This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
Everyone knows that the plastic bottles for packaged water are bad for the environment and bad for your health. The promotional items industry knew this as well and seized on this to promote the reusable plastic bottles ubiquitous in gyms and office promotions.
Water bottles became big business for us. Then came the Bisphenol A scare.
Overnight plastic bottles were out. If you are in the business of promotions and brand management it really did not matter if the plastic water bottle your client had purchased in the past was made with Bisphenol A or not. All water bottles got painted with the same brush.
So what happened?
Well basically overnight, and industry wide, the plastic water bottle orders became steel or aluminum water bottle orders. And then – due to the rush, the tragic earthquake in China which was one of the main manufacturing areas for these items, and basic distribution issues – the aluminum water bottles sold out.
Adventures in Green Marketing 