surfrider foundation: catch of the day.

This is smart. Super smart. It’s getting more and more rare to see an actual, honest to goodness guerilla campaign that involves both a surprise and an insight tied together with a purpose. Slapping decals on the hand-rests of escalators just isn’t enough anymore.

To bring some attention to ocean pollution and just how disgusting it really is,  Surfrider Foundation teamed up with Satchi & Satchi LA to create “Catch of the Day.” Simply and brilliantly, they collected actual trash from beaches around the U.S., packaged it like food, and left it on display at farmer’s markets. It’s site-specific, appropriate, impacting, meaningful, shocking, and an actual consumer insight into the very act they’re in the middle of. Someone about to buy fish from the same ocean as the trash in their hands can’t help but be at least a little more enlightened as to how pollution isn’t someone else’s problem.

Condom Strips – Newport Beach, CA

Butts-n-Bits – Venice Beach, CA

Plastic Surprise – Galveston Beach, TX

Styrofoam Bites – Long Beach, CA

Aerosol Valu-Pack – South Padre Beach, TX

Thanks to Jessica at Thoughts Punctuated for the tip.

quercus: total warming.

Holy shit. I feel riddled with guilt after watching this. This is one of the best environmental-awareness pieces I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I need to go recycle something now.  Heartbreakingly lovely animation from Seagulls Fly.

(Agency: McCann Erickson Portugal. Director: FlavioMac. Production: Seagulls Fly.)

Via Fubiz™

greg lynn: recycled toy furniture.

While trolling the blogs today I found these re-used toy tables on Dezeen. Designed by California-based architect Greg Lynn, his series of recycled toy furniture won Golden Lion for the Best Installation Project in the International Exhibition at the Vienna Architecture Biennale.

While it’s pretty clear these aren’t recycled toys, I still think this works beautifully as a piece, almost more as an installation. And the idea is still true – you could use recycled toys in this fashion. I guess the line is a little grey, but I don’t care. They look hot. They’re big and shiny and plastic and colourful and have been melted together in a little toy-pyre and made into table. I likes.

irena salina: flow.

I stopped buying bottled water about 9 months ago, after discovering a website called Tappening. Luckily for me, I live in a city, Toronto, and a country, Canada, with an abundance of water and quality control infrastructure to keep it clean and safe. Not everyone is in the same boat.

In her documentary film “Flow”, director Irena Salina looks into the evils of the bottled water industry and the global water crisis. It’s playing the festival circuit right now, and hopefully will be shown in more cities towards the end of the year. I can’t wait to see it.

wwf canada: “zero carbon”.

Smart. So so smart. This definitely goes down into the “wish I had thought of that” file. And it’s Canadian to boot.

Taking the concept of recycling into a more virtual realm, WWF Canada’s latest spot, “Zero Carbon”, is “the world’s first zero-carbon TV ad”. It’s made up of recycled video clips (some as old as 60 years), was created during virtual collaboration sessions, and for any in-person meetings the people behind it took public transit to reach each other. Just to make sure nothing was missed, environmental consulting engineer Steve Lapp even did an emissions audit on it’s production. and carbon off-sets were bought for any energy that was used.

The icing on this cake is the old skool appearance of some vintage Shelley Long at 0:22…

(Agency: DraftFCB Canada.)

Via Stimulant

adidas grün: “guerilla gardeners”.

I’ll spare you my usual brand-cult diatribe about how I worship the ground Adidas walks on…oh shit, too late. So Adidas is the king. Once again, they go beyond merely creating and marketing a product to integrating it into a lifestyle and entertaining you while they demonstrate it.

Adidas Original’s new Grün line (German for “green”, dontcha know…) is their foray into the environmentally aware / sustainably created game. Sure, there are the old standbys like making the rubber soles from recycled tires, but Adidas is also investing research into creating shoes and clothing out of renewable, eco-friendly resources like bamboo. We all know that recycling is good, but reducing the amount of what needs to be recycled in the first place is where the future of the planet lies, and Adidas is taking steps to make that happen.

Knowing that environmentalism is a mind-set, not just a selling point, their Grün campaign has kicked off with “Guerilla Gardening”. For all intents and purposes, it’s graffiti with plants. The aim is to take a neglected, off limits urban space and turn it into a thing of beauty – be it with spray paint or with grass. Check out the “seed bombs”…

The line divides into three facets: “Made From” features track suits and apparel made from sustainably grown bamboo, cotton, crepe rubber, hemp, and rice husks.

All of the clothing in the “Reground” range is fully biodegradeable – right down to the zippers and buttons. One of the shirts in the Women’s “Reground” collection is made from from a mix of organic soybean and cotton fibres, and the neckline is inlaid with sunflower seeds.

Finally, everything in the “Recycled” line is exactly what it says – shoes and apparel made from 100% recycled plastic soda bottles, rubber, and others materials that otherwise would have sat in a landfill for eternity.

To prove it’s point, Adidas has taken the organic push and put it into more traditional marketing channels – like these green billboards made mostly from living plants and flowers:

Shoe pics via Sneaker Freaker

mtv switch: “3650”.

