Rising Tide of 'Green'

In one TV commercial, Waste Management touts its "Think Green" campaign with a truck, as sparkling clean as a showroom car, wheeling down a country road flanked by a lush forest. In another, General Electric features a dancing elephant in a rain forest to illustrate its "Ecomagination" campaign.

In print advertisements, ExxonMobil plugs its role in developing engine and fuel systems "that could improve fuel economy by 30 percent while significantly reducing emissions," and Lexus promotes a hybrid motor that provides "more power with 70 percent fewer smog-forming emissions."

Closer to home, in press releases, Delta Air Lines pledges to soon plant trees on behalf of any passenger willing to pay extra for tickets. Coca-Cola promises a drop of energy and water consumption by 23 percent and 15 percent, respectively, at its headquarters.

All of this eco-talk getting you hungry? At Ted's Montana Grill, "we try very hard to preserve the environment." By the way, entrees come "with a side order of good conscience ... Eat great. Do good."

Between the commercials and alongside the ads are plentiful news stories, often fed to media by increasingly eco-minded public relations agencies, about companies' environmentally friendly measures.

What in the name of Rachel Carson, the godmother of U.S. environmentalism, has prompted companies to portray themselves as save-the-planet souls? Twenty years after Gordon Gekko infamously proclaimed "greed is good" in the movie "Wall Street," here's the current mantra in marketing circles: Green is good.

Companies are colorizing themselves in a leafy hue, creating buzzwords with an "eco" prefix and leaping onto the bandwagon --- powered, of course, by alternative fuel.

"The green wave has become unavoidable," says Eric Biel, managing director of corporate responsibility with the public relations outfit Burson-Marsteller. "The most striking single thing [in PR] is the rapid growth in which companies are positioning or repositioning their environmentalism."

Atlanta-based Novelis bills itself as the world's largest supplier of rolled aluminum, an industry that hardly endears itself to greenies. Novelis wished to spread the word that it recycled 24 billion discarded beverage cans last year, 45 percent of all those collected in North America.

"The volume has been turned up lately on the communications," says Paul Dusseault of the PR outfit Fleishman-Hilliard, who handles the Novelis account. His role is to personalize numbers by "telling stories" that might attract media coverage.

The trend is motored by a convergence of forces, from A (altruism) to Z (zealous environmentalists arm-twisting companies). Against the once-prevailing assumption, going green can bring in more greenbacks --- greater profits.

Surveys indicate that 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans consider themselves environmentalists, according to Pam Ellen, associate professor of marketing at Georgia State University. Consumers can be lured to businesses that take easily understood actions, such as the high-end California restaurants that no longer ship in bottled water but carbonate it from the tap. Or Home Depot slapping green labels on designated items in its stores.

Pro-active businesses can make consumers "feel better about themselves," Ellen says. "It is not a risk for a company to support environmentalism."