Sustainability Marketing: Christmas Issue(s)

The topic of the moment in Northern Europe is undoubtedly snow. Where usually the weather is the small item at the end of the news, now it is the news. The main news, the travel news, the sport news and local news are suddenly dominated by snow and some of the worst winter weather in 30 years.

The sudden fixation with the winter weather, and its arrival during peak Christmas shopping and traveling season has raised a lot of issues which resonate with key themes in Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective. One obvious one is climate, and climate change in particular. Progress towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption will be hampered unless consumers accept and act upon the real and present risks that climate change presents. The problem is that the clear evidence of changing (and warming) climate in the long-term is somewhat disguised and overshadowed by the short-term impact of the weather on our lives and consciousness. This is rather clearly illustrated by the comments of Michael O’Leary, Boss of Ryanair recently:

If the boss of a major company cannot tell the difference between climate and weather, and is given a platform in the media to further confuse consumers, then the prospects of mobilizing consumers to act on climate risks are much diminished. The problem is that when people look back on 2010, the thing they’ll remember is the worst winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere for 30 years. The fact that early indications are that global average temperatures for the year are likely to reach a new high is likely to be both overlooked and forgotten.

This weather and its impact also illustrates our dependence on the environment, and the extent to which our societies and economies depend on relatively stable and benign environmental conditions. This is particularly true as our economies and markets become increasingly globalized. More globalized supply chains can create economies of scale and scope which allow financial costs to consumers to be minimized, and make seasonal produce available virtually year-round to deliver convenience to consumers. The downside is that it introduces greater vulnerability into the supply system because if any one link in the chain is adversely impacted by the weather, the whole system can grind to a halt. More localized systems of production and consumption may find it difficult to match the prices of the global supply chains (despite the greater transport costs), but they are potentially more resilient. Shoppers all over Europe are discovering that a centralized retailing system based on the move towards out-of-town retail parks comes at a price when car journeys to them become impossible.

Talking of car journeys, another interesting aspect of this weather has been the change in social status of 4x4 car drivers in urban areas. Usually people driving huge 4x4s between their homes and their places of work or shopping or their children’s schools are frowned upon for their environmental profligacy. Now suddenly they find themselves in demand for socially important tasks like getting medical staff to hospitals, getting brides to weddings and taking basic supplies to the elderly who live alone. Rather like for businesses, a sudden burst of socially responsible activity does not really absolve you from a year’s worth of environmental sins, but it must be nice for 4x4 owners to feel popular for a change. Whether or not this winter will lead to an upswing in demand for 4x4 vehicles will be interesting to see.

Another issue raised by this very Christmassy weather is the impact that it has had on the traditional Christmas shopping season. In the UK there have been some very gloomy economic forecasts about the impact on retailers’ financial results in 2011. One commonly cited statistic is that for many retailers the sales during the two weeks prior to Christmas represent their annual profit. The other 50 weeks of the year generate the necessary income to cover their costs, and the festive season generates their profit. This has to raise some questions about the sustainability of businesses that are so dependent on sales during two weeks of the year when there is a reasonable chance that shoppers will find it difficult to get to the shops. The problem with Christmas sales is that it is not necessarily custom that will be deferred into the New Year, and even if it is, it may not be so profitable. As Nick Hood, of insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor, explained on the BBC news website this week, deferred sales tend to mean a real loss for retailers as would-be Christmas items are instead purchased in the January sales. As he stated: "The other problem is about 20% of all Christmas spend is impulse and that dies on Christmas Day. You're not going to buy that extra chocolate cake or that extra present for Auntie Flo. You stop." That last quote perhaps says a great deal about Christmas’s new role as a festival of impulsive and symbolic purchasing and consumption more than as a religious festival or even as a festive window of enjoyment to brighten up an otherwise rather long and dark winter period. As we explored in this blog exactly a year ago, Christmas is a tricky subject for anyone interested in promoting sustainability marketing. Attacking the over-consumption and the sheer volume of consumption of items with apparently little (or highly temporary) value or utility, leaves you sounding like a kill-joy or a more environmentally aware version of Ebeneezer Scrooge. But if you join in too enthusiastically, you’re open to the charge of hypocrite. Perhaps the solution lies in a ‘downshifted’ Christmas where the emphasis is on time spent with friends and loved ones, doing things you enjoy doing, and finding resourceful (and resource efficient) ways of enjoying the holiday season. If the current arctic airstream continues coming out way, many of us might not have too much choice about that last part !

So as last year, we wish everyone a happy and relatively sustainable Christmas, and best wishes for a peaceful and rewarding 2011.

Frank and Ken.

