable plastic bottles.

2. Craftzine.com post on things to do with plastic bags.

[Time story via Agenda Inc.]

On (not in) the bag

Interesting post on the Elsewares blog about a company called Mobi working with Todd Oldham on some snappy-looking sandwich bags:

The problem is that this product has nothing at all to do with design. It’s just packaging (which, like all packaging, ends up in the trash). I’m climbing up on my soapbox here, but I don’t think design is about making things look different with shapes and color, but about creating innovative solutions. Even if these bags were made of recycled plastic (they’re not), aren’t they just non-biodegradable garbage waiting to happen?

The company itself replied to his post, saying that it is shifting “biodegradable plastic” in the near future, and insisting that these bags are “recyclable.” Elsewares likes the biodegradable plastic news, but checked into whether plastic sandwich bags can be easily recycled, and found mixed answers.

My own take on this is that I remain suspicious of things like snappy-looking sandwich bags. When will the general strategy of adding “good design” to mundane objects run its course? I guess when it stops being such an easy way to jack up margins. Which hasn’t happened yet.

iUnconsume

Like everybody else, I guess, I was a bit caught up in the hype last week around the iPhone. In my case, I was strictly observing: I had no intention of actually going to stand in line or whatever. But I was amazed at the level of mass participation involved in the phenomenon. It became, like any mass event, more about being part of something big than about the particular thing being consumed. Even here in Savannah, people were waiting in line at the stores that promised to have the device on offer from the get-go. It was like “Star Wars” or Woodstock or something — people seemed to want to be involved just for the sake of being involved.

In the aftermath, what is there to say? Nothing, I thought. But this entry on the site Carbon Neutral Journal makes the point that, as a result of iPhone-mania, a lot of perfectly good mobiles must now be gotten rid of. It points to CollectiveGood.
The Unconsumption page of Murketing.com lists a variety of other options.

I almost hesitate to bring this up. The two recent posts here about green hype have not exactly been hits with you readers — the comments mostly seem to be saying that I’m a big spoilsport for failing to be excited about the alleged eco-consumer revolution. So don’t misunderstand me. I’m not raining on your parade, iPhone freaks. Enjoy your new gizmo to the fullest. But, as a bonus, you can also get a hit of unconsumption satisfaction, too, by getting rid of your obsolete (you know what I mean) ex-phone in the most responsible manner possible. You’ll feel that much better when you do.

Tips from a thoughtful unconsumer

Here’s an interesting, and maybe I can even say exciting, development:

Back in December I stumbled across your blog and was really taken by the concept embodied by the term “unconsumption”, since right about that time, this is exactly what I was trying to figure out how to do.

About a month later, I started my own blog, twigg hugger, which basically discusses my quest to “unconsume” in as environmentally and as personally satisfying way as I can.

Pretty cool! I bring his up not so much to prove (to myself at least) that people I don’t know personally have actually read things on this site, as to note that twig hugger turns out to be a pretty useful blog: In pursuing this quest to get rid of stuff in a responsible, and thus on some level rewarding, manner, the self-described packrat whose posts are signed Sestinaverde shares a tips and resources useful to even the most casual unconsumer.

Sestinaverde had earlier contributed several items to the Unconsumption resource page, but of course twigg hugger is now adding to that. This post offers a much more detailed account of using Bookins, a book-swap site, and this one has more on a broadly focused swap site called Throwplace.

The most recent entries have been about getting rid of items from twigg hugger’s somewhat elaborate collection of computer things — including several hundred 5.25″ floppies! Here’s the account of finding a way to get rid of those, through GreenDisk.

There are several more new resources in the blog, which is engagingly written, and which I’ll continue to follow. Meanwhile, I’ll update the Unconsumption page with twigg hugger‘s finds.

[Thanks again Sestinaverde!]

Rules, regulations, and the eco thing

I realize it’s lame of me to be several days late in noting an article in, of all venues, the New York Times Magazine. For whatever reason, I was a little slow to get to the “Eco-Tecture” issue from this past weekend, but was pretty interested in Nicolai Ouroussoff’s piece.

For one thing, I was glad to see that he specifically noted that there have been early waves of pop-culture eco-interest, but that (for whatever reason) it disappeared in the Reagan era:

In the late 1960s and ’70s, the Whole Earth Catalogue, with its D.I.Y. ethic and living-off-the-land know-how, encouraged a whole generation to dream of dropping off the grid. By the ’80s the green dream had faded somewhat.

More substantially, I was curious about his main point, which is that European architecture is far ahead of the U.S. in its “green”-ness. At least, he makes a pretty convincing case that this is so. And in explaining why, he basically says that European governments have imposed efficiency standards, and the U.S. government has not.

The United States has no federal regulations that would guarantee a minimal level of sustainability in new construction — or spur an ecologically attuned approach to new architecture. The LEED guidelines, which were drawn up by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit group founded in 1993, are a voluntary program that is now more than a decade old. Even when they are adhered to — they’ve been adopted by a number of government agencies, most notably the General Services Administration, which oversees the construction of federal buildings — they still have little effect on the majority of commercial or residential construction. In most cases, the decision to make an efficient building still rests with the client.

