As the summer heat breaks and you begin to gear up for the 2010-2011 school year, what do you know about the companies that get all your back-to-school shopping dollars? Which ones are actually working to bring our planet Back-2-Cool? In 2008, the top 100 brands spent over $100 billion dollars on US advertising alone, and the back-to-school season was second only to the holiday season in revenue generated (US Census Bureau). Companies use these advertising dollars to promote products that require energy, packaging and transportation – all of which contribute to climate change. The question is, what can you do affect the way these companies do business and help bring our planet Back-2-Cool (B2C)?

The answer: Become an engaged climate-conscious consumer and find out what these companies are actually doing (or not doing) about climate change. If these companies truly want your attention and your money, shouldn’t they know how much you care about the climate crisis?

Of course they should. But you have to tell them. Join the Climate Counts Back-2-Cool Campaign as we shift the back-to-school momentum away from business as usual and towards strengthening corporate climate action.

Over the next ten weeks, Climate Counts will take a close look at the Back-to-School ads from scored companies in the Apparel, Electronics, Food Products, and Internet/Software sectors (which combined had over $1.2 trillion in 2009 revenues). The goal of the campaign is simple: to inform you about the climate action (or inaction) of the companies behind the ads, encourage you to make informed choices, and finally, urge you to raise your voices both to the companies and to your friends.

If you want to tell companies that you believe corporate climate action matters, be part of the B2C Campaign and help us change business as usual! Please join us at Back-2-Cool.

Mark Harrison is the Campaign Coordinator at ClimateCounts.org and can be reached at mharrison@climatecounts.org.

Join our campaign here and follow our campaign on facebook & twitter!

B2C Campaign is supported by these great organizations:

DoSomething, Alliance for Climate Education, Green Music Group, 350.org

Are CEOs greener than we think? And if it’s true, what’s holding them back from moving the market towards a sustainable future? In a recent survey conducted by Accenture and the United Nations Global Compact, 93% of nearly 800 CEOs saw sustainability as important to their company’s future success and 81% stated that sustainability issues are now fully embedded into the company’s strategy and operations. Compare that to the mere 50% in 2007 and it doesn’t take much to realize sustainability is being talked about in board meetings.

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But what’s driving this eco-shift in the corporate mindset? The answer is actually quite simple: You. 58% of CEOs identified consumers as the single most important factor driving sustainable business. That’s right, you, the climate-conscious consumer, are driving this marketplace revolution, beating out company employees (45%) and governments (39%).

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As the greatest driving force behind corporate climate action, your consumer choices and voices are felt in revenue streams and heard in corporate board rooms worldwide. Companies spend millions of dollars fine-tuning their brand perception to match consumer wants and needs. 72% of CEOs identified strengthening brand, trust and reputation as the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability issues. Yet, a disparity exists between the actual sustainable activity of brands, and consumers’ sustainable perception of brands. So how can climate-conscious consumers fix this? Easy. Say something.

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In order to keep these CEOs on their toes, consumers must exercise their muscles and let CEOs know that “climate counts.” Visit www.climatecounts.org to email and tweet companies directly and have your messages land on the table in the next board meeting.

Follow our work on Facebook and Twitter and share our work with your friends.

The devastating and escalating events in the Gulf of Mexico underscore an amazing collection of problems: reliance on polluting energy, absence of a coherent national energy plan, the problems with lax government oversight, and dozens of others. Perhaps most clearly, it shows the gulf we should have seen years ago between the image of BP and the reality of BP.

This spiraling disaster might literally have never happened if BP had made a real and deep commitment to changing more than its logo. Almost 10 years ago, BP – the largest corporation in the UK – spent an extraordinary amount of money and resources on a now infamous rebranding effort ($125 million a year, according to the New York Times) to show its commitment to a world “beyond petroleum.” Branding experts would certainly argue it was money well-spent; for a time, the company became emblematic of the environmental transformation that could occur even within the largest of the world’s businesses and of the ROI that could result when the marketplace rewarded those changes.

Consumers were promised a cultural shift and, to a large degree, bought it. The company was going to remake itself. It was going to become a very high-profile example of how a company with the resources and know-how to profit from 19th-century energy solutions was perfectly positioned to do the same in a 21st century where the realities had changed. The company could be a leader in renewable energy and even transition away from the business of oil extraction. The company could even be positive voice for corporate climate action from an industry sector with a vested interest in increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

It was all a façade.

Unfortunately, the BP case illustrates a glaring example of the disconnect between cynical rebranding efforts designed to shore up the dollars of a growing and loyal green consumer segment and the cold, hard realities of global business. Consumers didn’t get the culture shift they thought they were buying. It’s now clear they saw a company paying the worst kind of lip service to sustainability — while still polluting heavily, while still profiting from the extraction of fossil fuels, while still cutting major corners on safety, while still promising the moon to communities where they did business, while still pouring huge dollars into political campaigns and lobbying designed to win powerful friends of fossil fuel expansion in Congress and in statehouses around the country. BP had played a game of smoke and mirrors. There was no corporate culture shift in “beyond petroleum.” It was cultural disdain. Essentially, the company said, “Who needs to invest in 21st century solutions when people will give us credit whether we’re really leading or not?” The company realized the consumer could be hoodwinked into not asking the hard questions.

