I will share proven ways to engage your employees through sustainable storytelling, coupled with the Green Nurture online platform to encourage behavior change.

Seven storytelling strategies we’ll cover on “Your Triple Bottom Line”

1. The Water – Use It Wisely campaign is based on environmental triggers. What are “environmental triggers,” and how do they work?
   “The importance of triggers in your green marketing”
2. What is the “Three Sunflower” analogy for green marketers in identifying and targeting your audiences when promoting environmental behavior change?
   “How sustainable is your sustainability message?”
3. What motivates people to make a behavior change more: Because it’s good for the environment or because it’s convenient and easy?
   “The surprising story behind what motivates us.”
4. Why is it important to speak to a person’s level of “Greenness” to promote behavior change?
   “How well do you know the ‘greenness’ of your customer?”
5. Why is storytelling so important to changing behavior?
   “Are you a green marketing weirdo trying to change the behavior of normal people?”
6. How do you make water conservation and other eco-actions personal inside your organization?
   “Feeling all green and tingly inside: How to promote your corporate sustainability initiative internally.”
7. How to give your water conservation and environmental initiatives handles?
   “Sustainable green marketing isn’t about creating ad campaigns. It’s about igniting movements.”

Donna DiFrancesco, Water Conservation Specialist for the City of Mesa, AZ, will also be featured on the show to talk about the operational ways businesses can save water.

Derrick Mains said of the water conservation partnership,

“Water is one of the most overused resources, and it’s costing businesses millions of dollars a year. Thanks to the Water-Use It Wisely campaign over the last ten years, people have become much more water-conscious in their homes. Now it’s time to extend that mentality to the workplace.  This partnership gives GreenNurture an intelligent, effective way to bring important information to our customers about water conservation and adds yet another layer to the Water-Use It Wisely mission.”

You can listen to a live stream of the show tonight and call in with questions toll free at 866-536-1100. You can also Tweet your questions to @your3bl.

“Your Triple Bottom Line” is a show that unpacks some of the more complex ideas in sustainability. We bring on some of the leading voices in business who make sense of the social, ecological and the economic threads that runs through business. We get them to put aside their talking points, step out of their corporate speak, and have real conversations with us and you our listeners.

You’ll be shocked.

Want to know what that leaky faucet is costing you? There’s now an app for that.

A simple new iPhone/iPad app. called Drip Detective lets you quickly find out how much that dripping faucet is costing you. Drip Detective is only $1.99 at the iTunes store, and it could save you hundreds of dollars.

There are two easy ways to determine the rate of your leak with this app.

1. Simply tap the screen each time a drips falls from your faucet. After four our five taps, Drip Detective determines the average drip rate. You input the cost per gallon of water from your water bill, and it calculates how much money is going down your drain.
2. If you have a fast leak, you can measure by volume.

Drip Detective supports both Metric and American volumes, and totals your water and dollar waste by day, week month and year.

In think Drip Detective is one of the easiest, most practical apps. available for understanding the impact of what may seem like an inconsequential waste of water. It’s a water conservation tool that will help you achieve savings that will really add up.

To learn of other ways to save water around your home, take the Water – Use It Wisely interactive Home Water Challenge.

Heal the Bay produced this poignant mockumentary capturing the miraculous journey of a wayward plastic bag. It’s improbable but true migration begins in the parking lot of a Southern California Safeway and ends hundreds of miles off shore in the Pacific Gyre.

“The Majestic Plastic Bag” is brilliant green marketing: the must see, feel bad hit of the summer. It draws attention to the destructive nature of this seemingly harmless plebian bag without getting all eco high and mighty on us. But really, bags don’t kill sea life. People do.

Their plea:

“Help stop our 19 billion bag-a-year habit in California and put an end to plastic pollution.”

The short film educates by being entertaining. I think, after watching this clever production, even the most cynical consumer that throws environmental caution to the wind can appreciate the impact a feather-weight plastic bag has on the environment.

If this fun film doesn’t convince you, then check out these horrific images by Chris Jordan.

So what’s it going to be: Canvas, paper or plastic?

That’s kind of embarrassing for a guy who writes a blog called, “Sustainable Storytelling.”

I admit it. I’m no treehugger. And chances are you’ll never find me strapped to a bulldozer, or flying across the bow of a whaling ship in a Zodiak. To be honest, I’m a middle-of-the-road green guy, arm-in-arm with the masses, because I believe that’s where the greatest incremental change in behavior can be made for the most significant impact on our planet.

I’m a practical green.

I promote water conservation, while still responsibly enjoying my Phoenix grass yard. I try to recycle everything, even the stuff that’s not supposed to go in the container; so points out my wife. I’ve switched to CFL’s wherever I can at home, except for my den ceiling fan where they throw about as much light as a Turkish prison cell (Ever watch “Locked Up Abroad”?).

