Conservation Covers

Archive for the ‘Conservation Resources’ Category

There are approximately 85 species of birds in North America that nest in cavities. Some, like woodpeckers, excavate their own holes. Non-excavators like the purple martin nest in cavities previously dug out by other birds or animals. Then there are birds such as wood ducks that nest in naturally occurring cavities that form in many trees. Many of these birds will also nest in birdhouses provided by humans.

If you could travel back to a time before Europeans began coming to the New World, you could see these birds living in abundance, each filling a particular niche in the ecosystem. The birds ate bugs that might otherwise become a plague on woodlands. In turn, their numbers would be kept in check by hawks, owls, snakes, and other predators. It was a beautiful, healthy balance.

In a case of humans living inside their natural balance, Native Americans in some parts of the country discovered long ago that they could attract purple martins to nest in hollowed out gourds. In this case, the martins ate many bugs that were considered pests to people and animals. That is how the first purple martin birdhouse was created. (It is important to note here that, contrary to many claims, mosquitoes are not among the insects favored by purple martins.)

A more common example of human interaction with nature, in the last couple of centuries at least, can be examined in a discussion on “introduced species.” Humans have frequently brought all kinds of plants and animals from their native lands, depositing them on foreign soil. Sometimes it happens accidentally, but there have been many intentional introductions as well. Many times, the new species dies out, because they were taken from their natural niche and inserted where there was no place for them. Occasionally, a species will survive, carving out a new niche. When this happens, it usually has devastating effects on native species.

In the bird world, two strong examples of successfully introduced species are the English house sparrow and the European starling. The house sparrow was brought to North America in the 1850′s in an attempt to reduce insect populations around human communities. This, unfortunately, proved unwise. As the number of sparrows increased, they began to consume huge amounts of grain and growing vegetables, and they competed with native cavity-nesting birds. The intentions were good, but the experiment was simply ill conceived. The house sparrow aggressively defends any nesting site it claims, and these sites are often ones preferred by birds like bluebirds and purple martins.

If the introduction of English house sparrows to the U.S. was ill conceived, the case of the European starling was downright silly. In the 1890′s, a man named Eugene Schieffelin wanted to bring to our shores every bird mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. This comedy of errors ultimately culminated in the continental distribution of starlings. They now reside from coast to coast. Highly aggressive, they actually “evict” other cavity-nesting birds from their homes. This, combined with the ever-increasing pace of land development by humans, puts a great deal of pressure on our native bird populations.

Conservation

Conservation is not a new or recent phenomenon. Conservation, or living in a sort of balance with nature, had been the norm for successful cultures for millennia. Many ancient societies had very respectful, and respectable, agricultural policies. Some were as simple as not over-killing, and using all parts of the animal for food, clothing, and shelter. Some early techniques were quite complex, like land terracing, crop rotation, and irrigation.

Then came the Industrial Revolution. Myriad products and services, such as the world had never before seen, suddenly came on the market, ever quicker and in greater numbers. The big businesses that grew up in this environment became very powerful; they felt they were invincible. They treated their workers horribly, they took advantage of consumers by gouging prices, and they ravenously devoured every possible natural resource in the name of profits. Forests, rivers, mountains, oceans, earth, and air all were hostage to the unrestrained avarice of the wealthy few.

Soon, a few wise observers realized that this was a trend with a dead end. In 1864, George Perkins Marsh, considered by many to be America’s first environmentalist, wrote Man and Nature. In it, he argued that rampant deforestation would bring “the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon.”

Later, in 1892, a man named John Muir founded the Sierra Club, an organization that exists to this day. The first point in its mission statement is to “explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth.”

Let us consider the words of another early proponent of conservationism, President Theodore Roosevelt. He said, “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.”

Over time, information and awareness spread, and many groups and individuals stepped up to try to turn the tide of destruction. Today, there are thousands of organizations and millions of people worldwide that are dedicated to improving our ecological outlook. Environmentalism has become a persistent pint of our national and cultural discussion. It has been a big part of presidential campaigns ever since Teddy Roosevelt. It is as if we have always known how important our connection to nature is, but maybe we forgot for a while. Now, we struggle with the thought of sacrificing the life-enhancing things that technological progress has brought us. Though some sacrifices will be necessary, many knowledgeable people believe that they do not need to be big ones.

