Building A Green Marketing Strategy: 6 Steps For Small Businesses

As consumers become increasingly conscious of their environmental impact, businesses of all sizes are being urged to adopt more sustainable practices. For small businesses, integrating sustainability into their marketing strategy can be a powerful way to differentiate themselves from competitors, build trust with eco-conscious customers and contribute positively to the planet. But where do you start? This guide will walk you through the essential steps to create a green marketing strategy, tailored for your small business. 1. Understand Your Environmental Impact Before you can market your business as sustainable, it’s crucial to understand your current environmental impact. Conduct an audit of your operations to identify areas where you can reduce waste, lower carbon emissions and use resources more efficiently. Without this type of audit, your green marketing strategy won’t be based on anything substantial. Things to consider: Energy consumption in your office or store The sustainability of your supply chain Waste management and recycling practices The environmental impact of your products or services 2. Set Clear, Achievable Sustainability Goals Once you have a clear understanding of your environmental impact, set specific sustainability goals. These should be realistic and measurable, allowing you to track progress and make adjustments as needed. Don’t forget to set sensible timeframes, to give new schemes and initiatives a chance to embed properly. Examples include: Reducing energy consumption by 20% over the next year Switching to 100% recyclable packaging materials by the next quarter Sourcing 50% of raw materials from certified sustainable suppliers within the next two years   3. Integrate Sustainability Into Your Brand Values For a green marketing strategy to be effective, sustainability must be embedded in your brand’s core values. This means that your commitment to the environment should be evident in every aspect of your business, from the products you sell or services you offer, to the way you interact with customers. Consider: Updating your mission statement to reflect your commitment to sustainability Training employees on sustainable practices and encouraging them to contribute ideas Communicating your environmental values clearly in your marketing materials 4. Partner With Like-Minded Organisations Collaborating with other businesses, not-for-profits or local communities that share your commitment to sustainability can amplify your impact and credibility. Consider: Co-branding Opportunities: Partner with sustainable brands for joint marketing campaigns, product launches or events. Community Involvement: Sponsor local environmental initiatives, participate in litter picking or support eco-friendly charities. This not only boosts your brand’s reputation but also strengthens your connection with the community. Certifications and Affiliations: Seek out certifications like B Corp, Fair Trade or ISO 14001, which can help validate your sustainability claims and enhance your brand’s credibility.   5. Be Transparent and Honest Transparency is key in sustainable marketing. Consumers are increasingly wary of greenwashing – when companies make misleading claims about their environmental efforts. To build trust, be honest about your sustainability journey, including the challenges you face and areas where you’re still working to improve. Publicly Share Your Progress: Regularly update your customers on the progress of your sustainability goals and be open about any setbacks or learnings along the way. Provide Data and Evidence: Whenever possible, back up your claims with data, third-party certifications or testimonials from credible sources. Acknowledge Your Limitations: If there are areas where your business still has room to improve, acknowledge them. Consumers appreciate honesty and will respect your commitment to continuous improvement. 6. Measure and Adjust Your Green Marketing Strategy Sustainability is a continuous journey and it’s important to regularly measure the effectiveness of your green marketing strategy. Use KPIs to track your progress and make data-driven decisions. Monitor Key Metrics: Track metrics such as energy savings, reduction in waste, customer engagement on sustainability-related content, and sales of eco-friendly products. Solicit Feedback: Gather feedback from customers, employees and partners to understand how your sustainability efforts are perceived and where you can improve. Adjust Your Strategy: Based on your findings, adjust your marketing strategy to better align with your sustainability goals and consumer expectations.   Building a green marketing strategy as a small business is not just about adopting eco-friendly practices – it’s about integrating sustainability into the very fabric of your brand. By following these steps, you can create a marketing strategy that not only helps the planet but also resonates with your customers and drives business success. Remember, every small step towards sustainability counts, and as your business grows, so will your positive impact on the environment. Find out more about our sustainability journey at Trident Marketing.

Earth Overshoot Day 2024: What Does It Mean?

