ecoSwagg Bags at the Oscars Benefit Global Green
by Jacob Gordon, Nashville, TN on 03. 2.06
If you caught Tuesday’s post on solar chargers on the red carpet, you know that our beloved celebs are being slipped eco-friendly goods as they roll to this year’s Oscar gala in their hybrids. For the fourth year in a row, as part of the "Red Carpet, Green Cars" drive-up campaign, a veritable cornucopia of ecoSwagg will be personally delivered into the arms of nominees and attendees chauffeured in Toyota and Lexus hybrids to the 78th Academy Awards. To get their wares in there, vendors make a donation to Global Green. Celebs smart enough to choose to show up in a hybrid get between four and five thousand dollars worth of green goodies, from organic denim to organic cabernet.
Among those represented in the bag (actually a post-consumer recycled box) are: The Ambrose Hotel, Arbor Snowboard, Biota Spring Water, Ecco Bella, Ecoganik, Edun, Frog’s Leap organic wine, Loomstate, Fat Tire Ale, Napapijri Geographic, Shift magazine, Solar Style cell phone chargers, Toyota branded solar iPod® chargers, and The Villages of Loreto Bay, a Baja Mexico eco-resort.
it's better than giving out $5000 worth of un-organic stuff, i guess, but doesn't anyone else see this and think "what a waste"? don't we have better stuff to do with that much money?
Do I spy some "strange water" in that lot?
I don't think it's a waste. For one thing, they aren't giving the celebs money, they're giving them product, it's not like a dollar amount that could be spent teaching the homeless to read or something. Secondly, as much as I hate to admit it, celebrities have a big influence on shopping trends. If they buy it, other people will, too. Although part of being "Treehugger" is reducing shopping altoghter, when people do buy we'd like them to buy products that are environmental in one way or another. If giving celebs free ecoswagg will increase the number of people who make their next purchasing decision a green one, then I'm all for it.