Nobody likes to hear about government regulations as the solution to anything these days, and I’m sure that the various libertarian thought leaders out there have all taken shots at this and assured their followers that the profit motive conquers all, and rules would come at the expense of aesthetics and innovation, etc.

Sometimes, however, rules can inspire innovation, especially in creative fields. And on the aesthetic side, Ouroussoff not only doesn’t seem to see any problems with what rule-bound European architects have created, but indicates that they’ve moved beyond buildings that overtly look “green;” they just happen to fold efficiency into the creator’s other goals and vision.

One of the problems with the idea of eco-ness as a kind of feature that attracts supposedly trend-setting consumers is that it tends to stay too much front and center. Consider Ouroussoff’s critique of LEED standards, which have always struck me as a kind of marketing talking-point.

The guidelines often lead to a constricted idea of what sustainability means. “In Europe the guidelines tend to have to do with broader organizational ideas,” Thom Mayne, the founder of the Los Angeles-based architectural firm Morphosis, told me. “Energy consumption, the organization of the workplace, urbanism — they’re all seen as interlinked. Here, the whole focus is on how to get these points. You just check them off: bike racks, high-efficiency air-conditioning units.”

I don’t know if that’s fully accurate or hyperbole, but I found it pretty compelling. Here in Savannah, there’s a pro-green contingent that’s always talking about LEED certification. It sort of reminds me of schemes to “certify” various food products in various ways, culinating in a bright certificatoin logo, as a kind of competitive advantage at the retail shelf. The problem is, this reinforces the notion of ethics as a luxury, and makes the certified product almost certain to become a niche: People who care are attracted to this certification, people who don’t, aren’t. Wholesale change may occur eventually. But it may not.

Last night I went to a presentation unveiling the proposed new master plan for downtown development. One suggestion was offering financial incentives to builders and developers who choose to get LEED certification. That’s nice for possibly inspiring some piecemeal efficiency improvements. But I’m not so sure that’s the goal we should be aiming for.

Eco turn ons and turn offs

I saw this some time ago on AdPunch:

When these photographs are seen after turning the light off it gives altogether a new picture. The campaign has used a chemical that glows in the dark.

It was certainly a remarkable idea to bring this message across people in an attractive and interesting way to compel people to think in this direction. The presentation of the campaign is too very interesting and simple. The text of the campaign reads, ‘turn off the lights and reverse global warming’. The campaign was developed by The University of Texas.

What struck me about this is that the basic message is such a throwback. This is what I remember, as a kid, being the sort of enviro message in the 1970s: Poor old Jimmy Carter telling us not to be so wasteful. Even after the oil shocks, nobody wanted to hear that, and the people tossed out scolding Jimmy in favor of amiable Ronald Reagan. Green kind of faded for a decade or two.

Now the enviro thing is back, but it’s not about turning lights off and curbing waste — it’s about buying as many eco-chic products as your credit limit allows. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but really: Is “turn out the lights” a message that’s going to be hyped on the cool-product blogs, where green friendly is regularly touted as the hottest trend? It’s just not something Oprah can give to her studio audience, or that Vanity Fair can photoshop onto its cover.

Not using energy needlessly is arguably another form of unconsumption, and raises the same question I’ve asked before: Can it ever feel as good, give the kind of pleasure, as consumption (eco or otherwise)?

This campaign seemed like an attempt to give uncomspution some kind of emotional currency, so I poked around for more information. But I never did find any, so it’s not clear to me if this was just a class project if an actual campaign that involves poster-ing, or something else.

Unconsumption: Continued

I’ve finally finished consolidating the feedback from the earlier post(s) about Unconsumption on this handy page. (If you’re looking at the actual Murketing.com site, it’s one of the tabs under the title. If you’re reading it in RSS, then, you know, click the link.)

Thoughts?

More on this general subject in the weeks ahead.

To Do in Los Angeles March 16 (and March 10-31)

This sounds sort of interesting for all you unconsumption fans in L.A.:

The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest along with Machine Project will be present Heather Rogers, author of “Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage”. The talk based on her book will take us through the surprisingly brief history of the trash heap, as before mass production and mass marketing it would have been unthinkable to dispose of so much of what we produce so soon after it is produced.

Images of Unconsumption

Steve Portigal did a turn at Pecha Kucha Night in San Francisco (20 images, 20 seconds per image) on the subject of unconsumption. See/hear the slide show via his blog. Pretty cool (and of course I appreciate the shout out).

I’m way behind on updating and re-organizing the earlier unconsumption post & feedback into a new page on this site. After two years of pretending to write a book, I’m actually sending a draft to the publishers in the next week or so, and I’m hoping that time will free up a little after that, and I’ll be able to take care of that unconsumption update and a bunch of other stuff that’s been on hold in recent months. Maybe I’ll be on top of things enough to mention NYT articles within five days of them being published. And maybe I’ll finally get around to cleaning up the list of links at right — perhaps I’ll some debt bloggers to it.

