It’s challenging to grasp just how much the world has changed from COVID-19 — Zoom happy hours, takeout instead of dining in, working from home, and squeezing in virtual workouts. To say we’ve reached a new frontier is an understatement, and small businesses in the fitness industry have had to pivot operations to stay open.

But there’s a glimmer from the chaos: An industry once contingent upon physical attendance is now finding footing online. That said, the transition hasn’t been easy.

Now, as lockdowns ease and we endeavor outside again, it’s time for another massive pivot in your marketing strategy. How can you promote your fitness studio post-covid? Starting a newsletter, has been proven hands down, the best way to keep your customers engaged. Among our services we use Cactus Mailing: Direct Mail Experts. 

It’s going to take hard work, but you’ve got this. In this comprehensive guide, we’ve outlined the best strategies for promoting your fitness studio after COVID. 

Ready to reboot? Let’s get moving.

Narrow Your Focus and Niche Down

There’s no need to be an expert at every form of fitness. Plus, there are already mega fitness chains like Planet Fitness occupying that catch-all space. Since 86% of consumers base their purchases on brand authenticity, your best bet is to niche down on your specialty. 

If you’re a yoga instructor, niche down on a type of yoga, breathwork, or technique you’ve mastered. Niching down shapes your marketing strategy to attract your ideal clientele.

Who has mastered this flawlessly?

Kayla Itsines, the fitness influencer who basically wrote the (e)book on how to niche down and own your expertise. Kayla created Bikini Body Guides (BBG), 28-minute workouts designed for women to yield maximum results with short sessions.

The fitness guru took the method she used for her own fitness and monetized it into a multi-million dollar business. By niching down to address bodyweight strength training, Kayla attracted a massive following — and wealth. 

What’s standing in the way of you achieving the same success? A pandemic? Not anymore.

How to niche down:

• Don’t aim to be a jack of all trades fitness studio, be a master of one. Choose the niche you’re passionate about and could teach all day, every day.
• Start brainstorming workouts within your niche. Cover the basics in your niche, and zoom in to discover sub-niches.
• For every piece of content you create, add your unique spin. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you do want to be original and recognizable.

Tell Your Story to Motivate and Relate

The pandemic has made us a little more skeptical, a tad wiser, and pickier about which businesses we support. A HavasGroup report found that 77% of consumers choose brands that share similar values. To gain trust, be transparent and vocal about your personal fitness story. 

Have you been passionate about fitness since you were a kid and learned to box in your uncle’s garage? Maybe you have a weight-loss story or live, breathe, and eat health and fitness. Your story doesn’t have to be groundbreaking or sensationalized, but it has to be honest to make an impact.

Sharing the why behind your business motivates people who’ve had similar experiences to join the movement. When you stand for something bigger than just one workout, you start a conversation.

Just ask Tally Rye, a London-based fitness instructor and health coach. Tally shares non-diet, weight-inclusive fitness programs that inspire people to “train happy.” The underlying message across all of Tally’s content is her story: ditching diet culture to find a happy way to train and love your body.

The message is clear, consistent, and honest. And that’s why over 100k people follow along!

How to tell your story:

Take pen to paper and write out the crucial moments in your story that led you to a career in fitness.

• If you’re not a writer, no sweat! Find freelancers on sites like Upwork or ClearVoice and outsource the task to a pro. 
• Share your story on every channel, including your website pages, social profile descriptions, offerings, products, and captions. 
• Keep it simple, be honest. Open up about the difficult circumstances or adversities you overcame to get where you are now. If that doesn’t apply, share the path that led you here. 

People don’t just buy products and services; they buy stories they can relate to, so don’t be afraid to share yours.

Create a Library of On-Demand Video Lessons

Creating an on-demand video library sets you up to reach the broadest audience within your niche. The more diverse the library, the broader an audience you’ll reach. 

Stay within your niche, but diversify lessons to reach every fitness level. There’s no use attracting a beginner if you’re only posting advanced cardio classes. If your studio focuses on HIIT workouts, create an advanced series of 60-minute lessons and a beginner’s series of 30-minute lessons demonstrating each move.

Also, share videos that tackle sub-niches. If you’re a yoga instructor, create playlists targeting abs, upper body, and lower body. While you’re at it, why not offer a 10-minute wellness series featuring sessions for meditation, breathwork, and anti-anxiety poses? 

