News Blog

This post was updated at 11:55 a.m. PDT to better describe the scope of TCG's work. It was also updated at 12:52 p.m. PDT with the corrected spelling on Clare Munn's name. We also corrected the photo credit and Sandhu Gurkirpal's title, both of which had been provided incorrectly by a company representative.

The Communication Group, a San Francisco-based marketing firm, isn't just about touting its clients' environmental friendliness. It's about showing them how to be more environmentally friendly.

The firm, also known as TCG, is helping corporations take their first green steps through what it calls its Green Prepare program, a 12-step process for companies to become greener. The program was the brainchild of TCG Chief Executive Clare Munn, who had run a similar type of eco-labeling program for companies in Zimbabwe before the country's economy collapsed. After starting TCG and going through the tedious green certification process, she realized that there might be a market for eco-labeling here, too.

In the first stage of the Green Prepare program, a TCG consultant does a walk-through of a client's office or workplace and comes up with 12 steps for sparing the environment. The steps might include simple fixes like, for offices, making sure printers are set on double-sided printing and using recycled paper, and that there's a cartridge toner/battery recycling system in place. Other steps might be using filters on water taps for getting drinking water rather than buying water in plastic bottles, or using energy-efficient light bulbs. Nothing revolutionary, but still things that might be neglected in many workplaces.

When the company has completed 6 of the 12 steps, it signs TCG's "Blue Step Promise" to strive to complete the rest and is awarded a certificate and logo in return that the company can then display.

The idea is that the Green Prepare program might also serve as the first step for corporations that want to become green-certified through other regional programs, Munn said.

Livermore, Calif.-based skincare product company GS Cosmeceutical, which used TCG to develop its Web site, recently got involved in the Green Prepare program.

"It has been an eye-opener," said Sandhu Gurkirpal, the company's chief operating officer. He became more aware, for example, that computers should be disposed of via certified green network recyclers.

Gurkirpal is also considering changing the company's cleaning process for the pots used in making its skin care products. Today the pots are boiled, but they might as well be high-pressure steamed, he said, which could save both water and energy.

GS Cosmeceutical has also become a supporting member of OASIS, or the Organic and Sustainable Industry Standards, which helps determine when products can be called organic. Gurkipal emphasized that the company's recent efforts are about more than image and helping the environment. "We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think we could save money."

The next step for him is to figure out what TCG calls the company's "green story"--something a company already does for the environment that can be used as part of its overall communications strategy. Maybe it's using energy from renewable sources or furniture from recycled material, or maybe it's creating an incentive program that encourages employees to identify practices that aren't environmentally sound.

While all the Green Prepare services up to this point are free, TCG will charge for creating and communicating the green stories. These, however, are not compulsory to create.

Sure, recycled paper is nice, but what about feeding it through a recycled printer?

Not as in refurbished and resold, but a new Deskjet that is composed of 83 percent recycled plastic. Hewlett-Packard is introducing a new green-focused label for some of its peripherals, and one of the first items under that label is the aforementioned D2545 printer.

HP hopes to tempt the environmentally conscious as well as those looking for a bargain with the D2545, which retails for $45. Even the ink cartridges it uses are made of recycled plastic resins.

The printer is one of several products that will fall under the HP Eco Highlights label. So far it also includes three LaserJet printers (P4015x, P4515x, and P4515xm models). HP says the label will list the environmental attributes of the product, and will eventually encompass all products the company offers.

HP recycles tons of dead tech products every year, so it makes sense that it's able to make products from the materials it recycles. So while consumers are becoming much more aware of the environmental impact of the products we use, and even businesses are beginning to see the boon that green policies are to their bottom lines, why not make this standard instead of an outlier?

HP responded that by 2010,100 percent of its Deskjet printers will contain some recycled materials, and will increase by three times the number of inkjet printers made from recycled materials.

If HP can do this with printers, why not make their PCs and other products from recycled materials too?

They wouldn't be the first to make eco-conscious PC casings. Fujitsu has been experimenting with corn-based resins in some of the laptops it is selling, and for the same price as the non-corn-based models.

