Every day I wander about the Internet, I see a growth in information stating that the human race if damaging the planet. I am sure you have seen it too. Environmentalism and blogging are looking like becoming long terms lovers. Like many things out there, the core ethic in these lifestyle focussed blogs is about conversation. An online trend that is growing even faster than even the large amount of online environmentalists is able to keep up with. Brand should be taking heed and working with these online communities to improve their brand perception.

Environmentalism Online Could be building your brand.

Online communities are great places for brand building. But the you need to have core values that they associate with. 

For a bottled water company this can present many problems. The bottles used consume oil, the extraction process uses energy, the bottling plants use energy, transportation uses energy and emits CO2, and over time, this eats into the credibility that a bottled water company can have within environmentally focussed communities. 

Stage One: Find out what people care about.

Researching the market through search engines, news engines and blog engines will start to show you what conversations are going on about your brand, and related issues, with which you should be involved. In bottled water there are many topics – a core ‘hot’ topic at present revolves around the bottles themselves: 

Stage Two: Make the Changes Needed 

Bottled water may take only a couple of minutes to drink but the bottle itself can survive for hundreds of years. So how do you dispose of these bottles? Normally the bottles would go into landfills sites or would wash up on beaches around the world. So the best way to minimise this is to make bottles reusable – glass bottles can be recycled and biodegradable plastics are already available. Brand like ‘bleu’, the penguin friendly water, are already using this technique and it is developing a cult following online simply by having a bottle that does far less long-term damage to the environment. 

Energy usage is also core to many people’s hearts in environmentalist websites. Making bottled water using green and renewable sources of electricity, and reducing the carbon footprint used to make the water would help hugely in this community. So by changing to wind or waterpower bottled water companies could be enhancing their green credentials. In the UK, companies such as Scottish Hydro and Southern Electric offer this to businesses. Even green hosting is now available so that the bottled water company website can be run in a green manner. 

Stage Three: Get your Green Message out

By getting involved in the green communities, especially where the brand is mentioned, would be a good start to promote these things. Show how your company is starting to change and is thinking about the future. Work with the community to help make your product better for them and for the planet and you could have a truly green, growth product in the bottled water sector.

For more information on this topic please contact Martin Jordan via his blog at: Equator Live