PRINT AN AD, PLANT BAMBOO: Graydon Carter’s original “green issue” idea is sprouting up all over the place. magazine such as Town & Country, Domino and Elle (which, like Vanity Fair, did a green issue in May) will tell readers it’s good to be green in 2007. But one jewelry advertiser is taking its eco-friendly message a step futher by planting four football fields worth of bamboo to counteract the environmental impact of its national advertising campaign. In 2006, John Hardy, of the eponymous jewelry company based in Bali, purchased more than 150 pages of advertising in 25 publications.
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“Over 400 tons of paper was used just to produce his advertising,” said Hardy’s spokesman. hardy was inspired to do something proactive after watching AI Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” This week, he began planting bamboo in Nusa Penida, a small island off the coast on Bali. bamboo was chosen, in part, because it grows faster than hardwood trees.
The bamboo planting accounts for 1 percent of Hardy’s overall ad budget.
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“Very few publishers focus on their eco footprint,” said Don Carli, senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, a not-for-profit organization. “Margins are very thin, and (ad) contracts are competitive.” He added that some advertisers were not jumping on the bandwagon to appear in “green” issues because their ads would likely be printed on recycled paper, which often doesn’t look and feel the same as the typical magazine sheet. “When investors care, publishers will care, and there is a higher level of awareness that is building,” said Carli. --A.W
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