L'Occitane teams with TerraCycle for sustainability

Group L'Occitane markets all-natural and organic personal care products through 3,200+ retail stores in 90 nations. With headquarters in Luxembourg and Switzerland, L'Occitane's annual turnover exceeds €1,300 million.

Tech-savvy L'Occitane is leveraging the trend of consumers connecting via mobile devices to personalise offers and encourage purchasing through the firm's many e-commerce sites worldwide.

Behind the scenes, the company also works with Provence-based suppliers to source sustainably-produced ingredients for its beauty products.

It's very committed to achieving goals for recycling. As this window display shows, L'Occitane stores in Canada and the US will accept empty containers from any cosmetics brand and recycle them in partnership with Terracycle, which turns the recycled and upcycled materials into eco-friendly new products for sale.

UK consumers can participate in Terracycle recycling in various ways, including bringing recyclable items to a nearby 'brigade' for free recycling.

This post offers an additional example of societal objectives as covered in Chapter 5 of my Essential Guide to Marketing Planning.

Marketing fashions with sustainability in mind

#recycle

Inditex, which owns Zara and other well-known fashion brands, now disassembles old apparel to remake into 'garments with a past'. Its Join Life label features clothing made in part from reclaimed materials and made using processes that are more earth-friendly.

The company also invites customers to bring old/unwanted clothes to selected stores for recycling. If you live in Spain, where Inditex is headquartered, you can have the courier who drops off your Zara purchases take your old clothes back for recycling--quite convenient!

Inditex and other fashion marketers are becoming more active in adopting sustainability and promoting this aspect of their products to customers, suppliers and partners.

H&M, the fast-fashion retailer based in Sweden, has set the ambitious goal of sustainably manufacturing all its fashions by 2030. 'H&M group is . . . pushing the development towards a shift to a circular model; where materials are maximised and waste is minimised', according to its 2017 Sustainability Report. It is investing in startups that search for ways to make fabrics and recycle materials without environmental harm. 'We need to speed the shift toward waste-free models [of business]', says H&M's CEO.

Watch for more sustainability activities as companies seek to conserve natural resources, reduce waste, help the planet and differentiate their brands in the competitive global marketplace.

Fast Fashion and Sustainability

Is sustainability compatible with fast fashion? Even though fast fashion is based on speedier fashion cycles and adoption of new styles and clothing items, H&M, Zara and their competitors recognise that 'throw away' fashion is not just wasteful, it can contribute to environmental damage.

H&M, based in Sweden, is increasing its focus on sustainability. It has a Chief Sustainability Officer to keep the retailer on track toward green goals. And it issues a sustainability report to demonstrate what it's doing to save the planet and reassure customers of its commitment to the natural environment.

Further, H&M has added clothing made from sustainable materials and, just as important, it actively encourages recycling inside and outside the organisation. Among other initiatives is a fashion collection programme to encourage consumers and designers to make the most of garments by reusing materials, passing garments along for use by others or turning used garments into something else.

Greener packaging for soft drinks

Coca-Cola has been highlighting its green-tech credentials through the development of earth-friendlier packaging such as the PlantBottle. Just a few days ago, Coca-Cola displayed the latest version of the PlantBottle, which 'looks and functions just like traditional PET plastic, but has a lighter footprint on the planet and its scarce resources'.

The soft-drink company first introduced PlantBottle in 2009, and began selling beverages in it in UK markets in 2011. Now it has distributed more than 25 billion 'green' bottles worldwide, as the infographic shows.

When influential brands such as Coca-Cola commit to environmental efforts on a large scale, they not only encourage consumers to participate but also add a new point of differentiation for competitive purposes. And that's exactly what happened in this case.

Not long after Coca-Cola launched PlantBottle, which was originally made in part from plant-based material, PepsiCo announced its own 'green' beverage packaging that was 100% plant-based. This kind of competition surely benefits the planet: Coke's latest bottle is now 100% plant-based--and it is using its corporate resources to continue developing additional packaging that will biodegrade instead of lingering in landfills.

Unilever's sustainability strategy resonates with customers

Unilever is seeking to support sustainability through improvements in health and well-being (blue on the chart), reduced environmental impact (dark green), enhancing the livelihoods of communities (red) and making its businesses more transparent and sustainable (light green).

What does the multinational consider to be a material issue or opportunity? From 2010, when the sustainability initiative was implemented, Unilever applied four criteria:

• The degree to which an issue is aligned with our vision and purpose, brand portfolio and geography.
• The potential impact on our operations, or on our sourcing and consumers.
• The extent of Unilever’s influence on the issue.
• The importance of an issue to our key stakeholders.

Unilever now has evidence that progress on sustainability issues resonates with its customer base. Its brands most active in sustainability initiatives (Dove, Lifebuoy, Ben & Jerry's, Comfort) 'accounted for half the company's growth in 2014 and grew at twice the rate of the rest of the business' according to CEO Paul Polman.

In other words, a solid sustainability strategy can help save the planet, improve the quality of life for stakeholders and bring the company closer to growth goals.

Happy 45th anniversary to Earth Day

45 years ago, the first Earth Day was held on 22 April 1970 to call attention to environmental issues. Today, Earth Day activities have spread worldwide as more individuals, businesses, NGOs and governmental agencies think green.

A wide variety of events are being held online and in person throughout this week, to raise awareness of environmental issues and opportunities worldwide through green marketing for all ages. For example:

• Ocean & Earth Day at the University of Southampton's National Oceanography Centre is a family-friendly open house filled with interactive presentations.
• International Mother Earth Day is the focus of a United Nations initiative for climate-change leadership.
• Rovio, the digital entertainment firm, developed a special Earth Day environmental level of play for its popular Angry Birds game.
• Oxford University Press is offering free access to journal articles about environmental concerns and studies in celebration of Earth Day.

The green side of Unilever

Unilever has set the ambitious goal of doubling sales while slashing its eco-impact by half buy 2020. The European head of Unilever says:

"We will prove to the world that this is the right plan and this is also the right sustainable plan for business."

As the company's illustration shows, product packaging and transportation packaging together account for 73% of its environmental footprint. Shrinking or otherwise changing product packaging--without putting products at risk--will make transportation packaging smaller or lighter or both, which in turn will cut shipping costs and save fuel as well.

Now Unilever is opening the door to firms and entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for revamping its packaging technology and other green projects. A good idea!

Being green isn't easy: 2011 preview

A few months ago, the Lincolnshire County Council took Sainsbury's to court, charging it with "excessive packaging" of a joint of beef. Then the Council abruptly dropped the case, saying it was "no longer in the public interest" since the grocery chain had reduced its packaging.

Excess packaging is only one of the eco-issues that marketers will be facing in 2011. Others include:

• Who's watching? Customers will be more impressed by claims verified by independent groups. Kimberly-Clark's Kleenex tissues, for example, have met Forest Stewardship Council certification standards.
• Be ambitious. Small changes won't be enough as competitors jump on the green bandwagon. Unilever has aggressive goals for going green--a risk if it can't deliver, but a big plus if it can.
• Industry-wide practices. In some industries, marketers are joining together to meet standards for eco-friendly practices. Setting goals isn't enough--the marketers must submit annual reports showing progress toward goals, as Carrefour and others are doing.
• Online reporting for transparency. Some firms, including IKEA and BT, are posting goals and reports online where they can quickly and easily be read by customers, employees and other stakeholders.
• There's an app for that. Even when shoppers are standing in the store, they'll be able to check green claims via apps such as barcoo.

Any way you look at it, environmental issues will be a major element in marketing plans for the coming year.