Hopefully, by now, most of you have heard about Anya Hindmarch’s bag project. What I found most amazing of all were these few stats from a recent article in the Times:

Made from polyethylene, a petroleum product, the common plastic bags that stores put our groceries in take as long as 500 years to degrade.

Then, Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags a year, recycling less than 1 percent of them.

Wow. And there is more.

We like the idea of promoting a cloth bag through clever branding, PR and a high-end designer name. Good stuff indeed. Now if we can just remember to bring it along with us to work or wherever we go when we’re not going directly to the shops.

And while we’re on this reusable thread, we’re looking for help with an idea we’ve had recently: launch a new “bottled water” brand that is basically a refillable empty bottle branded as tap water with a clever label and name—something like TAP could be cool. And perhaps the plastic is Natureworks PLA or something that has a biodegradable, biological or technical nutrient story built in to overcome the negative baggage with plastic. The bottle could be filled on purchase but the consumer would be instructed to refill it continually. Since tap water in many places has been shown to be as good or better for our health than bottled water, it seems like a train that today’s conscious consumer could board easily with the right brand personality and some good PR. The sales for the proceeds could go to water projects in the region whose tap water was being used to keep the story local. Or perhaps a percentage could go to a developing country with more serious water problems. Lots of fun and possibility with this campaign — but essentially an empty branded vessel to promote the use of tap water in order to: save the resource, the energy to transport it, the plastics from filling the landfills, and, oh yeah, money. The benefits are enormous.

Drop a line if you want to brainstorm this one with us. And if it’s good enough to steal, we’re willing to open source the idea here and now. Belief in karma, or something.

We were happy to see the latest Cone study — it presents the most compelling evidence to date for the importance of social responsibility as a major (and growing) brand differentiator. In short: the successful brands of the future will be those that do good and proudly tell the world about it.

Cone’s study found that Americans’ expectations of companies are at an unprecedented high — 83% say companies have a responsibility to help support causes. Furthermore, a full 87% of people (up from 65% in 1999) claim that they’d be “likely to switch from one brand to another brand that is about the same in price and quality, if the other brand is associated with a good cause.” And another dramatic recent shift: 72% of employees wish their companies would do more to support a cause or social issue — a 38% increase since Cone’s last survey in 2004.

The numbers are in: Americans are no longer satisfied with business as usual. This continues the story told in Environics’ Millennium poll: 89% of all Americans believe that companies need to go beyond their historical role of making a profit, paying taxes, employing people, and obeying all laws — companies must also set higher ethical standards and help to build a better society. (In fact, even back in 1999, when the Millennium poll was done, a full 35% of Americans advocated for companies prioritizing social goals above financial ones.) As the income gap in the US continues to soar to heights not seen since 1928, people are finally getting fed up with companies that put pure financial gain above all else — at the expense of the numerous environmental and social stakeholders. And as transparency is becoming an important cultural value, people are becoming empowered to vote with their dollars for the companies that actually want to do good in the world.

There’s a cultural paradigm shift afoot, and corporate irresponsibility — one of the many sad side effects of unprincipled capitalism — is no longer acceptable to an increasingly savvy public. Now that mainstream companies — from Whole Foods to Wal-Mart, from Nike to Timberland, are raising the bar by doing the right thing (or taking steps to do so), we can look forward to a new era of healthy competition — except this time, it’ll be about who can be the most socially responsible and get the word out most effectively.

Recently surfing the Treehugger site and couldn’t help but notice the two square banner ads over on the upper right hand side of the screen. One on top of the other and so close they were almost linked, I couldn’t help but see the serendipity of the moment. On the top was the Patagonia ad, which was static and displayed just their logo and nothing else. On the bottom, flashing between various frames pitching an organic cotton tee shirt promotion and showing models wearing the product, was the new apparel company NAU.

Of course those of you who are familiar with NAU know that there are quite a few Patagonia alums that jumped ship to join the nascent ranks of this cool new company that dedicates itself to changing paradigms in the outdoor industry. So there’s that.

But what struck me were the different approaches to their ads. They were directly “on brand” and, in fact, not surprising at all.

First, that they both were pitching to Treehugger readers was no surprise–although, I do find it interesting that NAU is doing more advertising recently when I had heard from one high level NAU executive a distinct aversion towards advertising. (A necessary evil, I suppose, when you are launching a socially responsible apparel brand that needs to sell product in a crowded category, which in itself, is taking on many shades of green.)

Mainly, I smiled just thinking about the two different brands. One the one hand, Patagonia is the stand sure, no frills, confident, and unwavering original. On the other hand, their new competitor is the bright, shiny, new kid on the block with flashing animated ads, promotional offers, and the need to stand out.

Patagonia is relying on its logo to carry the day, feeling confident in the established recognition and emotional connection that its logomark carries, while NAU is just trying to get our attention. NAU laid a solid groundwork coming out of the gate earlier in the year with a well financed public relations push and a cool online social community strategy, but in the end, a brand isn’t created overnight and NAU knows this.

It will be interesting to watch these two brands over the next two years, as they each go after the same evolving mainstream consumer (beyond Patagonia’s Core consumer) who is looking for social responsibility in the brand they display on the streets and trails.

