Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Taken aback

Last week I blogged about the phenomenon of nonprofit advocacy groups teaming up with corporations that once might have earned their censure. One such partnership (which I didn't mention in the post) can be found in the Sierra Club's endorsement of Green Works, Clorox's foray into the eco-friendly cleaning products market. Now comes an interesting twist...

take_back_the_filter_badge2 Co-op America just brought my attention to the Take Back the Filter campaign to persuade the Clorox Company to restart the take-back program for its Brita water filters in the U.S. Pointing out the dissonance between the shuttering of the program and the fact that Clorox's Filter for Good campaign "promotes the use of its Brita filtration system ... as a means to reduce disposable plastic bottle waste," Beth Terry, the woman behind Take Back the Filter, invites consumers to contact the company—and to send her their used filters in the meantime (using minimal mailing materials, of course).

Right at the top of Take Back the Filter's home page is a link to a letter to Clorox from none other than ... the Sierra Club. Granted, it's signed by Norman La Force, chair of the San Francisco Bay Chapter, not Carl Pope, the executive director of the national organization, but I would think that it still has some pull.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this.

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