The footprint of the 'Nano Puff"

No they haven't discovered the footprints of a very small dragon in the snowypeaks of Tibet but in our office in blustery southwest Australia a new creature has appeared, the nano puff wearing ecoworker. And they look pretty cool really, and cosy. Samudra the organic raw food cafe and yoga centre behind which we work has started stocking Patagonia products in its shop.

Great move I think. It fits in really well with their image. Patagonia is a brand delivering high quality goods for outdoor sports, including surfing and yoga, whose philosophy started out to protect wilderness areas in Patagonia and has developed into one multi million dollar business that is trying hard to act sustainably and develop products that will have a minimal impact on the environment, be manufactured in fair labour conditions and fulfil their high spec for quality and product innovation. And they tell you all about it too. Here's the footprint chronicle for the nano puff. It shows the journey, the different environmental impacts, discusses the good and the bad and goes into detail about each stage of the manufacturing process.

You can choose different products too and dig deeper and even join an online discussion about it. I think this website could be put to excellent use with our The Big CONsumption module, showing how a product impacts along its supply chain and as a case study of a company implementing sustainable practices. You could use the shirt case study to compare it to the standard t shirt manufacture in 'What's the Cost?'. Its great for geography as a study of interconnectedness. In Business studies you could use it as an example of how a company has incorporated ecoprincples into its brand and how this allows it to charge high prices ( its otherwise known as 'Patagucci' due to its relatively high prices) by increasing its cachet and so allows it to invest in improving its supply chain and manufacturing even further.

Follow the "Footprint Chronicles" to find out about the life cyle of lots of Patagonia products. Did you know they also offer to recyle all your old patagonia products for you too?

Branding BP - by Greenpeace

Well the BP oil leak must be the biggest environmental disaster of recent times. BP have come out of it looking pretty bad too, even though they've got lots of money to spend on advertising and PR with the media as it is now, the internet and social networking sites its very hard for them to project a positive image or convince the public they are a 'green' company when its so easy to find evidence to the contrary.

BP rebrabded a few years ago from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum and changed their shield logo to a logo, a softer look meant to show that they were focussing not just on oil but on other alternative forms of energy. Well Greenpeace are now having a go at rebranding them again. The competition was open to the public and you can have a look and vote for your favourite here http://rebrandbp.greenpeace.org.uk/

Uee these in your business lessons to consider marketing and branding. What messages are the Greenpeace rebrands getting across? How do they do it? How must companies change in their methods of PR? Do you think the internet and social media mean that companies will really have to act as they claim/ change their ways of operating?

You could do similar in English and Art. Get studetns to design their own logo. Think of other companies whose businesses are not sustainable and think how you would rebrand them to demonstrate this to other people so that people brough other more sustainable or ecologically friendly products.

Lucy

Consumption Modules

We've got a consumption module on our website. Its in the SOSE section and is a 20 hour module for year 10 and 11. It uses Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff and explores consumption, wants vs needs, recycling, fair trade, happiness, production and consumption chains and interconnectedness. Its here. The Big CONsumption.

I also just noticed that Facing the future that I pointed you to yesterday have also done a module on this subject. Its free to download from their website. Its called Buy, Use, Toss. I haven't yet looked in detail but it also uses the story of stuff and there are likely to be lots of complimentary ideas.

Edit - Had a look, it follows a very similar structure to our module as its also based on the story of stuff, additionally there is a lesson on advertising which could be used in an English lesson aswell.

Lucy