Head over to the Popsugar Fitness YouTube channel, where 5.48 million Youtube subscribers have free access to a rich library of on-demand video workouts. 

Covering everything from hip-hop to HIIT to targeted muscle training sessions, Popsugar has something for everyone while staying true to the integrity of their niche: fun, fresh, vibrant workouts.

How to make a fitness video library:

• Record fitness videos in bulk sessions. Block out 1-2 days a week to batch content until you’ve got a sizable stockpile.
• Create playlists for each video category so that viewers can explore specific areas of your YouTube channel.
• Optimize your channel and videos. Use a free keyword tool like KW Finder and include them naturally in the title, description, and tags.
• Have fun with it! The more engaged you are in your video and content, the more likely people will show up to your channel.

Pitch Your Offerings to Local Media Outlets 

Press coverage builds social proof and establishes your fitness studio as an industry leader. Plus, 92% of consumers trust organic media coverage more than paid ads. You’ll gain their trust by earning organic publicity, which also broadens your exposure.

Are you launching a new video series or offering virtual memberships? Write up a press release and send it to regional news outlets that feature local businesses, like this segment on KSBY News in California.

Tips for approaching news outlets:

• Use a free press distribution network like PR Newswire to find quality media leads known to feature small businesses.
• News outlets frequently lift copy directly from a press release and use it in their coverage, so make sure your press release clearly states what you’re offering.
• Include crucial details about your event or promotion, including date, website links, price, and why it’s worthy of publicity. 
• Share a little insight about your business (refer back to your unique story); that way, if you’re featured in a multi-business segment, your studio stands out.

Leverage Live Video on Social

There’s nothing like a personal training session to motivate your clients and build a connection. Well, in this post-COVID landscape, you can still do that with live videos.

Live video lets you knock down the screen to interact directly with your attendees. Encourage them to ask you questions and keep the communication active by addressing your viewers by name.

As you build attendance, create a daily 2-minute tutorial or weekly sweat session they can mark on their calendars. Live video is the closest we can get to a personal training session, and your viewers will show up pumped and ready to get moving.

Just ask Massy Arias, a fitness influencer with nearly 3 million followers on Instagram. Massy often engages her audience with Live workouts for all fitness levels. Viewers can join in for free beginner sessions, mobility and yoga flows, strength training, and warm-ups.

Toward the end of the video, she gives a call to action to guide viewers towards her paid 60-day strength and yoga program. 

How to Leverage Live for Your Fitness Studio

• Don’t be shy to jump on Live and start training with your viewers. Chances are, they’ll embrace the opportunity to get to know you better and join in.
• Leading up to your Live workout, tease the event on Instagram Stories, Facebook, and any social channels where you hang out. Promote it like an in-person event by leaving hints about the workout to get your audience pumped.
• Before you record, outline your routine and find an open, attractive space that sets the right tone for the workout, i.e., a lush indoor space for yoga or a bright room for cardio.
• While you’re recording, engage with your audience by asking them questions and interacting as if they’re working out beside you.
• As you conclude the workout, share the product or program you want to promote. Tell viewers about your fitness studio, a 30-day challenge, or a meal program. Whatever you’re promoting, you have viewers tuned in, so while they’re here, promote your services.

Monetize Behind The Curtain Content

Your business needs revenue to stay open, and fortunately, you don’t need a physical space to do that anymore. You can monetize exclusive content with apps like Patreon. The key is to incentivize your viewers to support you. How will you do that? By providing exclusive content that’s only available to your Patreon subscribers.

How to Monetize with Patreon

• Offer 2-3 subscriptions, and make each higher tear a more expensive investment. 
• Share snippets of exclusive Patreon content on your social channels to encourage your audience to subscribe.
• For a middle-tier subscription, offer bonuses like a 30-day meal plan or insider tips you don’t share in free content. Then up the ante for the premium subscription by offering monthly 1-1 coaching sessions to focus on each customer’s specific goals. 

By monetizing these higher subscription tiers, you’ll accrue revenue without any enormous overhead costs.

There are three membership levels, each under $10 a month, to make fitness accessible to all.

The lowest tier gives supporters access to the community page. The middle option offers monthly calendars, early access to programs and contests, and Live workouts. Lastly, the highest membership offers exclusive Q&A’s, plus all the perks of the lower tiers.

The beauty of this strategy is that you make the rules. Adopt this framework and apply it to your niche. The more you offer, the higher the subscription. 