Earth Overshoot Day is a different date each year, and for 2024 it falls on 1st August. That means that from 1st January to 1st August, collectively we have used as much from nature as the planet’s ecosystems can renew during this entire year – that’s according to the latest calculations by Global Footprint Network. So in just seven months, humanity has used what Earth takes 12 months to regenerate. And after today, the remainder of the year corresponds to global overshoot. How Is Earth Overshoot Day calculated? It’s calculated by dividing the planet’s biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year) by humanity’s Ecological Footprint (humanity’s demand for that year) and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year. Or if it’s a leap year like 2024, then that would be 366 days. In 1971, Earth Overshoot Day was on 25th December, but since 2005 the date has consistently fallen in August. How Can We Help To #MoveTheDate? The people at the Global Footprint Network naturally want to buck the trend on that graph, with an Earth Overshoot Day that falls later in the year. “Individuals have the power to better their homes and communities. The greatest potential for large-scale impact, however, lies with governments and businesses who align their policies and strategies with the reality of our finite planet,” they explain. “More precisely, immense #PowerOfPossibility can be found in the countless existing solutions that can be implemented at scale. With them, we can make ourselves more resilient and #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day.” Their Power of Possibility platform highlights many ways we can improve our resource security in five key areas: healthy planet, cities, energy, food and population. Here are some easy-to-digest examples of how we can make change happen: Reforesting 350 million hectares of forest would move the date of Earth Overshoot Day by eight days. Reducing the carbon component of humanity’s Ecological Footprint by 50% would move Earth Overshoot Day by 93 days. Existing off-the-shelf, commercial energy-efficiency technologies for buildings, industrial processes and electricity production could move Earth Overshoot Day by at least 21 days, without any loss in productivity or comfort. If we cut food waste in half worldwide, we would move it by 13 days.   How Can We Reduce Food Waste? Did you know that half of the Earth’s biocapacity is used to feed us? And, in the UK alone, we waste approximately 9.5 million tonnes of food every year. Here are some top tips on what you can do to reduce your food waste and become more sustainable: Store food correctly. This will make your food last longer, so check the packaging for instructions or Google if you’re not sure. Your freezer’s your friend. Whether it’s for leftovers, half a loaf of bread or about-to-turn vegetables, your freezer is the perfect way to reduce food waste. Use a compost bin. Pop vegetable waste, egg shells and coffee grounds into your compost bin! Think about the biggest culprits. What do you throw away the most? If it’s fresh herbs, freeze them for future stews or curries. If it’s milk, freeze in ice cube trays. Revive vegetables. Bendy carrots can be good-as-new if you place them in cold water in your fridge. The same works for salad leaves – simply run ice-cold water over them in a colander. Take a measured approach. Always shop with a list so you only buy what you need, and measure foods such as pasta and rice so you don’t overdo it.   Find out more about Earth Overshoot Day and consider how you can make a difference.

Electric Car Update

We’ve got a little update for you: our electric car fleet has grown to a family of five! Finance Director Yvette and Project Manager Chris now have electric cars too, taking us another step forward in our sustainability journey. In our drive to becoming fully electric, we’ve already seen a massive difference – spending £15,518.36 less on fuel from October 2022 to September 2023, compared to the year prior. Those figures will be even better for the current period, as our company cars are all electric now – and will be going forward. But… did you know that the electric car movement isn’t all that new? La Jamais Contente, a torpedo-shaped car, was the first ever road vehicle to top 100km/h. It was electric. And the year was 1899! Image credit: Wikimedia Commons Electric Vehicles Of The Past Battery-powered taxis buzzed around London and New York in the 1890s and early 1900s. In fact, there were more than 30,000 electric vehicles registered in the US at a time when the most common form of transportation was still the horse and carriage. Their popularity dwindled due to an absence of power infrastructure beyond big cities, and fuel-powered vehicles soon dominated instead. Why Are Electric Cars Back? So, why have we come full circle? Along with environmental concerns, it’s taken more than a century of battery improvements for electric vehicles to become a viable, appealing alternative to fuel-powered cars. The number of sales has tripled between 2020 and 2022, and although the electric car market accounts for less than 20% of all car sales, the prediction is that they will overtake within the next 15 years. That’s thanks to a number of developments. In 2022, an electric Mercedes travelled over 1,000km through four countries on a single charge. Since then, Toyota and Volkswagen have both announced plans to begin commercial production of next-generation batteries, allowing people to travel roughly double the distance of current petrol or diesel cars without charging. The likes of Ford, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo have set targets of phasing out the production of cars with internal combustion engines entirely by 2040. Engineering firm CALLUM aims to cut charging times to just a few minutes, making the process as convenient as refuelling. Along with Cambridge-based battery developer Nyobolt, the companies have showcased an electric vehicle capable of fully charging in less than six minutes. Mass production is set to begin as soon as this year.   The Future Of Electric Cars With these updates, the understandable concerns around reliability and functionality will potentially become a thing of the past. There are still concerns over price (the average cost to buy an electric car in the UK is £50,000) and practicality en masse – such as, how will a row of terraced houses in compact cities charge their cars at home safely? More recently in America, there have been concerns over electric cars’ inability to withstand cold weather – but by cold weather, we mean -35°C. Which is, thankfully, a temperature that’s never been recorded in the UK. One thing’s for sure, we’ll be keeping our ears to the ground for further developments in the electric car market. Let’s all watch this space!

