Doing Good and Being Cool Too A New Breed of Eco-Entrepreneurs Enters the Marketplace May 8th, 2006 E-mail to a friend
The last few years have seen the emergence of a new breed of environmentalists who are mixing high style with an ecofriendly ethic and becoming, in some cases, celebrities in their own right.
The convergence of style and the environment represents a turning point in the environmental movement; a distinct move away from the angry activist to something more pragmatic, more accessible, and definitely more stylish. This approach in turn is appealing to an increasing cohort of Awakening Consumers. For its Celebrity issue, g-Think sought out several rising stars in the eco- and green design arena and asked them about their rise to fame and how they see celebrities impacting this rapidly growing sector.
An Eco-Style Leader: Danny Seo At just 26 years old, Danny Seo is become a leading expert on environmental lifestyle in the U.S. Starting with his own environmental group in his teenage years, Danny has already authored books and has a show on Sirius radio. In 2004, Treehugger described Seo as “the Martha Stewart for the young, green crowd” (Treehugger, Nov. 19, 2004). That same year, Seo teamed up with trendy Kimpton Hotels, where he is acting as “an eco-stylist and environmental consultant” for the group's 39 hotels throughout the United States. He is also designing for Kimpton a series of “celebrity eco-suite hotel rooms dedicated to environmental sustainability.”
In an interview with g-Think, Danny Seo shared some of his ideas and the reasons behind his meteoric rise as an environmental celebrity:
What's led to your passion for design and influencing what consumers purchase? My birthday is on Earth Day. It is a huge influence on what I do and how I got started. It wasn't until I moved into my first home that I realized that I wanted nice furniture, good food, nice sheets on the bed...but also they should be organic and sustainable.
I didn't mean to go off and become a green lifestyle expert, but the more I learned, the more I wanted to share. The more I shared, the more of an authority I became. I'm happy to be a teacher on this subject, and hopefully others will change. It's a gentler form of activism.
How rapidly is the market growing for ecofriendly consumer products and information? Huge. It's not a trend. Trends are Ugg boots. Eco living is a necessity of life, where we NEED to go. People love and "get" hybrid cars. We love Whole Foods and organic beauty products. Now we're looking at our homes, our clothes, our community. Where does the wood come for our furniture? How was the cotton grown for our fitted T-shirt? Why isn't our community investing in green spaces? Everything is close to hitting a tipping point. The question isn't when but HOW we will respond.
You obviously work with a number of celebrities.What role do you feel these individuals have in influencing the public--and consumers--when it comes to the environment? My job isn't to change how we get our news and information. Sadly, most people get their news from the entertainment press. I can't change that. But I can change what they report on. When I work with celebrities, we work together to get the message out there, and they are usually happy to help. Cameron Diaz talking about her Prius on the Tonight Show educated millions of people that a hybrid car isn't something you plug into the wall. That's huge...and that helped kick off the Prius from a concept to something mainstream and DESIRABLE.
You started out as an activist and now you're a brand. Do you think influencing consumers' choices through style is more beneficial than political action? It's not either or. I'm better at lifestyle, and helping people live a greener, better life in their everyday life is one way I can help. We all need food to eat, gifts to give, pillows for our bed. I'm here to show you the greenest and most gorgeous and most simple way of doing it. If everyone lived green, that does have a big impact as much as sweeping ecological legislation would, too. It's all good.
What's your dream for the Danny Seo brand? To be out of business! Seriously! I started off as a teenage activist wanting to save the world by the year 2000. If there ever comes a time when everyone lives, breathes, and does everything as sustainable as possible, it will be a wonderful day when I need to send out my resume.
The Lazy Environmentalist: Josh Dorfman Josh Dorfman has a big vision… to address environmental challenges at the root level, where people make spending choices. A pragmatist at heart, Dorfman believes there are practical opportunities to be green at every turn. Dorfman shared his vision and his thoughts on celebrity in a recent interview with g-Think.
How would you define your personal brand? The Josh Dorfman brand stands for stylish, innovative, and market-oriented approaches to environmental challenges. It addresses environmental challenges at the root level of reality, dealing directly with what is rather than with what should be.
Do you see yourself as something of a celebrity, and is this a catalyst for propelling your mix of businesses? It’s not about being or becoming a celebrity. It’s about recognizing that when building startups on limited marketing budgets you have to leverage all your talents, all your assets. I had no experience in media before I began hosting The Lazy Environmentalist. The opportunity came because of my work with Vivavi and my familiarity with the players in the design-driven environmental marketplace, so I jumped on it. I’m naturally inquisitive, capable of conversing across a wide range of topics, and enjoy surrounding myself with a diverse range of super-innovative people. Those attributes translate well into hosting an interview-based radio talk show. The radio show raises my profile and in so doing also raises the profiles of Vivavi, ICI, our sustainable style consultancy, and The Modern Green Living Home Directory, our next consumer-focused green venture. I admire the Richard Branson model of company building that he has implemented so effectively at Virgin. While I have no immediate plans to jump out of airplanes, I’d consider it if someone built an ecofriendly airplane and the media were watching.