Anyway, it’s possible that this site will become somewhat less lame in the months ahead. Or maybe just lame in a whole new way.

Unconsumption

In Consumed: Freecycle: Can getting rid of stuff feel as good as getting it?

Getting new stuff can feel really good. Most everybody knows that. Most everybody also knows — particularly in the aftermath of the consumption-frenzy holiday season — that utility can fade, pleasure can be fleeting and the whole thought-that-counts thing is especially ephemeral. Apart from the usual solution to this problem (more new stuff!), it’s worth pondering whether getting rid of stuff can ever feel as good as getting it….

Continue reading at the NYT site via this no-registration-required link.

Additional links: Freecycle; earlier Murketing post on unconsumption.

Unconsumption

[UPDATE May 6, 2007: Please see the new Unconsumption page for updates, comments, etc., on the below.]

Okay. New topic! Please note this entry concludes with an open call for feedback and suggestions. Let me know if I need to offer a prize or something to get you interested in this topic. I’ll do it.

The topic is “unconsumption.” By this I mean, getting rid of things. I don’t mean voluntary simplicity etc. — I mean we all have to get rid of things sometimes, and as you’re probably aware, this can lead to problems. Basically there are two kinds of things we need to get rid of: things that don’t work and/or are used up, and things that do work but we don’t want them anymore.
One dimension of this that’s gotten a lot of attention is the disposal of gadgetry, from computers to cell phones. There’s a book that’s evidently on this subject — I haven’t read it — called High Tech Trash, by Elizabeth Grossman. (Here’s TreeHugger’s writeup.) And there’s another book called Made To Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. I haven’t read that either, but here’s an Utne Reader interview with the author, Giles Slade.

A site called Computer Take Back offers information about “which computer companies will take back your old computer, what services they offer, how to uses them, and how to get free recyling.” THere’s also a list of articles, with links, on the subject of “e-waste.”

More broadly, but within the context of stuff that’s used up or doesn’t work anymore, a project called The Art of Recycling looks like a sort of “awareness”-focused kind of thing. Making recycling cool, maybe? Looks like there’s also a kind of store or project involving the selling of cool stuff made from recycled materials. That’s fine, but it’s not my interest here: I’m not interested in things Joe Consumer can buy (in this rare & particular instance), I’m interested in how Joe Unconsumer can get rid of stuff.

[Side note: I’m not sure how to reckon with things like “make your old CDs into coasters or a disco ball,” as suggested here on Worldwise (via TreeHugger). I guess that’s useful. Is it?]

A UK outfit called Envirofone touts itself as “the best way to get money for your old mobiles and help the environment.” It does not appear to operate in the U.S. (Here’s a Popgadget writeup.) Another UK project is Reverse Vending Machines, “designed to automate the collection and identification of used beverage containers, issuing a refund receipt or money.” (At least it looks to be a UK thing.) Here’s a Treehugger bit on that.

On getting rid of things that do still work, there’s always donating them to charity in one way or aother. And barter seems to be a popular response. Freecycle (“a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns”) appears to be the most prominent example. It claims more than 2.8 million members. PSFK had this rundown of other barter example (all in the UK, looks like), including Read It Swap It, which is book-focused, and Swapz, which bills itself as “the biggest, most established and original direct swap website where you can swap anything with anyone.”

Have any other, or better, examples? Again my focus is not on how to keep from buying things in the first place (which is fine, it’s just not my focus), but rather on disposal of things you’ve already consumed.

What do you do when you are ready to unconsume them?

Update (December 8): Something else I just found in my files: Ebay has an “initiative” called Rethink that’s aimed at the e-waste issue. According to this old press release, at least, it wa launched in October 2005, to address the “understanding of electronic recycling and reuse options.” There’s a list of places to donate, and another of recycling-oriented organizations. I haven’t checked this out in any detail, but, just adding it to the pile. Also: Some good things in the comments section to check out if you haven’t already…

Sneakertrash

Usually when I’m thinking/writing about consumption, I’m essentially focused on the moment people buy something. I don’t think I’m alone in this: consuming and buying sound like the same thing.

But of course you could also argue that the purchase moment is actually just the beginning. The process of consuming something doesn’t end until it’s gone (in the case of, say, a beverage) or thrown out, or dissolved, or whatever. And we all know it’s pretty common to feel much differently about a given object at the end of this process than at the beginning.

For a long time I’ve had this on my list of “themes to address some day,” but lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because we’ve been in the process of getting rid of a lot of stuff. For instance, the sneakers above — one of two pairs I just threw away. Pondering the conclusion of my personal history with these consumable objects has given me a reason to act on a months-old invitation to join an online “sneaker community,” called Sneakerplay.

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