I sweat like a Swede in a sauna if our house is over 78 degrees in the desert summer. I’ve got to have relief at 76 degrees (points off on the Practically Green scale).

We donate ALL of our unused stuff to Goodwill, and know we have more to give, but just can’t part with that “Hang Loose” muscle shirt I got 20 years ago.

Although I drive a fully combustible 6-cylinder Acura, my commute is just one mile each way from home to office, and has been for 15 years (Practically Green says I should ride my bike more). Michele drives a Highlander hybrid.

I eat red meat without giving a second thought to the cow flatulence I indirectly underwrite.

My point is that I work hard to be “practically green” in the consumer sense of the term, and probably not so much as an “activist.” Even so, I was surprised  to be found only “fairly” green. I’ve got work to do.

Have you taken the quiz?

If not, you should. Because it will not only help you understand where you are in the greening process. But you can help this green beta website perfect their scoring system. They’re looking for testers, and I’m gladly promoting their site and their cause.

Susan Hunt Stevens, CEO of PracticallyGreen.com, generously spent an hour on the phone with me last week getting acquainted. Although she hails from Boston, turns out we grew up around the corner from each other in the Seattle area. I asked Susan to sum up the concept of her website.

“What Trip Advisor is to travel, and Weight Watchers is to dieters, and Baby Center is to raising kids, Practically Green is to moms who want to live a more sustainable life for themselves and their families.”

What other description would you expect from the former head of Boston.com, the 5th largest newspaper site on the web, and past director of marketing for NYTimes.com. Susan knows her market, and she is delivering the green goods.

I actually think Practically Green is more like eHarmony.com. The site helps match your lifestyle and proclivity towards sustainability with healthy products and services to help you achieve your “greenness,” be it “Barely Green,” or the curve-breaking “Wickedly Green.”

“We are a really valuable matchmaker between consumers who want to live a healthier life with products and services that can help them.”

But they’re not just talking to consumers. They’ve refined it even more to moms. And not just all moms, but young moms with babies and toddlers. And there-in lies the brilliance of their business model. Practically Green creates a marketplace that makes it easy for this highly-niched, highly-chatty, and highly-active consumer group to make wise product  choices.

Practically Green doesn’t drive the market. Their customers do. And who wins? Everyone. From the mom’s making educated buying decisions, to the accountability of the companies, products and services on their site, to Practically Green for making it all happen.

It’s the ultimate business model that gains greater knowledge about their customer every time they help their customer gain greater knowledge about their healthy green buying decisions. Manufactures don’t push product. They simply answer to an active consumer demand under the harrowing light of immediate accountability through this growing community of consumers.

Finally, I have to also give a nod to their “Mother Board.” This is Practically Green’s board of advisors, and I get a chuckle out of the name every time I think of it. They’re looking for more advisors, and if you’re interested, by all means contact Susan’s right arm: Sarah Finnie Robinson.

I dare you. Take the test, and let me know your shade of green.

Denver's "Your Keys to the City" Piano & Art Public Exhibit

I was chomping down a buffalo burger at an eatery in downtown Denver on Tuesday when a hand-painted, upright piano sitting on the curb caught my eye.

My heart jumped, because I thought Denver may be one of the American stops for Luke Jerram’s word-of-mouth marketing campaign, “Play me, I’m Yours,” and I wanted to be part of it. The European version of street pianos is about inviting the public to engage with, activate and take ownership of their urban environment.

Denver’s piano WOM campaign, “Your Keys to the City,” is a similar tune, but in a different key. The Denver Downtown Partnership describes their 10-piano public art exhibit this way:

“The concept is designed to encourage residents, employees and tourists in Downtown Denver to interact with their public spaces in new and spontaneous ways—while contributing to the vibrancy within our urban core. We want the public to be able to sit down and crank out a tune!”

Young Brazilian Plays Mozart on the Streets of Denver from ParkHowell.com on Vimeo.

This morning, coming out of Niketown on 16th street, I was tickled when I tripped across this young Brazilian tickling the ivories with Bach. So I whipped out my iPhone to capture his performance on video, and I made a request for something from my favorite composer. “How about a little Mozart?” With a smile as wide as the keyboard, he happily sat back down and began to play away.

I was struck by the power of this street piano WOM campaign as tourists, street folk, locals and international visitors (check out the Nigerians walking in the background on their way to Forever Living Product’s International Super Rally; the reason we were in town) all experienced this wonderful music at a most surprising time and place.