When a disaster like this happens, it’s sometimes reassuring to try to find the potential good that can come from it. There is more and more evidence that neither the White House nor the Congress will be using this disaster to issue the necessary clarion call for the new energy future we so desperately need. If we’re lucky, maybe the impact will be largest in deepening both consumer savvy and consumer scrutiny of corporations so that their programs to “go green” have both measurable depth and staying power. Otherwise, we’ll never be far away from being duped again.

Quick note: As an organization annually scoring well-known companies on their efforts to address climate change, Climate Counts made the conscious decision when we launched in 2007 to NOT to score oil & gas companies and automobile manufacturers. In trying to help consumers make more climate-conscious choices when they spend their money, it seemed almost absurd to evaluate companies that had such an inherently profound impact on the climate crisis. Would it really be reasonable to suggest to a consumer, as they drive down the road in a vehicle produced by one of the numerous car makers who’ve fought vehemently against increased fuel efficiency standards, that they are truly more responsible by choosing to buy gasoline from Shell vs ExxonMobil vs Chevron vs ConocoPhillips vs….BP? We chose to opt out of that fool’s errand.

Wood Turner is the executive director of Climate Counts and the founder of the Climate Counts Industry Innovators program.

It is often said that the college years are the best years of one’s life. In the ideal setting, the freedom to learn, grow friendships, explore one’s passions and embrace youth all collide in a four-year span to create a sort of responsibility-free utopia. Amidst this collision, a college student may feel detached from the real world, but she is still very clearly a participant in the consumer economy.

The big picture – youth is fleeting, but consumption isn’t.

If you think about it, campuses are communities, marketplaces, learning centers, idea generators, and ultimately, earth shakers. When corporations sell to college campuses, they are not only selling to large academic institutions, they’re directly tapping into future generations of consumers. But too few students realize that they have almost exactly the same opportunity in reverse. They’re not simply one-way receptacles for corporate messages. They can and should learn to talk back to those companies.

It does not take a petition thousands of signatures long or a day when the company switchboard lights up with complaints to make companies listen. Many business leaders will acknowledge it only takes a few dozen messages to bring a consumer or investor concern to a company’s attention. Just think of the impact a fully engaged student body could have. Everyone consumes goods and services, everyone can have a say in how the companies that produce those goods and services operate. But when launched from college campuses, those voices can really resonate.

The choice is yours.

Climate Counts Campus Champions have the power to jumpstart a climate-awareness consumer movement. They can motivate their peers, colleagues and administrators to take action. Climate Counts can serve as a source and a roadmap. With our information and support (nearly 150 companies scored representing over 3,000 brands), Champions can activate climate-conscious consumerism on their campuses and have a direct impact on way companies do business. The attention of college students on public policy related to climate change is critical, but perhaps nothing is more important in changing the trajectory of climate change than changing business as usual.

Mark Harrison coordinates campaigns at Climate Counts. E-mail him about the Climate Counts Campus Champions program at: mharrison@climatecounts.org

Still, even though the decision threatens our direct role in our democracy, the power we have as individuals is incredible. Too often we fail to realize the real power that we can have over the companies that now stand to wield such an excess of influence on our government. So in a kind of roundabout way, we can still engage in our democracy by making it clear to big corporations that big global issues – climate change and climate justice, access to clean drinking water, and poverty and disaster relief, to name a few – truly matter to us.

Every time we shop, we’re voting. Every time we eat, we vote. Every time we watch TV, we vote. The list goes on and on. So why not vote for our future? Corporations know where you shop, they know what you eat, and they know what you watch. Their business revolves around what consumers want or they fail. If we are truly committed to a more sustainable world, we should support companies that are making efforts to reduce their impact on the environment, supporting strong public policy on climate change, and engaging with us openly on their efforts to be good corporate citizens. It actually becomes a quite simple equation. If those companies know we care about the environment and climate change and demonstrate our willingness to reward them for their meaningful action, those companies will naturally become the most outspoken forces for aggressive climate action in their interactions with our government. In short, our money talks and will motivate deep-pocketed corporations to put their money to use for good.

This is all about making lemonade out of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Let’s make it work to the advantage of us, the consumers of the products and services marketed by these “corporate persons.” Let’s put increasing pressure on the world’s most well-known companies – many of them some of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – to put their money towards the issues that matter to us.

The key is making them realize our support for their businesses is contingent upon how responsive they are to our very real concerns about global challenges like water scarcity, poverty, and, yes, climate change.

Take a look at the 2009 Climate Counts Scores of 20 companies in the Food Products Industry.

Media companies should bring words and actions into alignment.

With the highest overall sector average (65) of any sector scored by Climate Counts and all twelve companies now in our “Striding” group of companies, the Electronics/Computer sector has solidified itself as an example for other industries.

With so-called environmentally responsible products everywhere, it’s become fashionable to be “green,” but is the fashion world confronting the realities of climate change? While boutique green fashion companies (that espouse sustainability as a key value) are growing, have the large companies that dominate the landscape improved their scores in the past year?

Climate Counts scored a total of 16 different Airlines and Hotel companies in 2009 and came up with some interesting results. When scored on a scale of 0 – 100 points, each sector began to establish clear leaders committed to combating climate change.