SAN MATEO, Calif.--Catering to a rising tide of socially-conscious shoppers, eBay this summer plans to help publicly launch WorldofGood.com, a marketplace for buying fair-trade products, according to Robert Chatwani, eBay's general manager of the project.

eBay, in partnership with a separate fair-trade company World of Good Inc., has already built a community site for people interested in goods that are made of recycled materials or produced by fairly treated workers, for example. But the two organizations plan to open a shopping site that will cater to these "social change consumers," Chatwani said here Tuesday at the Dow Jones Environment Conference.

That segment of shopper spends as much as $45 billion on green products annually, he estimated.

"Those people aren't on eBay. We believe only between 7 and 12 percent of these social change consumers are eBay users now ... so this could be accretive to the business," Chatwani said on a panel at the two-day conference.

Chatwani helped conceive of the idea for the WorldofGood.com marketplace three years ago while traveling to India with fellow eBay employees. There, they found some sustainably made artisan products they believed would sell online, and could give some money back to the creator. They tested the idea and it worked. Bay teamed up with World of Good, a group designed to alleviate poverty in third worlds by helping sell local artists' goods globally.

Chatwani said WorldofGood.com is only one project inside eBay that's focused on social change. Historically, eBay has been what he called a low-carbon company, built with more efficient online practices and an emphasis on technologies that are good for the world. But eBay also operates explicitly more charitable projects.

Those include MicroPlace, a micro-finance site for people to invest in entrepreneurs in the developing world. It also runs eBay Giving Works, a shopping site that lets buyers and sellers donate a percentage of sales to a charity. Chatwani said that that site has raised more than $120 million for charities.

For its part, WorldofGood.com will focus on giving people more information about products--where they come from, how they're made, and how they effect the environment, Chatwani said.

"Our challenge is not so much about getting people to spend more. It's about introducing alternative forms of consumption," he said.

MENLO PARK, Calif.--The practice of playing up a company's green policies for show was the new black for the past few years. But now actually making and selling green products is what's hot because of its potential to put a business in the black.

At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Emerging Technologies Summit held here in Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, business consultants, entrepreneurs, and representatives of some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world discussed the new wave of innovation in a rapidly commoditizing industry. It basically comes down to two words: energy efficiency.

And the reason it's important? Because it can make a product stand out. And if consumers can see a real benefit to using products that are environmentally conscious, they'll buy it. And that's potential profit for vendors and manufacturers.

"Before it was something (consumer electronics companies) just said to make themselves look good. Now it's a business imperative," said George Bailey, general manager of IBM Microelectronics.

That's because flashy, visible new breakthroughs in technology in the CE space aren't providing the same profitable bump for as long as it used to. High-definition televisions are a prime example.

"TV manufacturers are troubled in terms of profit," said Bailey. "They're asking, 'How can I add value, recapture profit?' Before it was larger format LCD screen. If yours was bigger you'd make more money. Now we know that's not true."

When the big TV manufacturers come to his division of IBM he says they are all looking for greener, more energy-efficient chips that will make their TVs consume less power because that's a way they can differentiate their product from others on the shelf. New technologies include High-K Metal Gate chips that IBM is working on that "leak" less power and can power smaller devices for longer.

But green-friendly products can be more expensive, which can deter certain types of consumers. A representative from Samsung in the audience said the company has yet to see that consumers are willing to pay for products just because they are "green."

That's why you have to give them a real benefit, not an imagined one that makes them feel good, said Steve Westly, who runs the clean tech venture capital firm The Westly Group.

"You have to give customers a real value proposition. A 'green' truck that gets 16 miles per gallon? Consumers will see through that," he said. A green product "has to have an added benefit."

Even if energy efficiency doesn't attract consumers in the numbers that these manufacturers and investors hope, businesses will be forced to green their products one way or another, Westly said.

"You'll see (environmental standards) dialed up in a government-mandated way," he said. "Government regulations and mandates are only going to increase. Not just here, but globally."

Wind energy company Noble Environmental Power has filed to raise as much as $375 million in an initial public offering, according to a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission that was filed Thursday.

