The year has started as predicted, and everybody's gone green! At the PSI Dusseldorf and TVP Stuttgart promotional industry trade shows in January, and across the Atlantic at ISS California, over 80% of visitors canvassed were looking for ethical or green products. ‘Awareness' in 2007 has turned to ‘Action' in 2008, and everybody wants in on it.

In 2007, the Nobel Prize winning IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) stated that worldwide CO2 emissions would need to be cut by 80% by 2050 if the world was to avoid catastrophic climate change. Now, in 2008, one UK company claims to have reduced the CO2 emissions of its promotional apparel by over 89%, and it has the world's first carbon reduction label for textile products to prove it.

Time to get tough

You’ve been following Printwear and Promotion’s climate change series, you’ve thought about taking action to reduce your business’s carbon emissions, but as yet you’ve done nothing. You haven’t progressed your business, or accepted your responsibility as an industry leader.

These days businesspeople are falling over one another to prove their green credentials. All global companies, whatever their nature, need to be seen to be tackling their greenhouse gas emissions, and paradoxically, it is the most damaging industries that are collectively making the most effort to be seen as ‘greenest’.

Climate Change has been one of the biggest issues in the headlines this year, says Continental Clothing director Philip Charles, and it is not going to go away. “Climate change has gone from being dull and marginal to cool and core; the idea of going carbon neutral is gaining popularity – and quickly.”