Parker plays a little "Linus & Lucy" for the locals

Perhaps I should consider bringing this musical concept back to Phoenix. I’d embellish it, though, with an online social media campaign more in line with it’s overseas cousin, that would include:

• Get an indie pianist like Ben Folds to launch the campaign as he cranks out tunes from a vaudevillian upright outside a downtown pub and stream it live on the web
• Tap Google maps to pinpoint the piano locations around the Valley of the Sun
• Invite the community to post photos of their friends and family with their favorite pianos
• Host a YouTube video contest with the best one-minute performances posted by anyone who wants to play
• Take bids (donations) from local companies to have an art piano temporarily grace the outside of their establishments
• Sell the pianos at the end of the exhibit to raise money for Ear Candy, one of Phoenix’ finest music charities for kids

What other ideas can you offer to make the Phoenix street pianos campaign a big hit?

A little love and respect doesn’t hurt either.

Forever Living Products hosts 3,000 distributors from over 100 countries in Denver, CO

Today marks our 16th year producing Forever Living Product’s International Super Rally, an annual product launch and distributor celebration. That’s pretty unique, considering your average client/agency relationship lasts about as long as a tabloid romance.

FLP is the world’s largest grower, manufacturer and distributor of organic aloe vera health and beauty products. Denver is this year’s host city for nearly 3,000 FLP distributors representing over 100 countries. This festival of product launches, training, recognition and entertainment is being translated real-time into 10 languages and broadcast through a live webcast around the world.

We produced roughly 200 individual videos, animations and still images for the event, and each year we look forward to besting our creative from the previous Rally.

What we love about our partnership with FLP is their openness to new ideas that keep things interesting for their distributors. For example, motion graphics play a large role in this year’s product videos, including FLP’s new Forever Active Boost energy drink. Essentially, we’ve taken extreme sports footage and transformed the athletes from live action into something like a laser light show to depict the power of the product.

“We have events for thousands of people, and Park&Co’s been involved in those since the very beginning, and it’s been good to see how they’ve always topped the last one.” – Aidan O’Hare, Senior VP Europe – Red Chair Interviews, The Results

Our relationship and work with FLP has led to long-standing partnerships with some of Phoenix’s top production professionals who team up to make all of our projects come together. This year’s team includes Perry Ryan at Fetch Productions. Leighton and Dani’s talent agencies, Bill Kohler Lighting, Christophe Jeunot Illustrations, Court Stumpf Music, Big-U Music, Danielle Paluscio, Dave Routt, Jeff Parsons, Jesse Hernandez, Mike Aufiero, Jeff Balch, Kimberley Boege, James McDonald, Patty Moraga, Miguel Alonso, Meri Pachuilo, Shanan Krosky, Marg Sorg and Debby Rosenthal.

A big thanks to all of you. Let’s do it again next year.

The blaze destroyed the Clearance Center and Salvage Operations at the 16th street facility. Thankfully, no one was injured.

Goodwill Needs Your Donations NOW!

More than 1,000 storage containers of donations were destroyed. The money generated through your donated items is what funds the 36 programs that Goodwill of Central Arizona administers to train and put people back to work in the community. Your donations count more than ever. Here are four ways you can help now.

1. 

   The view of our Goodwill donations bin from my office window. Wave when yo drop off your stuff.

   Drop your donations at any one of these stores or donation centers.

2. Help coordinate a donation drive in your neighborhood or through your business. Please e-mail Chandra Stewart, Vice President of Marketing & Communications at chandra.stewart@goodwillaz.org for more information or to schedule your drive.
3. Consider a monetary donation made securely and conveniently on Goodwill’s website.
4. Or swing by Park&Co a drop your donations in the convenient Goodwill bin in our parking lot.

Please share this post with everyone you know to help put people back to work through the great programs at Goodwill of Central Arizona.

The blog that reveals the trues stories of the beaten, abused, hushed and hidden survivors of domestic violence.

Today I’m not writing about green marketing, the environment or corporate sustainability campaigns. I want to share with you a new blog that paints sustainability in a completely different light:

Surviving hell, and living to tell about it.

The six authors at HearHer.org are all survivors of domestic violence. They volunteered as our inaugural writers, and they are truly pioneers.

These are women who have been beaten, abused, hushed and hidden the majority of their lives. Somehow they have mustered the courage to flee their abusers, often with children in tow, and they have found a home in Mesa, AZ, at SEEDs, a program of the National Advocacy and Training Network.

HearHer.org is the first-of-its-kind online podium where abused women can shed light on the raw and awful circumstances surrounding domestic violence and child abuse. Once you’ve read a couple of these unbelievable stories of horror at the hands of a spouse or partner, you can’t turn away. These women are real. What they need now more than ever is a friend and your support.