The Connecticut-based company, which plans to list its shares with the Nasdaq under the symbol "NEPI," operates in the booming wind power market. But the company will still have to brave a weak IPO market.

The 4-year-old Noble runs wind parks in New York state that generate about 282 megawatts of electricity; and later this year, it plans to open added parks in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maine, and Texas. Noble is seeing demand for wind power in the Northeast partly because of renewable energy mandates in the area. But the wind-power industry is hampered by a shortage of wind turbines.

Noble plans to use the money from the IPO to develop its business, invest in new technologies, and ink future turbine supply agreements. Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Securities, and Credit Suisse Securities, are underwriting the IPO.

Updated 2:05 p.m. PT: Dell PR provided us with a photo.

How apropos: On Earth Day, a PC company says it's going to make a greener PC.

We already know Dell wants to be the greenest company on the planet, or in the solar system, or something. So as part of his remarks to the Fortune Brainstorm: Green conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Chief Executive Michael Dell previewed a desktop PC aimed at consumers.

The PC will be 81 percent smaller and will use 70 percent less energy than one of Dell's mini-tower desktops. And the packaging will be totally recycled. Though there's no name for the PC and no pictures (a Dell representative insisted they didn't just come up with the idea on the flight from Austin to LAX, and in fact have been working on it for "a while") the desktop is supposed to be available by the end of the year.

Dell is targeting consumers first with this energy-efficient desktop, which is notable since the company normally rolls out green initiatives on business machines first.

Click here for more Earth Day tech news.

There are many ways to slice--or draw--an apple, but the Cupertino, Calif., computer maker is once again claiming right to its own methodology.

Just as we were enjoying a reprieve from Apple trademark cases, a new one arose this week with the company challenging New York City's trademark application for a logo it's using in a new green living campaign.

The Big Apple's GreeNYC campaign features an emblem--an apple with a stalk and leaf--that has started to appear on city bus shelters, hybrid cabs, and even Whole Foods shopping bags, according to a story first reported by Wired.

Apple says the emblem resembles its own signature logo, and will thus confuse people and "seriously injure the reputation which (Apple) has established for its goods and services," according to the January filing with the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board obtained by Wired (PDF).

New York, in response, says the claim is without merit and that Apple is asking for overly broad protection, according to news reports. A spokeswoman for the city's marketing arm said the logo was "meant to invoke thoughts of upstate New York's bucolic rural areas, where apple orchards once delivered much of the nation's crop," according to the Associated Press. She added that the idea came from the city's Big Apple nickname.

The city, however, has never obtained trademarks related to "The Big Apple" phrase, according to the AP. But with Apple's three Manhattan retail stores and its trademark history, maybe the time is ripe for the city to do so.

Bamboo buyer beware, says Kelly LaPlante.

"This is one of the biggest areas for greenwashing," she told me during a tour of a suite she redesigned on behalf of Lexus at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. (As part of a marketing campaign, Lexus is sprucing up hotel suites in San Francisco and Washington, D.C, The Fairmont one costs $869 a night, but you get to use a Lexus hybrid V8 while you're there.)

A lot of companies offer bamboo flooring and panel so they can sell a green product, but many of them also use toxic adhesives and other chemicals that take away the advantages of using bamboo. Bamboo grows fast and needs little fertilizer, making it a relatively green building product.

Some also grow it in distant places and truck it in, eliminating further environmental advantages. You've got to dig into the suppliers to figure out if you're buying green. Later this year, she will set up a site that rates various building suppliers on how green they really are. It should be good reading.

Other remodeling tips from LaPlante:

• Recycle as much as possible. She recently remodeled three cottages in Venice, Calif. They reused drywall and so much material that they didn't even need a dumpster out front. The less stuff that ends up in the land fill, the better.

"When you demolish something, are you demolishing or carefully removing," she said.

That footstool/table you see in the picture is an example of recycling. It's made out of leather found in old Lexuses.

• Green is not necessarily a statement. You can consciously pick green materials, but it doesn't have to be a theme. In fact, self-conscious green will likely look dated in the future.

"We try to make things that don't look like green design," she said.

Updated 6:20 AM PDT to reflect the official announcement from SpiralFrog.

