Lay’s is kicking off a nationwide experiential tour featuring the company’s potato farmers.

The six-city tour that kicked off in NYC on July 26, is designed to bring a rural farm experience to city-based consumers via a mobile greenhouse. Visitors can see plants that result in Lay’s potato chip ingredients as well as meet a Lay’s potato farmer. Additionally, Lay’s will give away 8,000 basil plants to visitor and will donate plants to local community gardens at the end of each stop. And of course, Lay’s potato chips will be sampled!

PR efforts, Facebook and Twitter will drive consumer awareness for the tour. Consumers will also be able to track the mobile greenhouse using the “Chip Tracker” on the brand’s website.

Source: Marketing Daily

I never really thought of purchasing used items from eBay as being green, but it makes sense since “Reuse” is 1/3 of the classic green motto “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. And their PR push around this year’s Earth Day is helping other eco-conscious consumers make that connection as well. eBay’s green team has been working hard since 2007 to make their company a truly green place to work and they saw an opportunity in 2009 to open up their efforts to their buyers and sellers by creating the Green Shopping Hub; eBay is the world’s largest marketplace for used, vintage, and refurbished goods after all.

To further raise awareness this Earth Day the green team is challenging consumers to reuse what exists in the world today, and for each person that pledges at ebaygreenteam.com to take the challenge, eBay will protect an acre of forest in your name one of three locations of your choice via a partnership with Team Earth. Plus, you’ll automatically be entered for a chance to win $10,000 to spend on eBay.

Learn more about the Green Team’s initiatives to inspire the world to buy, sell and think green every day.

Americans sure are obsessed with bottled water; we spend just about $17 billion each year to satiate our thirst with purchased portable water. This equates to nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil used to make plastic water bottles, not to mention they fill up our landfills, and often end up littering our oceans and streets. One of the main reasons consumers are hesitant to give up their bottled water addiction is because it tastes better than tap water, and they know its clean.

So what is a eco-conscious person to do? Well that’s where Bobble comes in! It’s a new type of water bottle that launched last month made from 100% recycled plastic. It’s BPA-free and it includes a built in carbon filter that removes chlorine and contaminants from tap water giving it that fresh, clean flavor we love from bottled water. It’s got an attractive design and comes in 6 bright colors. The filtration system is good for 300 refills, significantly reducing one’s impact of drinking bottled water and saving quite a bit of money in the long run selling at $9.95 and $6.95 for replacement filters.

You can order yours online at waterbobble.com or look for them in a Whole Foods, JC Penny, Bed Bath & Beyond, or other green retailer near you. It’s popularity is picking up steam thanks to articles in O The Oprah Magazine and Seventeen Magazine, their Facebook fan page, and a few twitter promotions through partners such as PSFK and Yanko Design.

Source: fastcompany.com

Puma just announced the release of their new Clever Little Bag to replace the brand’s shoeboxes, kicking off Puma’s next phase in its sustainability program.

The bag uses 65% less cardboard than the typical shoebox. Created out of non-woven mesh, the recyclable material requires less work and creates less waste. It has no laminated printing and no tissue paper, it takes up less space than boxes and also weighs less when shipping. It can also can serve as a replacement to the retail bag. According to fuseproject, all of this will result in Puma’s reduction in water, energy and diesel consumption from manufacturing by more than 60% a year.

Read more at cnn.com and watch their video here

Kelly Rippa is teaming up again with the eco-conscious brand, Electrolux, this time to host a live webcast on April 13th @ 1pm EST in preparation for Earth Day and to help support Global Green USA. Fans can currently RSVP on the Kelly Confidential microsite or facebook to participate in the discussion with Kelly and “The Green Team”, a panel of eco-experts, taking questions and providing ideas on everyday green living. Afterwards participants can stay online to swap ideas of their own, and for every shared idea Electrolux will donate $1 to Global Green USA, up to $25,000. Also, participants will be entered to win an eco-friendly washer and dryer from Electrolux.

Source: Daily Candy

On Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:30 p.m. local time, Earth Hour will once again cascade around the globe, from New Zealand to Hawaii. Hundreds of millions of people, organizations, corporations and governments around the world will come together to make a bold statement about their concern for climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour.

Last year iconic landmarks from around the world went dark, including The Vegas Strip, Empire State Building, Sydney’s Opera House and may more.

Earth Hour is sponsored by the World Wildlife Foundation. To learn more about Earth Hour, visit myearthhour.org

Will you participate???

Typically recycled plastic gets turned into something not-so-recyclable, like carpet fibers and auto parts, but this may be changing thanks to new technology. Naked Juice recently took another big step towards it’s commitment to sustainability, by becoming the first nationally distributed brand to transition to a 100% post-consumer recycled PET (rPET) bottle. The eco-conscious company revolutionized it’s manufacturing process in order to do so, and once the transition to the new “reNEWabottle” is completed in 2010 it will in turn be reducing virgin plastic consumption by 8.1 million pounds per year, saving 57,000 barrels of oil every year—the equivalent of taking 3,460 cars off of the road. Additionally, these PET bottles are plastic coded #1, which are easily recycled, allowing it’s bottles to be “reincarnated” into a new bottle after consumption. Now that’s what I call a significant positive impact on our environment.

In order to promote this new initiative, Naked Juice has launched a campaign asking consumers to join the eco revolution, by passing along a “Naked Message in a Bottle.” Facebook users can “drink” Naked Juice and pass virtual bottles and their messages along to friends. For every bottle passed (up to 400,000), Naked Juice will donate five cents (up to $20,000) to Keep America Beautiful and its recycling education initiatives. 

Sources: GreenerPackage.com, MediaPost.com , and NakedJuice.com

Go to http://apps.facebook.com/messageinabottle/ to get started!

Google has begun a new ad campaign for its enterprise services, but it isn’t your typical Google venture—it’s going oldschool. Starting today and running for the next four weeks in August, Google will be running a series of billboards—yes, real ones—in Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco in order to showcase the benefits of “going Google” for business. The hope is that more business owners will ditch managing their own e-mail, calendaring, and doc sharing solutions in favor of Google Apps—especially now that they’re out of beta.

For those who want to see the billboards for themselves, they will be placed along Highway 101 in San Francisco, the West Side Highway in New York, the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago and the Mass Pike in Boston. Google says that the billboards will be changed every single weekday for the next month, but you environmentalists in the crowd should worry not—all vinyl used on the billboards will be recycled and turned into either computer bags or shopping bags.

Read more here

Source: Ars Technica

Introducing ECOBOT; a free app that calculates your carbon footprint by measuring the fuel, power, and paper you use. And it does much of this automatically, right from your desktop. By tracking your carbon consumption, it’ll help you see where you have the most negative impact so you know where to put the three Rs into action. Aside from reducing, reusing, and recycling, it can link you to places where you can offset your carbon totals.

Check it out at http://ecobot.taxi.ca/ to start tracking your environmental impact.

Philadelphia has introduced the Big Belly, an environmentally friendly trash can and compactor, in an attempt to help make the city a little bit more green. The new trash compactor uses solar panels to power 100% of its energy. The actual unit is the same size and shape of previous garbage cans; however, the machine can compact trash and store up to five times as much waste as its non-electronic counterparts. The Big Belly comes equipped with a wireless transmitter that informs collection companies as to which receptacles are in need of emptying, thereby reducing fuel costs from collection trips. All in all, the Big Belly solar powered compactor has demonstrated the possibility of environmentally friendly technologies in even the most unexpected places.