Watch Out for the Green Police!

It’s Friday, snow is falling again, and I’m in the mood for a little lighthearted entertainment. Since Joe and I don’t have a television (by choice, thank you very much), I rarely see the ads that the rest of the world sees. Today, our friend, Gregory Johnson sent us a link to the Audi “Green Police” ads, and I enjoyed them so much that I thought I’d share.

According to Audi’s “Green Police” YouTube channel, the commercials are intended as an entertaining way to make several points about how we harm the environment in our daily lives:

“As part of the lead up to their third consecutive Super Bowl ad, Audi has created a fictional Green Police unit that are caricatures of todays [sic] green movement. The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment. They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.” …

The Positive Economics of Going Green

“The only way the Green Revolution will be achieved is through economic opportunity, not through regulation,” says Rob Rafson. A world-renowned environmental engineer and author of the highly regarded book, Brownfields: Redeveloping Environmentally Distressed Properties (1999), Rafson has cleaned up and redeveloped 17 brownfields — including four Superfund projects. He’s on a mission to teach sustainability management to businesses. “Once they see the economic benefits of going green, the transition is easy to sell to shareholders and management,” he tells us.

“In our opinion,” Rafson says, referring to Full Circle, his Chicago-based Sustainability Management Solutions firm, “any business interested in going green should do a cost benefit analysis of tactical opportunities that support their overall strategy and simply look at the return on investment (ROI). Whether it’s through renovating to make a building LEED certified, going to solar power, reducing waste stream, etc. — if you filter all the tactics by ROI, the steps become obvious. If you execute on the projects that have immediate and real economic impact, you can stair-step toward more complex projects with longer term ROI.”