There’s a lovely little recycled paper company in Wales with a slightly different approach to paper making and with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Their showcase product is Sheep Poo Paper! By allowing the sheep to pre-process cellulose, they can then easily separate it out into pulp suitable for papermaking and fertilizer to grow more grass.

Take their Sheep Quiz for added fun!

From their website (this bit is a little more serious in tone than most of the pages):

We have sited the paper mill in one of the most beautiful places on earth, the southern reaches of Snowdonia National Park, only 3 miles north from the world famous Centre for Alternative Technology. We want it to stay that beautiful for many more generations to come, so we are committed to constantly pursue only the most environmentally friendly options and to work as part of a sustainable community.

The non-craft papermaking industry is notoriously intensive in its use of resources, destroying vast areas of forest every day and with staggering energy requirements (Paper Industry Fact: large paper factories often have to give advance notice to their national electricity grid networks before they can switch on their pulping machinery! Not surprising when you think about how much power it would take to chew up and spit out a forest or two every day). They also have a bad habit of using very large amounts of chemicals and other environmentally contaminating nasties in their processing – this is because trees are bound together by a tough chemical called Lignin, which is very, very (and very) hard to remove.

We’re seeing more and more greenvertising these days as people become more aware of the impact of their buying decisions upon the environment. AMD is the one I see the most around here but the Gear6 posting lists quite a few more. It’s the message of "every bit helps" and it sells to a growing percentage of the market.

As Seth tells us in many of his blog postings, marketing is about telling a story that connects with your audience. Often, we focus on the product side of the story. The marketing that I tend to connect with best also conveys a unique story about the process, people, or philosophy behind the product.