Joshua Saunders

Tune in to your local public radio station tonight to hear an interview I did with Scott Tong from American Public Media.  The segment will be on over 500 radio stations tonight during the Marketplace report.  In the interview Scott and I talk about the proliferation of eco-labels, how they are impacting consumer purchasing behavior, examples and traits of successful labels, and thoughts on the launch of the WindMade label.

WindMade is a new certification being announced tomorrow in Davos at the World Economic Forum.  It is a collaboration between WWF, Vestas Wind Systems, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.  The standard is not yet publically available and public comment is expected in March.  The standard technical committee is only made up of the three organizations listed above with the standard expected to be finalized in May, so it will be interesting to see if this consortium develops a rigorous and credible standard in such a short timeframe.  As more information is available on WindMade, I will post a full write-up.

A new event that looks to be an insightful few hours of dialogue with some of Chicago’s most successful entrepreneurs is coming February 8.  The line-up includes many notable names, including some that have been speaking quite a bit at other local events recently. 

Come to the Greenhouse Theater in Lincoln Park to hear from Genevieve Thiers and Dan Ratner, founders of SitterCity and now ContactKarma, Mari Luangrath, founder of FoiledCupcakes, Matt Maloney, founder of GrubHub, Ross Kimbarovsky, founder of crowdSPRING.  You’ll notice several of these names from the lineup of Seed10, put on by the Polsky Center a couple months ago.  They are all great speakers with tremendous success, so hopefully there will be some great new content shared with the audience.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the event!

GoodGuide is preparing to launch ratings for dog and cat food.  This will be the first of its kind ratings for pet food, looking at the health of the food along with the environmental and social performance of the companies that make the food.

In total, 1500 products were evaluated from 50 brands.  There are a lot of myths floating around about the health of pet food and many misleading marketing claims.  In fact, I would argue the greenwashing of marketing claims for pet food is larger than for consumer goods.

For a sneak peak at the ratings and top performing brands, visit my friends at Consumer Ally:  http://www.walletpop.com/2011/01/21/goodguides-cat-and-dog-food-ratings-which-brands-are-best/

DePaul students or recent grads- get ready for Launch DePaul, the annual new venture competition, with a top prize of $10,000.

Launch DePaul is a new venture competition for businesses, non-profits, and social ventures, and is open to the DePaul community. The competition emphasizes the ability of teams to demonstrate the sustainability of their ventures, illustrated by the achievement of milestones and/or documentation of market potential.

I look forward to judging the first round and seeing some of the great submissions from students.

For more information, see the Coleman Center website here:  http://coleman.depaul.edu/students/launchdepaul/

Hi everyone.  Welcome to my new blog.  I transformed my website and removed all of my old blog posts, which were a couple years old and thought I would start fresh.  I plan on writing occassionally about sustainability, green products, green consumer trends, entrepreneurship and business strategy topics that interest me.

Stay tuned!