A Sustainable Alternative To Black Friday

Now, don’t get us wrong… Black Friday deals can be brilliant. Especially if you’re genuinely in the market for a product – like when your vacuum cleaner breaks and Dyson is offering a £200 saving. Perfect. It can be even more beneficial to businesses, potentially giving you your best profits of the year. But it goes without saying that this major shopping event has a negative impact on the environment. We’re here to explain the impact of Black Friday and offer up some more sustainable options. What Is Black Friday? Black Friday is a major shopping day which started in America in the 1970s and is always the day after Thanksgiving, towards the end of November. Once the Thanksgiving festivities are complete, it’s a chance for retailers to capitalise on the beginning of the Christmas shopping period. In more recent years, the shopping event has gone global. Cyber Monday was introduced in 2005 to become the biggest online shopping event of the year, turning the one-day sale into a whole weekend – or in some cases, a week-long or month-long campaign. Why Is It Called Black Friday? The term has had other meanings, but in the 1980s retailers wanted the derivation clarified. The name Black Friday refers to the fact that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this was recorded in the financial records, accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, therefore, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be ‘in the red’. Is Black Friday Bad For The Environment? There are some frightening statistics associated with Black Friday. Firstly, online shopping can lead to higher emissions than shopping in stores, which is down to the energy needed to run warehouses and emissions from home delivery. In 2021, UK deliveries from Black Friday sales were estimated to release more than 429,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Waste is also another massive factor. Huge discounts and cheap products lure people into buying something they don’t need – in fact, roughly 80% of items bought on Black Friday are thrown away after just a few uses or without being used at all! Products that aren’t thrown away are often returned to the company, but they won’t always be put back on sale, leading to more products in landfill. For this reason – and for the fact that turning a profit isn’t a guarantee with such large savings – some retailers don’t take part in Black Friday at all. In the UK last year, Marks & Spencer, B&M, Next, IKEA, Primark and TK Maxx were some of the big brands who didn’t offer discounts. Is There An Alternative? As a sustainable company, we’re all about Green Friday! This alternative day promotes a focus on responsible shopping by buying from small, local, independent shops or opting for second-hand items. By shopping local, you’re also helping the shops that need your support the most during this cost-of-living crisis. There’s also another angle. There is a Green Friday movement to ignore shopping completely, instead encouraging people to get outside in nature, give to worthwhile causes, create something, meditate, or spend time with friends and family. All that good stuff. What Can Businesses Do On Black Friday? As we said before, if your business sees its biggest takings (and profits) on Black Friday, you’re obviously going to want to take part… who could blame you? Whether you’re a small or large business, there are some things you could consider to make the day more green. Only offer all-in-one deliveries, rather than multiple shipments – or encourage your customers to choose that option. Use as little packaging as possible and make sure any packaging you do use is sustainable. Set up a donation scheme at your physical or online checkout, to environmental charities such as Friends of the Earth, and encourage your customers to do their bit. Whatever you decide is right for you as an individual or your business, we hope you have a successful Black (Green) Friday!