Create a Referral Program

Before Coronavirus, digital marketing trends favored the new and unconventional. Now? We’re reverting to what has always worked: word of mouth. 

The 2018 Chatter Matters Word of Mouth report found that 83% of Americans offer word of mouth recommendations to their friends and family. How can you get existing clients to recommend your fitness studio?

Referral programs capitalize on the clientele you’ve already established. And when you make those clients happy? They’ll likely tell their friends about your fitness studio. Nudge them toward sharing by offering incentives for recruits.

You can easily implement a referral program for your existing members by offering rewards like 24 Hour Fitness. When members invite a friend to use a 3-day gym pass, they’re rewarded with a training session or in-store coupon.

But you don’t have to be a national gym chain to make this work because referrals work for businesses small and large.

There are a few ways to do this, but whatever method you choose, don’t skimp here because referrals will comprise much of your post-COVID fitness members. And if you want to expand with minimal investments that bring in sizable returns, let’s get people talking about you.

Referral program strategies:

• Offer a free 1:1 personal training session to existing members who recruit a new member. 
• Consider offering a free trial to your recruits, and while you have them, promote your Facebook group and online community that’s rich with free resources and exclusive access to new content.

• Launch a review campaign. Reviews are instant social proof. Incentivize them to leave a review by offering exclusive access to a private workout series or meal plan that gets them invested and singing your praises! 

While reviews aren’t a form of direct word of mouth, they work in the same way because 95% of customers read reviews before buying. 

When you combine referrals, reviews, and rewards, you create a word of mouth trifecta that builds revenue.

Repurpose Content Across Platforms

There’s no disputing the importance of content for business growth, but creating a steady stream of high-value content takes time. Repurposing content is kind of like juggling but way easier. It’s an effective way to stretch the existing content you’ve already created. 

Say you filmed a weight training video targeting specific muscle groups. You can create bite-sized content from one video for newsletters, Instagram Stories, Facebook posts, and more. 

Repurposing content saves you time and reaches your customers on various platforms. That’s especially beneficial if they happened to miss the original fitness video but caught your Instagram carousel post while scrolling the app after work. 

Need a tool to make repurposing your fitness content quick and painless? Try PosterMyWall, a free graphic design tool offering customizable templates for creating social media images, videos, and marketing graphics.  

Tips for repurposing fitness content:

• Review your existing video content. Think about how you can break down fitness videos into small, digestible pieces.
• Start with one video and branch off smaller content pieces for social media posts, infographics, or tweets.
• Rather than writing content from scratch, use an affordable transcription service like REV to transcribe your video’s audio into written text. Now you can use the text to formulate a blog post and social media captions.
• Cut short snippets from the full-length and share them on Instagram. Tell people to head to the link in your bio to see the full video.
• Snap screenshots of the video and post them to Twitter and Facebook.

Did you just create a dozen pieces of content from one video? You sure did! 

Cultivate an Engaged Community

With your business operating virtually, it makes sense to build a community for your members to interact with you and one another. One of the best ways to do this is by starting a private, members-only Facebook group.

The best part about this strategy is that it requires zero investment. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you’re tight on marketing funds, this is a great place to start. 

Offer exclusive access to your studio members and stimulate conversations by sharing new workouts, your favorite recipes, and tips for balancing healthy living at home. Take the time to interact personally with your members and show them that you’re a real human who cares about their progress and pain points. 

The goal is to make a fun, interactive, engaging space to grow your community like 305 Fitness, a dance cardio studio. The 305 At Home Facebook group is a private group where members chat about fitness goals, upcoming dance parties and motivate each other.

Tips for starting a Facebook group for your fitness studio:

• Encourage members to join your Facebook group. Tease them with exclusive content, real discussions, and exciting news.
• Ask new group members to introduce themselves in a post and share their goals and pain points.
• Post daily, respond to comments, and interact directly with your community to keep the conversations going.
• When you have an exciting product to promote, give your Facebook group members first-access — this will incentivize non-group members to join!

Choose a Monthly Theme for At-Home Fitness

You’re in a competitive industry, but there are ways to stand out. Rather than simply posting your content and recording fitness videos, personalize your program to keep it fun and lighthearted. 

Create monthly themes to engage your members and keep them interested in your content. Play around with themes like 30 days of crunches or Fit February. This strategy is another way to roll out new challenges that keep your clients motivated and participating year-round.

