RetailGreen Speakers Put Emphasis on Strategies to Go Going Green
Thank you to Rudy Milian for his input on this post...
The ICSC RetailGreen Conference not only featured wonderful workshops on obtaining funding for going green, examples of actual projects and opportunities to network one-on-one with experts in the field, but also featured dynamic keynote speakers emphasizing the strategies of going green.
Brad Davis former Chief Marketing Officer of SunPower Corporation gave examples of the importance of the green movement in the digital and technological age and showed slides of many retailers’ installations of solar photovoltaic cells in their stores and distribution centers. As a former branding marketing officer for WaMu and Target, he emphasized key ways of green branding but warned the audience to avoid “green washing.” In his great dynamic speaking style, Davis moved the audience with his view about why going green is “The right thing to do.”
On Friday, Melissa L. Bradley-Burns, senior strategist for Green for All in Washington, D.C., presented her case for why it is important to go green and why there is public and private money available to support this movement. She was particularly complimentary of Kohl’s for its use of renewable energy.
After Bradley-Burns, Andrew Winston Founder of Winston Eco-Strategies in Riverside, Conn. and author of Green to Gold closed the conference. His key message about the green movement was “there is no alternative,” but he said that was alright because green is about cost reduction, revenue, branding. He said that Toyota Prius is an example of the green movement and he explained how this vehicle became the number one vehicle in the world. In the middle of this recession, Toyota had to go into overtime production. He said, “Don’t miss the green wave.” He closed with this message, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
Rudy Milian, ICSC senior vice president and author of the RetailGreen Agenda thanked Larry Kilduff for his leadership over the past two years as chairman of the RetailGreen Conference & Trade Exposition program committee. Milian announced that Jeff Bedell Vice President of Sustainability for Macerich will be next year’s chairman and that the event is taking place in Scottsdale, Arizona from October 27-29, 2010.
For more information, please visit http://www.icsc.org/apps/news_item.php?id=2543
