Greenwashing goes spam
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I just marked a set of emails as spam. This is the first group of emails that I’ve received that targeted me as interested in “green” purchasing. I was fooled at first. I started thinking to myself “Hmm. My Green Choices sounds pretty cool. Is this an organization that I’ve contacted to explore potential partnerships?” My memory didn’t tip me off to the automated nature of the emails. It was where they were addressed to. Each of the emails were sent to different addresses that we publish on bilumi.org. One for our “GetInvolved” email, one for our “donations” email, and a third for me: “clay”.
I did a quick google search to see if “My Green Choices” was more than just a newsish and chatty email to convince me to purchase greenwashed christmas tree stands. They’re no where to be found. Who knows; maybe just by writing this post I’m increasing their page rank. Jerks.
I was going to end the post there. But “Jerks” is not too optimistic. Sure, it’s jerkish to be so slick about pretending your business is doing good things when lots of truly green businesses are struggling to communicate their green message. So let me take this time to remind myself that those jerks are only making money because as the public we need a little technological help knowing who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
Buy It Like You Mean It can help. So I’ll get back to oh so glamorous end of year non-profit paperwork now. Thanks for listening.