The Battle of Bags: Consumer and Ecological Challenges

In 2009/10 FritoLay introduced the world’s first 100% compostable snack chip bag in the USA and Canada. Helmi Ansari, Sustainability Director at FritoLay Canada, wrote a guest post about the launch of the new SunChips packaging in our blog. Initially the public applauded the company’s move to compostable bags. However, in October 2010 FritoLay USA withdrew the SunChips bag, just 18 months after introducing it. What happened?

Consumer Challenges
Launched with extensive publicity that highlighted the compostability of the bag, the new packaging soon became the target of negative attention. Consumers started complaining about the “noise pollution”. Many called up the customer service line or wrote letters to the company. The digital natives left their comments and led a lively discussion on the SunChips facebook group, which was joined by more than half a million people (!). The arguments were not one-sided, though: "There was a lot of feedback that asked for changes to the packaging" said FritoLay spokesperson Aurora Gonzalez. "But there were a lot of consumers who gave us kudos for this innovative step.”

Some consumers even created videos, and uploaded them on YouTube. One of most popular videos regarding the subject of noise in the case of SunChips was created by a user named Mark Mosk. It is just 13 seconds short, no words, only the sound of the crinkling SunChips bag and a non-verbal face gesture in the end.



The video was seen more than 150,000 times on you tube and even made it to ABC news. In light of consumer complaints and dropping sales FritoLay USA decided to go back to the original packing for five of its six flavours. The original, plain flavoured chips will still be sold in the supposedly "eco-friendly" wrappers. This strategic sustainability marketing decision compromise sends three signals: 1) It shows responsiveness to the high number of consumers who complained about the noise of compostable bag. 2) It leaves the compostable bag still available for those who are more concerned about the natural environment than the crinkliness of the SunChips bag. 3) By keeping one flavour the company shows its continuing pursuit of more eco-friendly packaging, which is “a little less noisy”. FritoLay Canada even decided to go further and take a stand. Despite the criticism it kept the compostable bag on the shelves and made a “public service announcement”, featuring Sustainability Officer Helmi Ansari on YouTube:



He explains the trade-offs between a little noise and compostability of the bag in an informative and yet humorous way. Arxces, one of the viewers, comments:

"Well done SunChips for taking a stand and keeping the bag. But also well done for treating your customers like the intelligent people that they are, by explaining why these noisy bags are worth it."

Ecological Challenges
Despite consumer challenges FritoLay also faces ecological challenges. Most consumers readily assume that the compostable bag is more environmentally friendly than petroleum-based, non-recyclable bags. At first glance this seems to be the case. It is intriguing idea that the new packaging stems from renewable resources and that it is 100% compostable in the end of the life cycle. It realizes the "cradle-to-cradle" approach introduced and promoted by Braungart and McDonough (2002).

However, it is not that easy and straight-forward (as usual in the real world). One of the latest Life Cycle Assessment was published by Tabone et al. in Environmental Science & Technology 2010, 44, 8264-8269. The interdisciplinary study was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of chemists and engineers from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Life Cycle Assessment compared one litre of polymer (= unit of analysis) made from 1) petroleum or other fossil fuel feedstock, 2) biopolymers from renewables resources, and 3) hybrid bio/petroleum polymer. The Life Cycle Assessments were completed in accordance with the ISO 14040-14043 series. The results show that there biopolymers do not score better than conventional polymers based on petroleum in all dimensions. There are environmental trade-offs in the case of bioplastics. The advantages in the form of renewable resources and compostability come with a price: there are impacts on the natural environment and human health at the beginning of the life cycle. More specifically, the agricultural production of crops like corn and maize result in the use of land, fertilizers and pesticides, which have an impact on categories such as eutrophication, human health, and eco-toxicity. In addition to that, the fermentation and processing of the crops also have quite an impact. A severe limitation of the study is the exclusion of disposal scenarios, which should be included in future studies. In light of these results companies like FritoLay should be cautious claiming that there SunChips bags are 100% compostable (without saying that the agricultural production produces impacts). There is the danger of committing a sin of greenwashing (the “sin of hidden tradeoff”).

Yet, it is worth mentioning, that bioplastics are relatively new materials. Several long-term trends will drive their growth: volatile oil prices; energy security concerns; environmental benefits; favorable regulatory intiatives; and the improving performance and competitiveness of bioplastic resins. The ecological “battle of bags” has just begun…

The case of the compostable bag demonstrates that both at the consumer end and the producer end there are typically trade-offs involved in moving towards more sustainable solutions and that pure 'win-win' trade-off free solutions are relatively rare. This is one of the challenges sustainability marketing faces in the present and the future.