Because if you don’t, they might slip away or try another program. Adding that motivation boost will bring people back to participate and engage with the community.

Promote the monthly theme on your social profiles to encourage people to join your program, Facebook group, and jump in on the challenge.

Take it a step farther and ask members to take selfies of themselves participating in the monthly challenge and post it with a hashtag. This is a great way to build awareness about your fitness studio and recruit new members.

Fitness Themes in Action

A fitness theme can be as simple as targeting a specific area for one month or as dynamic as this Go The Distance challenge from iFit. For October, members participated in distance goals to reach major miles by running, cycling, or rowing. On October 31, members who completed the challenge received an exclusive reward.

Get the creative juices flowing and have fun trying different themes. Follow the format from iFit and reward members with free merch. When you get people involved, they’ll come back for more.

Offer Gift Certificates and Pre-Packaged Deals 

No one’s in the dark about how the pandemic has hit small businesses, and people are eager to help. Loyal clients will likely jump at the opportunity to purchase packages, gift certificates, and pre-paid memberships because they’re invested in your business.

There are several ways this can work, and you don’t have to do them all. Instead, try one and see how it goes. If it works well, keep at it. If not, try another strategy.

• Roll out pre-packaged personal training deals to use after the pandemic or when restrictions lift in your area. If you offer these sessions at discounted rates, people are more likely to buy them and cash in when they can meet up with you for a 1:1 session.
• Offer gift certificates for your clients to buy for friends and family, like the ClassPass gift card; a redeemable cash value people can apply to future membership plans.
• Discount your membership fees. It’s not an ideal solution, but it will help to keep your business afloat in the interim. 

Host a Fitness Workshop 

Regardless of fitness level, people always have questions that only pros like you can answer. There are probably several questions you regularly hear, right? 

How many calories should I eat every day? 

Am I breathing right during cardio? 

What’s the proper running form? 

Think about the repetitive questions you get and compile them into a workshop for your members. 

A workshop isn’t much different from a video series or fitness regime — you’re still instructing people. The difference is that you’re providing a comprehensive overview of a specific issue or problem in a workshop.

Workshops provide value that you can charge for or offer for free to your members. If non-members want to sign up, by all means, charge a fee for the workshop, and they might end up paying for a membership to your fitness studio.

Let’s look at a great example from Yoga with Adriene. 

In her free 30 Day Yoga Journey, Adriene instructs attendees on how to breathe consciously. On the sign-up page, she offers access to her free community platform and a downloadable calendar corresponding to the 30 days of breathwork students will learn.

The program is hyper-focused on one area of yoga that’ll benefit an attendee’s yoga technique. By offering this workshop, Adriene will likely garner new followers and subscribers to her online yoga studio.

Apply the technique:

1. Design your free workshop. You can choose to post a video series on your website, YouTube, or a third-party portal like Skillshare or Udemy.
2. Create an opt-in page with sales copy that illuminates the benefits of attending the workshop (including access to your private Facebook group).
3. Promote the workshop on your website and social media channels to build hype and encourage sign-ups.
4. Direct attendees to a higher sales funnel like training sessions or membership to your fitness studio.

Get Moving On Your New Marketing Strategy

The writing is on the wall: this pandemic changed the fitness industry. Brick and mortar gyms have had to migrate to virtual offerings to accommodate their members and maintain revenue. 

In this sink or swim era, fitness studios have found new life online and shown what can be achieved in dire straights.

As you pivot your marketing strategy and maneuver this new digital frontier, focus on reaching people on a more personal level. Share high-quality content across all platforms to promote your fitness studio and increase brand awareness. 

Most importantly, make fitness accessible, relatable, and convenient for your members, and you’ll experience a new type of digital business that’s pandemic-proof. Now go grind out your new strategy!

The post A Complete Guide To Marketing Your Fitness Studio — Post-Covid appeared first on Green Prophet.

The idea of starting your own business comes across our minds quite often. However, we tend to abandon the thought because we think that it is something that involves a lot of risks. It is true that starting your own business comes with a lot of risks and hard work. However, if you know what you are doing and you keep some golden rules of starting your own business in your mind, then you can change your fate in no time. From having a proper business plan to IT consulting, there are many things that you have to take care of.

If you don’t know what these golden rules are, then worry no more. This blog is going to cover everything you need to know. I’ve narrowed some very important tips that will help you in establishing your business like a pro. 