MonaLou Callery, the executive director and founder of NATN, came to us a few months back requesting ideas on ways to make the lives of these survivors more tangible and relevant to those of us who have never experienced the atrocity of domestic violence. Creating an online podium and establishing their own social media network seemed the natural solution.

You can share their journeys on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube

The project has been a godsend from day one. Everything fell together naturally and quickly. Unbelievably, the HearHer.org domain was available. If you’ve ever created a new campaign that is reliant on an obvious URL, you know how difficult it is to find one.

Luis Medina, our creative director, designed the logo and website, which received immediate and unanimous approval. Then we turned to Amanda Hawkins of Little Bird to build out the site as we created their social media channels.

Mentoring our Authors

One of the most interesting aspects of this project is in helping the HearHer.org authors become proficient as writers and creating a comfort level with using social media. Six remarkable communication professionals in Phoenix, each with their own unique expertise, volunteered to mentor our writers. Thank you to:

• Michelle Olson, President of Olson Communications
• Pam Haitt, Partner in Strategies Public Relations
• Robin Phillips, Web Managing Editor, National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism
• Cam Williams, a social media professional for small business
• Greg Taylor, owner of GRT2Studios
• Aly Saxe, Managing Partner and Founder of Ubiquity Public Relations

I would also like to give a big shout out to my friend, Stephanie Holland of Holland + Holland Advertising in Birmingham, Bama, for her early noodling of the concept with me. Stephanie authors the She-conomy blog, and is an expert at marketing to women.

If you are a victim of domestic violence or abuse, or you know someone who is, share HearHer.org, or call the national domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

If you have a question for one of the HearHer.org authors, feel free to ask in their comment section on the site.

Water not only sustains life. It quenches a lifestyle thirst. When its use is abused, it can vanish. And with it, the life around it evaporates.

This withering of water is captured in the stark yet beautiful photos of Gigi Cifali’s series, “Absence of Water.”

You can feel the former living, breathing character of these now derelict lidos and baths in the United Kingdom through the architecture, which feels as though it’s frozen in time. The decided absence of one element – water – is what has lead to their ruin.

Through her photo essay, Cifali hopes to “express the importance of water” as an “element of regeneration for the human spirit.”

(This post originally appeared on our blog at WaterUseItWisely.com)

Goodwill International’s new “Donate Movement” is a model of online efficiency for consumer engagement. “Waste not, want not.”

They don’t doddle around trying to explain their differentiation over other important “green” causes and sustainability programs that compete for your attention. The “D Movement” website involves you immediately by enabling you to donate and recycle NOW!

Goodwill’s new “D Movement” is a partnership with Levi Strauss to make donating a more conscious decision. Their plan is to make the “D” the universal symbol for donating, like the recycling logo is to recycling. Would you really expect anything less from America’s first real recycler?

You always hear about “Search optimized” websites. Goodwill has “People optimized” this site.

For starters, you can quickly see the impact your donations have with Goodwill’s Donation Impact Calculator prominently featured on its homepage. The three pair of jeans I just donated to Goodwill of Central Arizona will support 34 minutes of on-the-job training. The two jackets I’m not going to need in our 112 degree weather just bought 1.2 hours of training. What do you think one lamp is worth in training? See for yourself.

Goodwill’s Thrifty Social Media Strategy Includes:

• Goodwill makes it easy to “Like” the Donation Impact Calculator by locating the Facebook “thumbs up” button as part of the calculator’s interface.
• The site uses Google maps to help you quickly find your nearest Goodwill donation center.
• A live Twitter feed captures on-going chatter about the campaign.
• A real-time digital counter tells you the poundage of usable items being saved from landfills.
• You’re encouraged to show your support by adding the donate button to your Twitter and Facebook profile photos through the use of Twibbon. They pay you back with immediate gratification as you pop up as a “Recent supporter” on their site. Great engagement tool that compounds the reach of their campaign. Smart!
• Goodwill invites you to join their blogger network. They request a post about why you donate, and ask that you include their donate button on your site. I’m joining, are you?
• “Make a commitment to de-clutter… and donate your gently used clothing and household items to Goodwill a few times this year,” is their last call-to-action in the support section on the Donate Movement site.

Goodwill & Levi’s Nifty WOM Promotion

All great green marketers know that a sustainable word-of-mouth marketing strategy happens both online and off. That’s why I love what Levis is doing with the campaign right in their britches.

They’ve created a care label that tells you how to have the least impact on the planet with the washing of your jeans. The final tip is to donate your Levi jeans to Goodwill when no longer needed.

What the “D Movement” means by the numbers:

1. Goodwill diverts some two billions pound of useful product from landfills each year.
2. The revenue generating through the resale of donated items helped 1.9 million people in a variety of industries in 2009.

What do you think? After touring their site, does it push your donate and recycle buttons, or does it push you away?