Don Carli, the sustainability advocate and the subject of a recent post at PrintCEO.com, continues to draw attention to his message about environmental responsibility for industries that produce or use print. On June 14 in New York City, he led a panel discussion sponsored by his organization, the Institute for Sustainable Communications, for a new coalition called the Sustainable Advertising Partnership. At that event, an audience of more than 100 printers, publishers, suppliers, and ad agency executives heard him explain why sustainability has become a necessary and potentially rewarding business strategy for print-dependent media. Carli was next heard from in a June 22 interview for National Public Radio's Morning Edition, in which he fielded questions from NPR's Renee Montagne. The audio clip of that conversation is available here. (Note to Mac users: you may need to download the latest version of RealPlayer to listen to the file; a link is provided at the NPR site.)
In the interview, Carli says that sustainability – the corporate commitment to recycling, control of greenhouse gas emissions, reduced energy use, and similar practices – has advanced from being a fringe idea on "the margins of marketing" to a stage where it is now recognized as "the central focus of marketing communications and advertising." Sustainability is good for business, but Carli has a warning for those who would greenwash unacceptable behavior with insincere displays of environmental activism. Savvy consumers, he says, won't be fooled: "We live in a world that is one mouse-click away from exposure.""