MTV’s Public Service Announcements (PSAs) are always beyond kick ass. They find the ideal blend of visual style, music, genuine emotion, and entertainment that all companies should aspire to when trying to hit home with the much sought after 16-30s. From their mind-blowing (literally) HIV/AIDS awareness ad “Shot” to the shocking realism and quiet truth of MTV Think’s “Subway” and “Family Room”, they consistently get it bang on. The mix of message, meaning, and art is unstoppable.

This spot, directed by duo Ubik for MTV’s environmental awareness campaign – MTV Switch – is pure win. The animation is sharp and eye-catching, and rather than ramming some bombastic message into our faces it’s just simple and lovely and allows us to make its emotional feeling our own emotional feeling. This is an ad you can embrace. Love love love it. Ubik won “Best Animation” at the BTAA Craft Awards for this and were just nominated for “Best Film and TV Graphics” at the British Animation Awards. They deserve it big time.

The YouTube version is right here, but to truly get the nuanced quality of the animation, I suggest watching the high-res version here.

(Agency: Ogilvy & Mather)

While you’re at it, check out these equally awesome PSAs from MTV Switch.

Via The Denver Egotist via Motionographer

honda: “plant this letter”.

Green is the new Ad. As part of it’s new drive to raise the green-cred on it’s lawn and garden vehicles, Honda sent out a direct mail letter that literally grows. Once soaked in water and planted in soil, the seeds inside the paper itself grow into wildflowers. Though one could fairly easily argue the environmental implications of a direct mail letter (the creation of more paper, regardless of it’s biodegradability or green purpose, uses chemicals and expends energy… I’m just sayin’) the romantic in me loves the beautiful idea of this letter:

Brain-stormed by London, UK agency Inferno and copywritten by Jaime Diskin, they really seem to have walked their talk on this one: the envelope and paper were 100% recycled and acid free and the inks were green-friendly as well.

There’s a certain green simplicity going on here that I really love. Keep in mind this isn’t the first time something like this had been done; earlier this year Bogle Bartle Hegarty Asia created plantable tags for Levi’s Eco Jeans (made from 100% organic cotton) that had the whole paper-with-wildflower-seeds thing going on. Still, an idea this cool deserves to be re-envisioned. Plus, the concept of viable seeds embedded in paper existed before either of these campaigns and neither of these agencies invented it, so I think it’s fair game to find new ways to use such an eye-catching concept.

nike trash talk.

Promoted as the brainchild of Nike star endorser and big time environmentalist Steve Nash, last month Nike released the Trash Talk – the first high-end running shoe made not just out of environmentally friendly first-run materials, but literally out of scraps that would otherwise have been tossed.

Check out the details on exactly what Nike is (and isn’t) doing to walk their trash talk, as well as read the various soap-boxing of environmentalists claiming to see right through this, at the must-read Treehugger.

svalbard global seed vault.

It’s been evident to me for quite some time now that Scandinavia will eventually save the world from a self-imposed doom. For proof, look no further than the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Officially up and running as of February 26, 2008, the vault is built into the permafrost of Spitsbergen Island in the very remote arctic Svalbard Archipelago (we’re talking only 1,120 kilometres from the North Pole remote… like, Santa might work there in the off-season remote…). Even cooler (literally), the vault sits deep inside a 120-metre long reinforced concrete tunnel built into the side of a sandstone mountain, behind two solid steel doors, and remote-controlled by a manned-outpost in Sweden. This shit is on lock down.

You KNOW that Dr. Claw’s secret lair is underneath this thing. But wait! It gets better…

As it’s name implies, the vault can hold up to 2 billion seeds from 4.5 million species from around the world. At the opening ceremony last week, 100 million seeds were placed inside. The seeds are kept in foil packets at -18˚ Celsisus and if undisturbed are expected to be usable for thousand of years. Called a “frozen garden of Eden” by European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, it’s mission is to preserve crop supplies and secure biological diversity. Though most people, myself included, like to think that the seed vault will help us grow bamboo and spelt and other protein-rich grains as we slowly re-populate the planet following some sort of apocalypse, it’s really more likely that it will supply replacement seeds when other gene banks around the world have equipment failures, fires, natural disasters… you know, boring stuff that doesn’t involve a 1000 foot tidal wave rushing towards the Eastern seaboard at the speed of sound.

They’ve covered all their bases with this one. The location was chosen because of it’s almost total lack of tectonic movement and the permafrost conditions pretty much create the ideal refrigerator. The location, 130 metres above sea level, will not flood even if the polar ice-caps melt. All of the seeds are organic and GMO free (despite the fact that it’s just smart, genetically modified seeds are basically sterile… another reason why we shouldn’t be messing with nature) and even if the air-conditioning system fails, now that the vault has reached it’s ideal frozen temperature, it’s estimated it would take 200 years before the temperature would rise enough to harm the seeds.

Though most of the building costs were fronted by the government of Norway, a lot of eyebrows have been raised by some of the other groups with a financial interest in the vault, including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and US agri-business giant DuPont. Though you could argue that an agricultural company has an inherent interest to preserve seeds, this big-business connection has conspiracy theorists all over the net going off their rockers. The Zeitgeisters are all pretty sure Bill Gates is going to stock all the seeds in the world, poison the rest, and then enslave all of humankind into some kind of nutritional feudal state. If you want to read a more balanced view on the possible evils behind the whole thing, check out this post at the Rasta Seed Project.