Marketing or Environment?

In previous blog posts, P and Pop introduced “Is Technology the Answer?” and “Pollution absorbing poster!” respectively. Thanks to their posts, they led my interest to the pollution problem in the society.

War on waste makes sustainable business more profitable in BBC News Business reports ways to cope with waste in order to make more profitable for businesses. One way reported in the article focuses on re purposing waste, such as producing household utensils and educational toys from recycling plastic, while another way is to reduce the plastic used in products at the first place, for instance producing the plastic bottle by using advanced technology to reduce the amount of plastic per bottle.

Both ways seems to be effective and efficient to sustainably develop our environments. Actually, one of many things that are very interesting in the first way that aims to re-purposing waste is plastic value concept. As reported on this BBC News, in Nigeria, people can exchange the waste that they collected with basic food, consumer electronics, or cash in order that the company will re-produce the product like clothing from waste and then sell it back to the market. Although it doesn't use high technology like Pop’s Blog post, it’s still effective and efficient because it looks like we can kill three birds with only one little stone. One bird is that we can alleviate the starvation problem. It likes we hire them to collect the garbage for us and we give them money or food to live. Second bird is that their environments become better than before. It appears like their neighborhood is cleaner and garbage on the street is lessened. Third bird is that the company gets source of products in cheaper price and their reputation looks good. It likes a win-win situation, doesn't it?

For the second way reported in the news, it reminds me one interesting thing. I believe that everyone has an experience with it. Have your ever bought drinking water in the soften bottle? What do you think about it? They told us that they love the world so they reduce plastic for each bottle. I’m not sure that they really mean or think like that. Three possible choices responding to that product coming up in my mind are as follows: 1) they really care the environment like they say 2) they just want to be able to compete in the market by using sustainable environment campaign and 3) they just want reduce the cost of bottle. How about you? Perhaps, you might come up with other possibility reasons. I am looking forward to the discussion here.

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Reference

Miller, J. (2014, May 20.). War on waste makes sustainable business more profitable. BBC News Business. Retrieved May 26, 2014 from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27413189

Visuthisakchai S. (2014, May 16). Pollution absorbing poster! Peter's Blogspot. Retrieved May 26, 2014 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2014/05/pollution-absorbing-poster.html

Wongngamdee, P. (2014, May 22). Is Technology the Answer? Peter's Blogspot. Retrieved May 26, 2014 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-technology-answer.html