There’s a growing cultural divide in suburbia, and it speaks volumes about the real-life implications of being a conscious consumer. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal describes the problem: now that pesticides and herbicides have been strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease and cancer, will Americans be willing to give up their preternaturally green and weedless lawns? Natural lawn care is still a tiny segment of the $24 billion US lawn and garden market, but as with organic food, it’s been growing at double-digit rates for the last five years. The interesting thing about the lawn issue (as opposed to organic food) is that it’s got a second-hand smoke quality to it — people are not only concerned about their own lawns, but about their neighbors’. Kids and pets run freely in suburbia, and conscious consumers — ever-vigilant about controlling what goes into their families’ bodies — would like to ban toxic lawn chemicals outright. As progressive communities across the US are enacting local laws or watchdog committees to do just this, an odd culture clash emerges: some people are horrified by the thought of their kids absorbing toxic chemicals from their neighbors’ lawns, and others are equally horrified by the thought of their lawns being corrupted by weeds from their neighbors’ (more natural) lawns.

As green moves further into the mainstream, we predict that the lawn issue will become a touchstone for issues of health and personal sacrifice related to going green. Americans love their lawns, and they’re not necessarily ready to question their lawn habits, or spend the time and money necessary to switch over to natural lawn care. But this is one green issue that may be forced upon people before they’re ready to make the switch, and it’ll be interesting to see how the turf wars play out.

Meanwhile, a modest proposal.

A Sunday New York Times article titled Buying into the Green Movement would seem to suggest that the Green Movement won’t serve us in the end with the approach we are taking. That it’s not enough. And that we are going about it all wrong. In fact, it reminds us suspiciously of the environmental movement before Death of Environmentalism, when it was de rigueur to criticize instead of empower and encourage. The article and its band of un-merry critics, including Alex Steffen of World Changing, Chip Giller of Grist.org, Paul Hawken and Michael Ableman, argue that we need to do more than buy green and incur no sacrifice. They suggest that it’s not enough to buy green because it feels good, and that we need to feel some pain and understand the implications of our intent. We can think of three points to make.

First, where did they get the idea that there was even enough of a movement into the mainstream of green to presume that a significant proportion of people could actually differentiate between the feel good of green versus the hard work required of green? The numbers just aren’t there in any shape. Just because the cover of every magazine has announced the green wave does not mean that mainstream America has arrived. (Haven’t we learned yet not to trust the media?) The truth is that yes, it is on a lot of people’s radar, but egg’s research indicates that while there has been a jump in Core Green Advocates (those for whom altruism speaks as loud or louder than self-interest), it still remains low at less than 20% of the population. The rest is sniffing around green just trying to understand whether it’s changed much since the 60’s and whether they can trust it.

Second, our primary research at egg on the conscious consumer, synthesized with all of the current secondary data, including Hartman’s recent very good study, indicates strongly that most conscious consumers enter into green when triggered by something that makes them aware of issues of concern surrounding their personal, then social, and finally, environmental health — in this order. Once on this “path to sustainability” consumers become gradually more and more aware of the issues in their entirety, as well as in their interconnectedness. All of which suggests that it is no quick and fast path at all, but rather one that average people will ease into and have to become comfortable with in their own time and pace. If the movement or anything about green bites back at them, they are likely to turn against it. While green is enjoying a soft attractive luster and requires little sacrifice at this point, it nonetheless allows for some traction, which we desperately need.

Our understanding at egg also indicates that people crave information, as they admittedly are unfamiliar enough with the issues. (While we may all know the meaning of carbon offsets, food miles, and ecological footprint, the vast majority of Americans do not.) So the theory might go, as we gain their trust, we can pull them in ever so gradually with informative communications that doesn’t preach but rather raises awareness, in a non-condescending manner.

Third, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The very fact that we are talking about green at all is a great step forward. (Four years ago, when we started egg, many thought we were bonkers.) So, now that we’ve moved from bleeding edge to cutting edge, please let’s try and get this to the dull edge. Having green become a cost of entry would be a huge success. Why criticize the movement now with windpower in the sails, just because the public isn’t informed enough to know that they supposedly need to do more, faster, with more intent, purpose and gravity–and dare we say it, sacrifice. Let’s encourage these people, not find fault. The greens have long been known for their death-of-the-party moods and holier-than-thou sermons. And where did it get them? To the well earned and positively received, Death of Environmentalism, which killed the movement and then resuscitated it from the grave, helping get us in part to the point where we’re even having this conversation today. (So perhaps they’re onto something after all.)

So thank you Michael Shellenberger, who co-penned the article and who is a partner at American Environics, a market research firm in Oakland, Calif. And nota bene the close of the article where Mr. Shellenburger points out how recent focus groups of green consumers indicated their very realistic take on the whole green thing. “We didn’t find that people felt that their consumption gave them a pass, so to speak,” Mr. Shellenberger said. “They knew what they were doing wasn’t going to deal with the problems, and these little consumer things won’t add up. But they do it as a practice of mindfulness. They didn’t see it as antithetical to political action. Folks who were engaged in these green practices were actually becoming more committed to more transformative political action on global warming.”

C’mon guys. Give green a chance.