How a Hobby Can Change the World

There are many things people can do in the course of their ordinary lives to improve the future of the ecology without making any sacrifices whatsoever. Picking up a new pastime – like birding, for example – could help make a positive change. Providing food, via bird feeders, and shelter, by way of birdhouses (also known as nesting boxes), for wild birds can actually help sustain native species. Bluebirds, purple martins, and wood ducks are a few species that are making comebacks thanks, in large part, to the efforts of recreational bird watchers.

Of course, there are a great number of organizations ready to help those new to the world of birding get started. From large national and international groups like the Audubon Society, the North American Bluebird Society, and the Purple Martin Conservation Association, to small, local birding clubs that can be found in towns of all sizes, help for the neophyte birder is close at hand.

So What Does the Future Hold?

We have traveled far in a dangerous direction. Only a major correction can steer us in the direction of a healthy, sustainable ecology, and preserve our beautiful world for coming generations. The good news is that a seemingly insurmountable task might be broken into millions of tiny, easy activities. If we are all together, each accepting a little bit of responsible stewardship of the earth, we can chart a course for success.

Educational Toys and Life Skills

Educational toys not only promote developmental skills in children. They also help children acquire and improve essential life skills. Creativity, self-confidence, independence, responsibility, and integrity can all be cultivated through the use of carefully selected educational toys.

Creativity

One hallmark of educational toys is how well they support creative, open-ended play. A tray of wooden food can inspire a child to spend a whole afternoon running a pretend restaurant or planting and harvesting crops on a pretend farm. A set of blocks can be turned into a tower, a road system, a fort, a car, or even different animals. And the possibilities for a pound of modeling clay are endless! The more time a child spends exploring all the different things a toy can become, the more developed the child’s powers of imagination will be. This fosters an open-mindedness to new possibilities that will help the child think of creative and innovative solutions to any challenges he or she ends up facing as an adult.

Self-Confidence

One way to build self-confidence is through play that encourages a child to assert him or herself. Singing, performing, and acting in front of an audience all help children assert themselves both in the planning stage and during an actual performance. Children also learn to assert themselves by acting out scenarios or performing informally with peers. Open-ended toys such as musical instruments and dress-up clothes and props encourage this type of play.

Taking risks that pay off will also develop a child’s self-confidence. Susan G. Solomon, author of American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space, notes that “Children need a chance to take acceptable risks, learn cause and effect, make choices and see consequences. If they don’t learn to take risks, we’ll lose a generation of entrepreneurs and scientists.”

To take such risks, children must develop powers of risk assessment and decision making so that they can be sure that the risks they plan to take are, in fact, acceptable. The act of riding and controlling large toys such as bicycles requires children to calculate physical risks. The logic needed to play certain strategy-based board games like Monopoly, chess, and checkers involves risk assessment such as whether or not to invest in a property or risk one piece for a future, greater gain.

To improve their ability to calculate risk, children should also develop their decision-making skills. Science and engineering kits can help by requiring children to use observations and directions to make decisions about how to run an experiment or build a working machine. Puzzles and building construction sets can also hone this skill.

Independence

In general, allowing children to direct their own play and be in charge of what to do during their free time helps them become more self-sufficient and resilient. In particular, certain educational toys foster skills such as problem solving, taking charge of a situation, and leadership.

One aspect of being independent is being able to solve a problem on your own. Working with a construction toy system allows a child to explore different solutions to the challenge of building various items. Logical challenges faced on your own, such as figuring out how to use a set of pattern blocks to replicate certain complicated patterns, also build problem-solving skills.

Another aspect of being independent is taking charge of a situation. This can be as simple as providing your baby with two toy choices and allowing the baby the autonomy to make his or her own decision about which to play with. Beyond that, you can also encourage the development of independence by allowing your child to direct what roles you will take on when playing with your child or letting your child be in charge of how a toy will be played with. Providing your child with open-ended play sets such as farms, fire and police stations, pirate ships, tree houses, and train stations creates a situation where your child can control what scenarios he or she will act out that day.

A third aspect of being independent is taking a leadership role. While unit blocks and communal building sets of oversized hollow wood blocks, huge foam blocks, or sturdy cardboard blocks can foster cooperation skills, they can also offer opportunities for one child to lead others in a positive way to build a specific construction that that child has in mind. Educational toys can also help children become self-motivated and self-directed so that they can lead themselves to accomplishments without always relying on outside support and affirmation.

