Selling beans. No longer counting them. Apparently.

A few days ago I noted the coverage of the M&S green announcement, and felt this was one that needed time to settle.

Happily, others are still paying attention: No figure on M&S's green payback

To whom I felt moved to write (plus a ps on EDF snitching on pot growers):

"Thank you for your piece today, which will make a nice counterpiece in my blog to the mostly uncritical gush that has been accorded this announcement in other quarters.

It has not been my experience that anyone in marketing, especially retail, has not put a price, first, and as high as possible, on anything they do. This has to be a new one.

However, with this new found hue, maybe my little organisation, which does no more than offer free (with paid ads if they want to push something genuinely, planet-savingly, consumer-benefittingly green they sell or do - only not going 'carbon neutral' because, as you say, they should have done ages ago and it really only helps their own bottom line, PR and CSR at AGM time) opportunities for them to upload their product data for reuse and recycling info purposes (which one would have assumed a savvy marketer would see as a possible ADDITIONAL sales opportunity), as has such as ecover, maybe they may feel like getting back to us after 3 years trying to get through the minions, using such e-dm as our Folda-Holda.

We cost them nothing and could make them money, after all. But maybe looking good is more important and needs more attention than actually doing good.

Rgds, Peter Martin

ps: Shining a light on EDF's true role in joint supply-side issues

I was recently at a seminar at the Science Museum where one of my co-presenters was extolling the virtues of hemp as source of textiles, etc. In eco-terms it is even way ahead of bamboo for instance. However all our enthusiasm for the potential (myself included) was dampened slightly when the speaker was asked how we grew it at home... you know the rest.

Still if EDF does feel like making a contribution to global warming in synergistic areas, it may be worth looking at!"