Recycle Week 2023: The Big Recycling Hunt

Now in its 20th year, Recycle Week (which runs from 16th to 22nd October 2023) is the flagship annual event by Recycle Now. A celebration of recycling across the nation, it’s the one week of the year where retailers, brands, waste management companies, trade associations, governments and the media come together to achieve one goal: to galvanise the public into recycling more of the right things, more often. Trident Marketing is an ISO 14001 accredited company, so recycling is always a hot topic in the office. Let us tell you more about the event… The Big Recycling Hunt This year’s theme is The Big Recycling Hunt, focusing on ‘missed capture’ AKA the items that can be recycled but are commonly missed in the home. Culprits include aerosols, plastic trays, cleaning products, shampoo bottles and – would you believe it – food tins. The campaign will have two distinct elements. Firstly, encouraging the country’s children to partake in fun activities throughout Recycle Week by providing schools and teachers with a free download pack and various resources. Secondly, there’s a focus on local authorities, partners and brands to share the central message. Which is exactly what we’re doing here. How Do I Know What To Recycle? Rather unhelpfully, recycling rules differ from council to council across the country. Some councils collect glass, others don’t so you have to head to the bottle bank. Some councils accept batteries, but most don’t. Some councils let you mix your recyclables, others want them separated. It can be a minefield. That’s why the work that Recycle Now does is so important. It’s also why everyone needs to spend more time getting to know what is and isn’t recyclable in their area. The best thing to do? Visit the official Recycling Collections gov.uk page. You can type in your postcode, then be directed to your local council’s website – and the rules. If In Doubt, Look At The Label Many of us act on autopilot when disposing of waste, but if you take mere seconds to check the label, it will give you a good idea on whether it’s recyclable or not. The various icons are pretty self-explanatory, but Recycle Now has a guide on recycling symbols for extra clarity. For example, stating when something should be recycled with its lid on. Did you know that caps and lids under 40mm in diameter are too small to be captured for recycling, because they fall through the holes in the screens at the sorting facility? At Trident Marketing, we make sure everything that can be recycled, is recycled – from cardboard packaging to tin foil and even grass cuttings. It’s the very least we can all be doing to reduce our collective carbon footprint.

Second Hand September 2023: Help The Planet!

Shopping second-hand in charity shops is brilliant. You can find unique items at a fraction of the original cost, all whilst helping the environment and the charity itself. What’s not to like? Our copywriter Rosie has bought two vinyl records, a rattan cutlery tray, a beautiful ceramic vase, and a never-worn John Lewis jacket with the labels still on… and that was just August’s haul. Last year, she schlepped a huge armchair home on the roof of her car for a bargainous £35. It’s hardly surprising – everyone at Trident Marketing is focused on sustainability and we all make a conscious effort to do our bit. It’s why we’re sharing details of Oxfam’s Second Hand September campaign with you. What Is Second Hand September? Its aim is to encourage everyone to shop second-hand and donate, reuse, rewear and restyle throughout this month – and beyond, of course! The Second Hand September campaign has been running since 2019 and has already inspired thousands of people to shop in a way that is kinder to both people and planet. The idea is that you don’t buy any new clothes for the month of September – come on, we can all commit to that for a mere 30 days! By signing up this year, you’ll get a free limited-edition poster and postcard set so you can help spread the word about sustainable shopping. Did You Know? When a new pair of jeans is made, an estimated 16.2kg of CO2 is emitted – the equivalent of driving over 58 miles in a car. So, by recirculating our clothes (buying, wearing and donating second-hand) we can help to reduce the demand for new clothes. And this could in turn help to reduce the damage to our planet. No Oxfam near you? Fear not! They have partnered with Joules, Superdry, Mamas & Papas, M&S, Sainsbury’s and House of Baukjen, so you can drop off your donations there too. If you get involved, make sure you share your secondhand finds on social media using the hashtag #SecondHandSeptember. Find out more here: Second Hand September

The Impact Of Being Sustainable On The Print & Promotional Product Industry

When people think about making their company sustainable, they turn to digital marketing over print and promotional products but, in some ways, using these methods of promoting your business can actually be better for the environment.

Fairtrade Fortnight 2023

Thousands of people throughout Britain are preparing to take part in the upcoming Fairtrade Fortnight from the 27 February until the 12 March 2023.

Our ISO 14001 Logos Are Here!

Our ISO 14001 certification demonstrates that the Environmental Management System we have in place, and our environmental goals align with the standards and regulations of the international body ISO.

Sustainability Saturday: The Year Ahead In Sustainability

January is almost over already! Where has it gone? As we look ahead to the rest of 2023, we decided to look at what will be happening in the world of sustainability and climate trends this year