This past week, I read an interesting article about a company by the name of Vestas, that specializes in wind turbines. The article talked about how they practice sustainability marketing because they aim at maintaining long-lasting relationships with both its customers and the natural environment. Whereas green marketing tends to centralizes around the idea of solving environmental problems and the reduction of the environmental burden.

The NY Times created an interesting news article about a group of people from Maine whom consisted of students and non-students that adventured over to Denmark to check out their Sustainability practices. The Island called Samsø has been known to have great success when it comes to energy self sufficiency using renewable sources. “In 2007, Samsø became 100-percent renewably powered and carbon negative through a combination of home efficiency and conversions to biomass, solar, and wind power.”

When these people first got to Samsø they were expecting some technical story around how they become so successful, but what they came to realize is that their success was because of their people.

Søren Hermansen owes a lot of credit for Samsø’s success. Hermansen had to persuade a somewhat-resistant agricultural community to take charge of their energy future. As you may know, persuading a resistant individual that sustainability marketing is the way to go, can be quite difficult.

“They used proven technology (now more than a decade old) and garnered widespread support by using a transparent and personal approach. They always began with the social, cultural, and economic returns of the project, rather than focusing solely on environmental implications that for some are less tangible.” BINGO, Samsø knows what they are doing. They are really flexing their sustainability marketing muscle and leaving a positive impact on our world.

While I was reading this article, I thought to myself, “That would be really cool if our professor took us to Samsø. It would be a great learning experience and an eye-opening opportunity”. ***Cough Mrs. Wilhelm Cough***

All in all, this was a very interesting article and makes you wonder what a difference you can make on the world if you approach businesses with a sustainability marketing approach instead of solely a green marketing approach. Until next time…