Wednesday, February 27, 2008

NEWS/Commercial PR - Drinks Co. in charity tree planting partnership!

Another commercial/NGO (well, charity) combo today!

We're not always that keen on the 'whack a fir in the firmament' notion, mainly as most press releases allude to some offsetting... off somewhere.

This one is a bit closer to home... and our hearts.

PR mainly as received, with edits. Check websites for details:

Tree Cheers – Feel Good Drinks in UK charity tree planting partnership!

Feel Good Drinks has teamed up with independent charity, Trees for Cities, for a national year long tree planting partnership. This initiative will see Feel Good Drinks and the charity holding ‘Feel Good Carnival Planting Days’, throughout the year.

Trees for Cities is an independent charity that works to transform urban wasteland into green spaces, by getting the local community involved in the tree planting and educating them on how to sustain the transformed green areas.

As well as tree planting, each carnival planting day will include face painting, live music, football games and loads of arts and crafts, including bird box making! On top of planting 1000 trees, Feel Good Drinks will be supporting the partnership with sampling, digital and PR activity.

The first of the five ‘Feel Good Carnival Planting Days’ kicks off on Saturday 1st March at Braithwaite Park in East London.

More on re-labelling

Recycling concerns beat health on shoppers' agenda

Good on shoppers. But...

Do they have a clue that what they are being told works, or is even accurate...?

'Recyclable' on its own, and without a bunch of other stuff in the loop, is essentially meaningless.

Also while WRAP and some industry brands may be in discussion, there are a ton of others doing their own funky thing and that may be tricky to undo.
So as Mr. Bird says, like the traffic lights/roundel/charts for health, it all becomes a bit of a mess really. But boxes will be ticked!

NEWS/Commercial & NGO PR - CSV Action Earth environmental volunteering campaign

Here's one that has 'thrown' the system!

It's both Commercial and from the Social Enterprise sector, so I have listed it under both.

Another that looks worth rushing out, so it's PR 'as supplied' with only some editing, so all due caveats as always. Though it's pretty clear what is being advocated and you can check through the various weblinks yourselves.

Let's just say Junkk.com will be applying... IF we qualify! Worth a go to us all!!!

CSV Action Earth environmental volunteering campaign

From March 1 2008 - July 31 2008

Supermarket giant Morrisons is giving away cash grants to help the local environment as part of the CSV Action Earth volunteering campaign. Morrisons have agreed to provide £50 grants to 900 voluntary groups across the country to help kick start community environmental projects.

Gillian Hall, Customer Services Director at Morrisons says: "We are pleased that the sponsorship we have given CSV is going to help kick-start many excellent community environmental projects.

Mike Williams, Director of CSV Environment says: "Helping the environment can seem like a monumental task, but volunteering in your local community, whether collecting dumped plastic for recycling, planting trees or clearing up a grotty area is something we can all do. We believe that local people themselves are best placed to decide what needs doing in their area and thanks to Morrisons' grants they can now do something about it."

To register a project and apply for a grant or get more information on CSV Action Earth, call CSV on Tel: 0121 328 7455 or visit www.csv.org.uk/actionearth.

Note: To receive a £50 grant, which covers expenses including materials, projects must:

* improve the local environment,
* involve volunteers,
*or meet a local community need.

Examples of projects completed by volunteers last year include: Planting up a wildlife area in a local school, erecting bird/bat/hedgehog boxes in a nearby wood, cleaning up a local beach and clearing and signing local footpaths.

Reading between the lines

Follwing quickly on from the previous note on targets vs. actual results: Charities criticise npower’s ability to effect green tariff

I must say I stumbled a bit on the headline use of the word, but read on to see what is meant is 'environmental charities', who these days seem mainly around to 'slam' things.

What was of more note is that 'Npower says that it has the facility to supply just 2% of customers with renewable energy.' Hmn.

Which does rather make oen wonder why 'the company is planning to launch a major TV campaign to push its green tariff, Juice'. Is that the one which works/ed with Greenpeace?


But, at least, 'Npower will be spending £100m this year on the Government’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT)'.

Bless.

There's also whether they add up

It was about, I believe, drug programmes, but as easily can apply to every aspect of current government policy.

In a rather matter of fact BBC news piece there was the choice insight that 'all that matters is the numbers who sign up, rather than whether anything effective gets done [with them].'

This target-based, box-ticking culture is spiralling us ever downwards.