Responsibility

To become good citizens, all children should develop a sense of personal, societal, and environmental responsibility. In general, trusting children to take good care of their toys, to play nicely with them and put them back where they belong when play is done, can begin to foster a sense of responsibility. At the most basic level, a chart such as Melissa and Doug’s Magnetic Responsibility Chart can help a child keep track of his or her personal obligations. Beyond that, specific toys can develop other kinds of responsibility.

When a child is provided with an open-ended toy such as a construction set that must be assembled by the child, he or she will take on the personal responsibility of following the directions and making sure the toy is put together correctly. This will train the child to take a sense of pride and personal responsibility in any future jobs he or she is expected to do. And, when a child takes care of a doll or pretend pet, he or she also develops a sense of personal responsibility for fulfilling his or her obligations to someone else.

Role-playing of obligations can extend to creating a sense of responsibility to society. When a child pretends that he or she is a construction worker or a doctor, that child is practicing taking on adult responsibilities that must be fulfilled if people are to live together in communities. Such role-playing socializes the child and allows him or her to get used to the idea of becoming a contributing member to such a community once he or she is grown.

Finally, science kits that encourage children to study the earth can educate children about why people must take care of animals, land, resources, and so forth. Plus, toys that are crafted from sustainable materials (such as Plan Toys) or bioplastics (such as Green Toys), or designed to use recycled materials (such as the Uberstix Scavenger sets), encourage a respect for the conservation of natural resources. This in turn leads to a developed sense of responsibility for caring for the environment.

Integrity

Educational toys can also help children develop integrity. Using costumes and props to role-play situations such as customer and server can help children practice politeness and manners. Acting out scenarios such as taking care of an injured doll or animal can foster compassion and empathy. And playing competitive games fairly by taking turns and following the rules develops a child’s appreciation for right and wrong.

The educational benefit of toys for child development cannot be underestimated. The childhood pursuit for play and discovery continues into adulthood. Children develop fascination about their surroundings from playing with toys and continue to pick up hobbies late into their adult life.

GREEN MARKETING – OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES

 

BY

Miss. P. PIRAKATHEESWARI, Lecturer in Commerce,

Sri Sarada College for Women (Autonomous), Salem – 16.

“Progress is possible, No one can stop it, but obstacle is there, we have to face it.”

 

- Amartya Sen

Introduction

Yes, green marketing is a golden goose. As per Mr. J. Polonsky, green marketing can be defined as, “All activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchange intended to satisfy human needs or wants such that satisfying of these needs and wants occur with minimal detrimental input on the national environment.”

Green marketing involves developing and promoting products and services that satisfy customers want and need for Quality, Performance, Affordable Pricing and Convenience without having a detrimental input on the environment.

Meaning

Green marketing refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in it or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way.

The obvious assumption of green marketing is that potential consumers will view a product or service’s “greenness” as a benefit and base their buying decision accordingly. The not-so-obvious assumption of green marketing is that consumers will be willing to pay more for green products than they would for a less-green comparable alternative product – an assumption that, in my opinion, has not been proven conclusively.

While green marketing is growing greatly as increasing numbers of consumers are willing to back their environmental consciousnesses with their dollars, it can be dangerous. The public tends to be skeptical of green claims to begin with and companies can seriously damage their brands and their sales if a green claim is discovered to be false or contradicted by a company’s other products or practices. Presenting a product or service as green when it’s not is called green washing.

Definition

According to the American Marketing Association, green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. Yet defining green marketing is not a simple task where several meanings intersect and contradict each other; an example of this will be the existence of varying social, environmental and retail definitions attached to this term. Other similar terms used are Environmental Marketing and Ecological Marketing.

The legal implications of marketing claims call for caution. Misleading or overstated claims can lead to regulatory or civil challenges. In the USA, the Federal Trade Commission provides some guidance on environmental marketing claims.

Three keys to successful green marketing

Show potential customers that you follow green business practices and you could reap more green on your bottom line. Green Marketing isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s a marketing strategy that can help you get more customers and make more money. But only if you do it right.

For green marketing to be effective, you have to do three things; be genuine, educate your customers, and give them the opportunity to participate.

