Eco-nique Climate Positive

Here's an interesting example of the green marketing dilemna. Today I stumbled across a company called eco-nique that claim to be a climate positive company, selling climate positive products.

What are these products? Mobile phone and MP3 cases. No, they're not some nice organic cotton or bioplastic sleeves - just your usual PVC, leather and silicon cases, whose environmental impact clearly spreads further than their carbon emissions.

The company themselves don't mention any environmentally positive actions either (e.g. energy efficiency, renewable energy, recycling etc). They're just a normal company selling phone cases on the internet (see their main website www.i-nique.com) who have realised that by buying a few tonnes of carbon offsets from Climate Care, they can create a separate 'eco' brand to appeal to the growing green market.

Very shrewd, but doesn't this highlight the problem with carbon offsetting. People can pretend to be really good for the environment, when in fact they're doing nothing at all. They're just buying the right to pretend to be good.

This is not to say that carbon offsetting isn't a good thing. It does help to reduce global emissions, and through some schemes can increase woodland areas and provide funding for energy efficiency projects in developing countries that benefit the local people. However, it only works if we recognise that it's only an interim measure to help us minimise our damage while we move to more sustainable practices in the long term. If we treat offsetting itself as the solution then we're probably doing more harm than good, which makes the use of the term Climate Positive somewhat dubious.

Selling carbon offsets with little control over the way that they are communicated is also damaging to the offsetting industry too, as its becoming clear that cynicism towards the concept is growing. Promoting the benefits while discouraging the exploitative use of offsetting is going to be an interesting challenge for the industry.

This blog is supported by Scamper - The pioneers in Sustainable Brand Strategy