On its face, the signing of a deal with Warner/Chappell Music, the publishing arm of music label Warner Music Group, would appear to be a breakthrough for SpiralFrog.

Warner Music is one of the top four record companies. And SpiralFrog, which last week claimed the position of third-largest music download site on the Web, has toiled for five years to convince the major labels about the soundness of its ad-supported business model. But so far, SpiralFrog has signed a deal for full rights to offer music with just one of them: Universal Music Group.

What's sad about the Warner/Chappell licensing deal, which SpiralFrog announced Monday, is that the troubled music service may be years away from actually featuring music from James Blunt, Green Day, Linkin Park, or any other Warner Music artist. That's because in addition to gaining the music's publishing rights, SpiralFrog must also acquire the recording rights in order to offer the music.

SpiralFrog cut a deal with EMI's publishing unit 18 months ago, for example, but you still won't find any of EMI's songs on the site. No recording rights.

If you're actually looking for substance from SpiralFrog, you're missing the point. What makes this company so fascinating to watch is how it continues to deliver more pretense than substance. The latest example came Friday when Joe Mohen, SpiralFrog's founder and chairman, came to San Francisco and met with me. I was led to believe that we were meeting to discuss the company's upcoming earnings report.

"Shouldn't the only two metrics that matter from SpiralFrog be the number of downloaded free songs, and the amount they have paid the labels? How is the number of free signups a meaningful measure of any success?"

--David Pakman, eMusic CEO

SpiralFrog, which had previously reported earnings, was supposed to report them this week for the quarter that ended December 31. Music fans, journalists, and insiders were finally going to get a peek at how the service, which launched in September, was faring during its first full quarter in business. In 2006, SpiralFrog drew wide press coverage after announcing that it planned to compete with illegal file sharing by giving away ad-supported downloads. The business model was experimental and, at the time, the record labels appeared desperate to find a legal alternative to piracy.

During my meeting with Mohen, no sooner had we sat down then SpiralFrog's public relations people sheepishly told me that the company was filing a Form 15 with the Securities and Exchange Commission later that day. SpiralFrog would no longer be reporting them publicly.

It's important to note that SpiralFrog is not a public company. Its shares do not trade on any exchange. An unusual arrangement with some early investors required the New York-based company to publicly report. Turns out new investors aren't as fussy about public disclosure, and the board decided to do away with the practice. According to Mohen, some of the company's partners also didn't like SpiralFrog revealing details of its business model to the public.

What this means is that Mohen no longer has to reveal his company's progress--or lack thereof--since reporting a dismal third quarter. For the quarter that ended September 30, SpiralFrog posted a loss of $3.4 million on revenue of just $20,400.

SpiralFrog's "silly" claim
So the public doesn't get any insight into SpiralFrog's business model. What the company offered instead were highly questionable claims. Last week, SpiralFrog announced that it had topped 850,000 registered users, making it the third-largest music download site on the Web behind iTunes and RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service.

"What about Amazon and eMusic?" I asked Mohen.

"We have more registered users than eMusic," he responded. He added that Amazon doesn't count because it's a store. SpiralFrog is an ad-supported service where consumers don't buy anything. I didn't bother pointing out that iTunes is also a store. It was obvious SpiralFrog's carefully tailored triumph could come apart all too easily.

"This claim is silly," David Pakman, eMusic's CEO, said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "(SpiralFrog is) a free ad-supported service, right? It costs nothing to sign up, right? You simply put in a username and password, no credit card required, right? And they only have 850,000 signups? We have well more than 400,000 paying subscribers. Those are people who have enrolled in a pay service with a valid credit card and are being billed. Those people have paid for and downloaded almost 200 million songs."

Pakman continued: "Shouldn't the only two metrics that matter from SpiralFrog be the number of downloaded free songs, and the amount they have paid the labels? How is the number of free sign-ups a meaningful measure of any success?"

A check of Alexa.com, which measures Web traffic, shows eMusic far outpacing SpiralFrog in rank, reach, and pageviews.

As for Pakman's question about what the important metrics are for judging SpiralFrog's success, it doesn't matter. The company isn't talking about them...anymore.