Earth.org spoke with Dr. Ed Stafford, Utah State University professor at the Hunstman School of Business, about how savvy marketing strategies can help promote sustainable technologies such as electric stovetops. 

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Do not mess with Texas. The popular slogan among Texans that is thought to be a state motto, was a green marketing public service announcement that started in the mid-1980s to reduce littering. At the time, Texas was spending $20 million in tax revenues annually to pick up trash along highways. The campaign aimed to “show your Texas pride” through the identity of being a proud Texan. The campaign was a huge success and resonated with demographics that would have otherwise cared very little about environmental issues. 

This example of savvy marketing became a case study that Ed Stafford, Utah State University professor in the Huntsman Business School, teaches to his students. It is an “identity” strategy that Stafford lectures on in one of his popular marketing strategy classes and one he also implements in his work on green marketing campaigns. In both lecture and implementation, Stafford seeks to understand what makes some brands widely popular and “cool”, while similar brands cannot gain footing with similar audiences. What makes Apple better than Samsung, and Stanley water bottles so popular among millennials and Gen Z’s? 

According to Stafford, these products have the “cool” factor. These products and ideas are engineering coolness through marketing actions. 

On a mission to learn more about how these marketing ideas could be used for environmental stewardship and promoting sustainable technologies in our fight against climate change, Earth.Org reached out to Stafford and his daughter, Victoria Stafford, who is now working alongside him to promote the benefits of electric stovetops in the US. 

When Earth.org spoke to Staffort about the application of these marketing techniques for climate action, he had this to say: “The lesson for climate change is that advocates need to tap key groups and leverage their emotions and identity to encourage climate concern and action. There are some groups with strong identities that can initiate that concern and action. Good marketing strategists can figure these connections out.”

Stafford and his daughter are using these very techniques to promote electromagnetism, more commonly known as induction stove tops. They have keyed in their target market as professional and celebrity chefs, using the slow food, farm-to-table, healthy, organic food movement to promote a sustainable technology in induction stove tops over traditional gas stoves. Not only do induction stove tops help towards electrifying our built environment but they also eliminate a list of health hazards within our living environments. 

For decades, traditional gas stove tops have been widely popular in both commercial kitchens and in households across the US. The slogan “Now We’re Cooking with Gas” came around in the late 1930s as a way for the natural gas industry to promote gas stoves. It was promoted as the “best” way to cook, and many chefs swore by it.

However, with the implications of climate change, the push to electrify stoves in a bid to reduce fossil fuel consumption has grown. Gas stoves run off natural gas, a methane emitter. Methane is a major contributor to the total greenhouse gas emissions, second only to carbon dioxide (CO2). It is 84 times more potent in trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a two-decade period and it possesses a 100-year global warming potential 28-34 times that of CO2. 

You might also like: Gas vs Electric Stoves: Which One Is Better for Your Health and the Environment?

Not only are gas stoves harmful emitters for the climate, but they are also linked to a long list of human health concerns. Indoor air quality is drastically diminished with gas stoves in use. Documentation shows that methane leakage from gas stoves, even while off, is considerable. One study found that 12.7% of all childhood asthma cases in the US could be attributed to gas stoves in their home. With health concerns and climate change, many cities have turned to banning gas stoves altogether, creating a hot button topic that was politicized and ignited a cultural war. 

“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,” tweeted Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas). As talk of bans on gas stoves heated up, so did the rhetoric around them. Several members of Congress even got together and proposed the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act. 

The cultural war was on. No one, however, was discussing solutions to the true health concerns of gas stoves. One of the reasons for this is the lack of awareness surrounding induction stove tops, which in the US has captured less than 5% of the market. 

“Our challenge is how to make an environmentally preferable appliance sexy? If the gas industry could make gas stoves a coveted possession 90 years ago and turn its marketing slogan ‘Now we’re cooking with gas’ into an iconic adage that people equate with ‘doing it right,’ our current task is to counter that by making induction a ‘cool,’ coveted feature of the modern kitchen,” said Stafford. 

And this is exactly why he and his daughter keyed into professional chefs: to help bring awareness to induction stoves and get more commercial kitchens using the technology. 

But what exactly is an inductive stove and electromagnetism? 

Inductive stove tops have an oscillating magnetic field that produces a current moving back and forth on an electric wire; this motion is then passed through to the cookware above. Benefits of inductive cooktops include lightning-fast heating and boiling; easy to clean; reduced risks of burns as they are safe to the touch; energy efficient; and capabilities of being paired with clean energy sources, making them environmentally friendly. Not to mention the eliminated pollutants on indoor air quality are better for human health. 

These benefits need to be promoted for mass adoption to be possible, and for continued building electrification to happen across the US. Stafford’s work with chefs, especially ones touting healthy, organic, and sustainable cooking, will hopefully help others identify with induction stoves in their homes. They believe celebrity chefs, foodie influencers, and restaurant owners will be key to mass adoption, as they are able to show the benefits of induction stove tops, make them “cool”, and get more people talking and transitioning to them. 

Making induction “sexy” and the “only choice for cooking” is going to take significant work. Gas has been king for decades, and marketers did a wonderful job in influencing us to think that. But times have changed, and the rapidly unfolding climate crisis requires us to find new ways of doing things. 

We have the solutions to unfix the issues of our past and create a more sustainable world. We also have more government support and funding than ever before to make this transition equitable and obtainable. With funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) being dispersed for electrical upgrades, the transition to electrical cookware is achievable. But it is with the help of people working on savvy marketing campaigns, like Stafford and his daughter Victoria, that we can make it a reality.