Do you agree there’s a new generation of green celebrities out there, and who do you think are the rising stars? There are rising stars, though I’m not sure that there are really any new green celebrities. Al Gore is on the cover of Wired magazine this month. He was already a celebrity. As far as the new crop of green media-savvy entrepreneurs, certainly Graham Hill of Treehugger is getting a lot of well-deserved attention for raising the profile of the entire modern green industry and lifestyle through the blog he founded and now manages. Bart Bettencourt of Bettencourt Green Building Supplies, Bettencourt Woodworking, and Scrapile is also a rising star. He’s doing a tremendous job of getting builders and designers to work with green materials and also demonstrating through his own work how green design can be beautiful design. Summer Rayne Oakes is also a rising star. Not only is she a super-hot eco -model, eco-fashion, and fair-trade spokesperson and budding TV personality, but she’s also a total science geek and understands the complex issues surrounding sustainability and how to brand effectively in the industry better than just about anyone else I’ve met.
The entrepreneurs we’ve spoken to seem to favor pragmatism above idealism when it comes to promoting and offering ecofriendly solutions in the marketplace. What happens next? What happens next is what I would call the “invisible eco” evolution. If Environmental Marketplace 1.0 reflects the crunchy granola-type ecofriendly aesthetic that was prevalent from the 1960s through the 1990s and Environmental Marketplace 2.0 reflects the emergence of ecofrienly products like the Toyota Prius that have gained market share and cultural mindshare but have a distinct aesthetic that makes them easily identifiable as being ecofriendly, then Environmental Marketplace 3.0 represents the coming “invisible eco” evolution which can be characterized by products like the Mercedes-Benz E Class Sedan that will be released in the United States this coming fall and will be equipped with BLUETEC clean-diesel technology. Invisible eco essentially means that, going forward, “eco-friendliness” will be seamlessly embedded in the products and designs we already love, making it much easier and more convenient for all of us lazy environmentalists to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle.
a.k.a. Green: Mick Dalrymple and Jeffrey Frost The latest green entrepreneurs heading for celebrity status are Mick Dalrymple and Jeffery Frost of Scottsdale, Arizona, who are about to create two other green celebrities. Mick and Jeffery discovered that they were both seeking to establish an environmentally safe building materials store and joined up to open a.k.a. Green. Their new 4,300-square-foot showroom in Scottsdale features a range of green products from recycled glass tiles to bamboo to countertops made out of recycled newsprint and currency. Dalrymple parlayed these ventures into another brand, Build It Green, a 13-episode series for PBS, covering such topics as conducting an energy audit on your home and using sustainable, environmentally friendly building products.
Build It Green is being fronted by Charlie Popeck, a general contractor who co-owns and operates the environmental consulting firm Green Ideas, and Jill Burtin, an architect with the award-winning firm Arcturis, The series seems likely to catapult the presenters into national recognition, while the show’s founders are busy building the a.k.a. Green brand one convert at a time in the fastest-growing metropolis in the country.
g-Think asked Mick Dalrymple his views about the eco-building movement and his views on celebrity:
This issue of g-Think is about celebrity. Do you feel the eco-friendly building movement needs a celebrity to launch it to the next level? I think credible celebrities would definitely open the movement up to audiences that otherwise might not be reached for a few more years. However, any celebrity that tries to claim a mantle as the green building superhero adds risk management issues to the movement and to their celebrity. It is easy for detractors to attack anyone for being a hypocrite and not living sustainably because, realistically, our whole society is living far beyond the planet’s means. And Hollywood celebrities tend to live even farther off the scale.
What is truly amazing to me is the breadth of this movement at the grassroots level. I think individuals and businesses and NGOs and local governments realized a while back that the federal government was just not going to take the lead on this and they started taking action individually and collectively at that grassroots level. The Internet has played a huge role in this because anyone who had the capability to go online quickly realized they were not fighting their battle alone. The Internet has enabled global and local information sharing, organizing capacity and moral support.
How widely will Build it Green! be seen around the country? PBS predicts, based on its experiences with This Old House and other home improvement shows, that Build It Green! will be carried by 90% to 95% of PBS's local stations. So, essentially, that translates to coverage of 90% to 95% of the U.S. television audience market.
How big is the market for green building products now, and what’s the potential? According to the U.S. Green Building Council, the total market for green building products and services is $7B, up 37% in the last year. That includes commercial and residential. But a big driver in that market has been the USGBC and its flagship LEED commercial green building rating systems. The importance here is that LEED for Homes won’t even come out until 2007, so the residential/consumer side hasn’t really even been touched… yet. And the National Association of Homebuilders is now taking green building somewhat seriously, so we’re going to see mainstream production builders starting to turn their ships. The market potential is huge, and the opportunity to impact the future of our planet is huge. When the U.S. finally gets to a tipping point on an issue, it tends to move quickly.
Another way to look at it is that building construction and demolition are responsible for more than 136 million tons of landfill waste each year. Think of that as a lot of opportunity for cheap raw materials for creative new products!
Sustainability requires us to change our patterns of thinking: How can a liability become an asset? How can we mimic nature’s strengths, rather than trying to conquer it? Zero-sum thinking needs to be replaced by net-gain thinking. It is a great mental and creative exercise. We desperately need to change things.
