Did you know that Earth Day is on April 22 this year? If you forgot, there are many major brands out there that will remind you.
While we’d love to see more brands join this list, here are just a few companies making minor marketing efforts for Earth Day—from creative ways to conserve resources to cleaning up and recycling. For those who don’t want to put energy in, there are companies donating to causes that protect the environment.
Save Water, Save Money (On Porn)
Internet pornography site RedTube took the most creative approach to Earth Day cause marketing this year, launching The Save Water Challenge, offering to reward pornography enthusiasts a free weeklong subscription to its premium service for taking shorter showers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=nurScKp8eiY
PornHub, RedTube’s parent company, has a history of announcing charitable campaigns, so this effort is another feather in their cap.
Land’s End, T-Mobile And Jet Blue Endorse Environmental Causes
Outside of pornography, the majority of brands’ Earth Day efforts consist of offering individuals the opportunity to make minor contributions to large-scale causes.
Land’s End promises to donate $4.50 to the Save Our Monarchs Foundation for every monarch butterfly design customers pay $6 to have embroidered on certain articles of clothing and accessories. Additionally, the company will provide customers with milkweed seed packets for any orders placed on Earth Day. To wrap up the charity, the company plans to plant three and a half acres of flowers at its headquarters in Wisconsin.
T-Mobile is promising to make it easier to donate to The Nature Conservancy, allowing its customers to take a $5 increase on their next bill to donate $5 dollars to the charity. Additionally, the company will donate $250,000 (0.000625 percent of its 2017 global revenue) to one of four different Nature Conservancy projects, which it is graciously permitting its employees and customers to vote on. The company will also donate up to 50,000 trees to the charity, but only if users Tweet using a specific hashtag on April 17, which it should be noted is not Earth Day.
JetBlue likewise is seeking customer engagement, offering four $15,000 grants (0.0033 percent of its revenue in Q4 2017) for causes that users can vote on. Additionally, on the island of Puerto Rico, the company’s green initiatives include “a planting and gardening workshop for JetBlue crew members,” “lettuce farm maintenance” and “tree nursery maintenance.”
Apple, Staples And Hasbro Take The Recycling Approach
Apple and Staples are making it easier for its customers to recycle their electronics. Apple will “make a donation” to Conservation International for every device returned to them for recycling until April 30, and has built a new robot named Daisy that makes it easier for them to disassemble recycled iPhones. Staples is celebrating Earth Day by becoming “the first and only national retailer to accept both single serve and traditional coffee brewers for free recycling in stores.”
Hasbro is likewise joining in on the “circular economy” bandwagon, and will allow customers to return their Hasbro toys to be recycled “into materials that can be used in the construction of play spaces, flower pots, park benches, and other innovative uses.” It should be noted that the company TerraCycle is doing the actual recycling; Hasbro is sponsoring consumer shipping.
Both Hasbro and Apple are also touting their existing sustainability efforts. Hasbro now uses exclusively renewable energy in its US operations, and Apple likewise is 100 percent carbon neutral in powering its own global facilities. These figures only apply to operations directly owned by each company, such as retail spaces, corporate offices, data centers and the like. Since both companies contract out production to “manufacturing partners,” the factories that actually produce their products are not included in these totals.
Blue Marble, Allbirds And Other Brands Think Conservation
Pre-mixed cocktail manufacturer Blue Marble will send “a contingent” of employees to clean up litter at Newport Beach in California for four hours on Earth day. They also made a video.
Eco-friendly shoe brand Allbirds has released limited runs of three new colors of its shoes, which are made with organic and recycled materials. “These limited edition hues are naturally dyed to celebrate Earth Day, and they won’t last long,” Allbirds’ online store reads.
In anticipation of Earth Day, Wrangler released a report on April 18 that found that conservation-minded cotton farming practices are in fact more effective at conservation than conventional cotton farming practices. It should be noted that the report contained no new research, but was a summary of 45 studies that have already been conducted on the matter. For cotton farmers on the fence about these conservation efforts, Wrangler produced an informational video about soil health.
Purina informed the press that it plans to be “fully zero waste to landfill” by 2020. Additionally, it has managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions per ton of production by a full 6.8 percent in just 11 years.
1 Hotels has announced a sweeping, multichannel awareness campaign at three of its locations. The company will make lobby space available to guests looking to learn about “various environmental issues,” and provides phones and computers to those looking to contact their representatives. Additionally, the company will dim the lights at its hotels during dinner on Earth Day to “raise awareness about a more sustainable and responsible future.”
Have we missed any corporate press releases bragging about their Earth Day efforts? Let us know—email wdrickey@alistdaily.com.