Their new campaign “Get Off Your Gas” is purposely edgy to touch on “rebelliousness” that is inherent in cool products. If we’re going to solve the climate crisis and cultural wars that follow, we may need to think in a whole new way about the way we promote these items and ideas. Savvy marketing and a bit of electromagnetism may be one way forward. 

The post Savvy Marketing and Electromagnetism: A Solution to Climate Change? appeared first on Earth.Org.

Plastic has become an inescapable presence in our modern world, infiltrating our food, water, and everyday products. From the packaging that encases our groceries to the bottles we drink from, plastic surrounds us. In this article, we explore the pervasive nature of plastic and provide tips on how individuals can actively reduce their plastic consumption and make more sustainable choices to minimize its detrimental impact on our health.

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Plastic Is Everywhere

In recent years, plastic has been a topic of heightened interest around the world. From recycling facilities piling high with plastics to our oceans becoming infiltrated with micro and nanoplastics, plastic pollution worldwide has gotten completely out of hand and is leading to severe human and environmental impacts. 

With new research into plastics, researchers are beginning to discover just how far plastics have traveled into our everyday lives. What once was exclusively looked at as an environmental concern has now become a human health crisis, as plastics have made their way to our everyday diet. 

The Standard American Diet (SAD) already consists of ultra-processed foods, added sugars, fats, and sodium, all things that greatly impact our health and reduce our lifespan. We can now add one more item to that list, plastic. 

According to a 2019 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) study, humans are consuming an average credit card-worth of plastic every week, or about 52 credit cards every year.

Phoebe Stapleton, an associate professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Rutgers University, and one of the authors behind the study, said the research does not take into account nanoplastics that are also being consumed. 

While research mostly focuses on well-known microplastics, fragments of plastic smaller than 5mm and larger than 1 micron (1/1000th of a millimeter) in length, nanoplastics, which measure less than one micron and are no wider than a human hair, are believed to be even more toxic since their smaller size makes it easier for them to enter human organs and bloodstream.

“Nano-sized plastic particles are significantly harder to identify, and thereby quantify,” Stapleton said, suggesting it is far more likely we are consuming more plastic than we think. Additionally, Stapleton and her team discovered 20 pieces of microplastic in every 10 grams of human feces. 

But how exactly are micro and nonoplastics making their way into the food chain? 

Let’s start with something simple and quite common around the world: takeaway coffee. To-go coffee cups, nowadays mostly made of paper, may seem harmless at first. However, not many know the inside of most paper cups – approximately 5-10% of the cup – is covered in a thin plastic film. A 2023 study published in Nature has shown that, as hot liquid is poured into the cup, toxic chemicals begin leaching out of this thin plastic layer, ending up in our stomach. And in 2019, a research group from India found that approximately 15 minutes after a paper cup is filled with a hot liquid, a number of microplastic particles originating from the plastic lining – an average of 25,000 particles per 100ml-cup – are released. 

The same thing applies to most packaging items, from takeaway boxes to everyday products at the grocery store, including milk, cheese, and bread.

Another common source of microplastics, which might shock most of us, are plastic water bottles. Similar to takeaway cups, a 2024 study found that plastic bottles can shed nonoplastic particles during the bottling or capping phase. Besides bottles, water itself can often be contaminated, as plastic waste that ends up in water bodies such as rivers and lakes breaks down into tiny particles. A recent study looking at five different water bottles from three popular brands, which researchers declined to identify, found, on average, 240,000 particles from seven different types of plastic, mostly in the form of nanoplastics.

More on the topic: One Liter of Bottled Water Contains About 240,000 Plastic Particles, New Study Finds

However, it is not just packaged products that are making their way into our food chain. 

Fruits and vegetables have also been found to contain plastics. Many farms around the world use fertilizers sourced from our wastewater systems. The byproduct of the treated water is sewer sludge, a substance high in nutrients that makes great fertilizer. Although the process is considered a good use of the byproduct, it is releasing microplastics into the soils in which we grow our foods. 

A 2024 analysis from Consumer Reports indicated that there is widespread presence of plastics in our food system. The report found that 84 out of 85 supermarkets came back positive for phthalates, a chemical used in the production of plastics. The same report also found 79% of food samples taken contained bisphenol A, another chemical contained in plastics. 

It comes as no surprise, then, that plastics are now also found in human stools and blood. 

Can We Avoid Plastic?

The easiest way we have to avoid ingesting plastic is to reduce our exposure to plastic products and materials. Using reusable metal bottles, coffee containers, glass tupperware, and purchasing food products that are not wrapped in plastics. For those lucky enough to be in a situation that allows them to change their buying habits, a good thing to consider is also a shift to sustainable packaging alternatives. Having consumers support more sustainable alternatives will likely nudge companies to do the same. It is up to each of us to stay informed, share what we know about the use of plastics, and create a system of change in our communities.  

We can and should also press for policy changes that ensure stricter guidelines are being followed in food safety processes and that limit or reduce the use of plastics in our food chain. We also need ongoing testing from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or similar authorities to verify that we are keeping these chemicals out of our food system, or at minimum to lower levels. 

As it emerged from this article, plastic is all around us, from the water we drink to the food we eat, making it nearly impossible to avoid it altogether. And yet, being aware about the issue and making small steps to reduce our exposure to plastic can make a big impact.

You might also like: Are Microplastics Harmful And How Can We Avoid Them?

The post The Plastic Diet: Has Plastic Pollution Reached its Tipping Point? appeared first on Earth.Org.