1) Being genuine means that a) that you are actually doing what you claim to be doing in your green marketing campaign and b) that the rest of your business policies are consistent with whatever you are doing that’s environmentally friendly. Both these conditions have to be met for your business to establish the kind of environmental credentials that will allow a green marketing campaign to succeed.

2) Educating your customers isn’t just a matter of letting people know you’re doing whatever you’re doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting them know why it matters. Otherwise, for a significant portion of your target market, it’s a case of “So what?” and your green marketing campaign goes nowhere.

3) Giving your customers an opportunity to participate means personalizing the benefits of your environmentally friendly actions, normally through letting the customer take part in positive environmental action.

Evolution of Green Marketing

The green marketing has evolved over a period of time. According to Peattie (2001), the evolution of green marketing has three phases. First phase was termed as “Ecological” green marketing, and during this period all marketing activities were concerned to help environment problems and provide remedies for environmental problems. Second phase was “Environmental” green marketing and the focus shifted on clean technology that involved designing of innovative new products, which take care of pollution and waste issues. Third phase was “Sustainable” green marketing. It came into prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000.

Why Green Marketing?

As resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, it is important for the marketers to utilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the organization’s objective. So green marketing is inevitable.

There is growing interest among the consumers all over the world regarding protection of environment. Worldwide evidence indicates people are concerned about the environment and are changing their behavior. As a result of this, green marketing has emerged which speaks for growing market for sustainable and socially responsible products and services.

Benefits of Green Marketing

Companies that develop new and improved products and services with environment inputs in mind give themselves access to new markets, increase their profit sustainability, and enjoy a competitive advantage over the companies which are not concerned for the environment.

Adoption of Green Marketing

There are basically five reasons for which a marketer should go for the adoption of green marketing. They are -

Opportunities or competitive advantage Corporate social responsibilities (CSR) Government pressure Competitive pressure Cost or profit issues

Green Marketing Mix

Every company has its own favorite marketing mix. Some have 4 P’s and some have 7 P’s of marketing mix. The 4 P’s of green marketing are that of a conventional marketing but the challenge before marketers is to use 4 P’s in an innovative manner.

 Product

The ecological objectives in planning products are to reduce resource consumption and pollution and to increase conservation of scarce resources (Keller man, 1978).

Price

Price is a critical and important factor of green marketing mix. Most consumers will only be prepared to pay additional value if there is a perception of extra product value. This value may be improved performance, function, design, visual appeal, or taste. Green marketing should take all these facts into consideration while charging a premium price.

Promotion

There are three types of green advertising: -

ü      Ads that address a relationship between a product/service and the biophysical environment

ü      Those that promote a green lifestyle by highlighting a product or service

ü      Ads that present a corporat
e image of environmental responsibility

Place

The choice of where and when to make a product available will have significant impact on the customers. Very few customers will go out of their way to buy green products.

Strategies

The marketing strategies for green marketing include: -

Marketing Audit (including internal and external situation analysis) Develop a marketing plan outlining strategies with regard to 4 P’s Implement marketing strategies Plan results evaluation

Challenges Ahead

ü      Green products require renewable and recyclable material, which is costly

ü      Requires a technology, which requires huge investment in R & D

ü      Water treatment technology, which is too costly

ü      Majority of the people are not aware of green products and their uses

ü      Majority of the consumers are not willing to pay a premium for green products

Some Cases

ü      McDonald’s restaurant’s napkins, bags are made of recycled paper.

ü      Coca-Cola pumped syrup directly from tank instead of plastic which saved 68 million pound/year.

ü      Badarpur Thermal Power station of NTPC in Delhi is devising ways to utilize coal-ash that has been a major source of air and water pollution.

ü      Barauni refinery of IOC is taken steps for restricting air and water pollutants.

Conclusion

Green marketing should not neglect the economic aspect of marketing. Marketers need to understand the implications of green marketing. If you think customers are not concerned about environmental issues or will not pay a premium for products that are more eco-responsible, think again. You must find an opportunity to enhance you product’s performance and strengthen your customer’s loyalty and command a higher price.  Green marketing is still in its infancy and a lot of research is to be done on green marketing to fully explore its potential.

References:

Chopra, S. Lakshmi (2007), “Turning Over a New Leaf”, Indian Management, Vol-64, April-2007 Ottman, J.A. et al, “Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia”, Environment, Vol-48, June-2006 www.greenmarketing.net/stratergic.html www.epa.qld.gov.au/sustainable_ industries