In Sales Trend 4 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2022 guest author Ben Peacock from Republic of Everyone explains what brands are doing to lower their climate impact and why it’s crucial that they do so.
By guest author Ben Peacock – Founder, Republic of Everyone
You might be too young to remember, but sometime in 2009 Cascade launched a beer called Cascade Green.
The bottle was green, the billboards were green, made of real plants growing where usually only ads would be, the beer was green – 100% carbon neutral – and it tasted good. Everything was aligned, except the timing. A year after it first entered fridges it was gone, one of a pioneering wave of products that soon withered, ahead of their time and put a nail in coffin of green products for the next decade or so.
How times have changed.
In our recent research report, The Power and the Passion, consumers, unprompted, named climate as their #1 environmental or social issue of concern.
Whether by bushfires, floods or the slow realisation that pretty much no-one was doing anything about it (other than our future PM parading a lump of coal around parliament), bit by bit climate has loomed larger and larger on our collective radar.
And rightly so.
Slowly we have come to understand that climate change is not some natural cycle, as Alan Jones would tell us, but the result of everyday choices, like heating our homes with coal, fuelling our cars with liquefied fossils and replacing the world’s wild places with livestock for our fridges.
We, as consumers, have realised we are responsible, and a growing number of us are ready to take responsibility.
When consumers demand change, they do so with their wallets. This offers brands a rare opportunity to supply a different kind of product. And as usual, the world’s brand leaders proving why they are leaders by leading the charge.
Take Nike. Their Space Hippie sneaker is as innovative as it is odd. Designed from the waste from their factory floors, it also features the lowest carbon footprint of any shoe they have created. And what they learned from that product is being applied everywhere. Google ‘Move to Zero’ and click images. You’ll see all your faves, like Airforce One, now feature a fan-like logo advertising that they don’t make ‘em like they used to. An ever growing portion of Nike’s production line is now made to use less materials and create less carbon. Sustainable innovation is now simply innovation. But let’s walk on.
Anyone who has ever worked in the world of food knows that what trends in the UK, ends up here eventually. Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket now features over 400 SKU’s of vegan foods and plant based proteins. Why? Because, quite simply, Gen Z wants them and they make up 31% of the world’s population, so you better listen. A large part of this shift is triggered by environmental concerns around meat, and it’s a global phenomenon. I could go on, but Forbes has already said it better. You can read more here.
Taking advantage of this trend is a wonderful new product called Wunda, from Nestlé. Made of peas, it has around half the carbon footprint of cow’s milk and, of course, they carbon offset the rest, then offer it in a multitude of delicious flavours. It’s been a resounding success in Europe so expect to see it on our shores soon.
Let’s flick the switch to technology. Microsoft rocked the sustainability world when, in 2020, it announced it will take more carbon from the atmosphere than it produces by 2030. Not to be outdone, it then outdid itself by announcing the long-term goal to ‘remove by 2050 all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975’. That’s a big statement, meaning if you have ever or even intend to use a Microsoft product (is it possible not to?), the climate impact of all those spreadsheets will by 2050 be zero.
While Microsoft is leading the big tech game, none of the big guys are far behind. Every Apple product you buy will be delivered carbon neutral by 2030. Google servers have been running on 100% renewables since 2017. Even Amazon will run on clean energy by 2025. Expect to see an announcement on how they plan to deal with the carbon created by their billions of annual deliveries some time soon.
Closer to home, VB is brewed with 100% renewables. What’s more, if your rooftop solar panels generate more energy than you use, they’ll pay you in beer.
Ben & Jerry’s went a step further in 2020, launching ‘Unfudge our Future’, a dairy-free flavour that is not only carbon neutral but donates to demanding more climate action in this country. Sadly, political action is a scary step too far for most of Australia’s marketers, so it’s nice to see the local arm of an international brand letting the haters hate and showing everyone how it’s done.
Meanwhile, while some of Australia’s larger energy retailers have spent years lobbying our open-eared government against climate action, upstart retailer Powershop has supplied every one of its customers with carbon neutral energy since the day it began, at no extra cost.
As a pure play sustainability agency, we’ve spent over a decade outlining the opportunity to put climate and other social and environmental issues that people truly care about front and centre of brands. It’s been frustrating to see how few have been inclined to listen, but I guess that’s what makes leaders leaders, right? Future focus, good planning and the guts to take a chance and see it through.
Now, the time for leadership is past, but the market opportunity remains. In the coming year, expect to see brands that are prepared to innovate their products to have a lower climate impact, then place authentic action at the centre of their marketing, join the leaders in having a bright, carbon-free future.
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