Here’s everything you need to know about it:

First Thing First – Work on Your Business Idea 

 Having a business plan is more than just selling your products or establishing someplace as your office. If you want to make sure that your business becomes a success, then you have to make sure that you are planning everything in a composed and well-researched manner. You need to analyze the market, the viability of your business plan, etc. 

More often than not, businesses suffer collapse because people become over-ambitious with their business ideas. Therefore, if you want to make your business a success, you need to sit down and take every single detail about your business plan into account.

Get All Kinds of Business Consulting – It’s Important

If you haven’t done any kind of business in the past and are going to start from scratch, you must understand the importance of getting business counseling. It is important because there are many things about business that only experts can guide you with. So, make sure that you get the right kind of business counseling if you want to make your business a success.

Develop a Sustainable Business Plan 

At the starting of any business, there are many difficulties that you could face. It is very likely that you might have to invest in your business from your pocket rather than earning profits. Therefore, you must make sure that you have a sustainability plan for your business so that it can at least survive the tough few months of the start. For example, you can start small projects that are sufficient to provide for the expenses of your main business.

Don’t Forget to Make Your Business Official 

More often than not, people are so busy establishing their business and making efforts about it that they forget some very important stuff like getting your business registered. If your business is not registered with the relevant authorities, then it can end up in a lot of trouble, and you definitely don’t want it to happen. Therefore, you must get your business registered as the first order of business so that you can avoid any kind of problem and focus on your business with your undivided attention.

Critically Review Your Financial Situation 

Even in the world of start-up culture, you need to make sure that you have enough finances to hold your business on grounds if things go unplanned for a month or two. Therefore, you need to have a critical look at your finances so that you and your business can survive on that money. If you don’t have that kind of money, then the rule is simple. You just cut some budget from the overall investment of your business and use that money as your secret stash in times of trouble.

Learn What Your Targeted Audience is looking for

Lastly, doing any business success is all about understanding the requirements of your targeted audience. You must make sure that you are studying the market and analyzing the needs of your potential customers. It’ll help to provide them with the services that they are looking for right from the start of your business. For example, if you are launching a product, then you just need to make your product one step better than your competitors, and just like that, your clients will be attracted to your product.

The post 6 Tips to Establishing a New Business from Scratch appeared first on Green Prophet.

In order to bridge the divide between electricity prices and costs and recoup an estimated loss of nearly $2.39 billion, Spain has slashed and in some cases completely eliminated the subsidies that first made renewable energy projects competitive against fossil fuels.

Masdar took advantage of these subsidies in 2008, when Torresol Energy was established. The Spanish engineering group SENER has a 60 percent controlling interest in the company, while Masdar has a 40 percent interest.

Through Torresol, Masdar helped to established the 20 MW Gemasolar power plant, which produces renewable energy around the clock thanks to groundbreaking solar storage technology, and the Valle 1 and Valle 2 plants with a capacity of 50MW each are still in progress.

Gemasolar alone diverts roughly 30,000 tons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere each year.

Related: Super green Masdar Headquarters design awarded to Brookfield Complex

But Spain’s decision to cut tariffs jeopardizes Masdar’s investment in the country, so the company filed their complaint through the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on February 11, 2014.

“As a result of the Spanish government’s unwillingness to overturn the regulatory changes, we are pursuing legal action to protect our investments,” a spokesman for a Dutch subsidiary of Masdar, Solar & Wind Cooperatief UA told Reuters.

The paper adds that foreign funds RREEF Infrastructure and Antin Infrastructure have also filed suits over the new energy laws.

:: Reuters

The post Masdar sues Spain over solar energy subsidy cuts appeared first on Green Prophet.

This news comes despite the work of Egyptian activists who have been trying to convince the government that the $3 billion bridge slated to cross Ras Mohamed National Park, which currently protects coral reefs, dive sites and a slew of endangered species, would cause irreparable environmental damage.

”If they build this bridge, coral reefs, endangered species and at least 22 dive sites will all be gone,” Ibrahim Mohamed, an activist with the anti-bridge group IBRedSea told Green Prophet in an earlier interview.

Once built, the 50km land-sea bridge named after King Abdulla will allow travelers to get from Egypt to Saudi Arabia in just 20 minutes.

But critics warn that the western-styled tourism that has for so long propped up the Sinai peninsula will be forever lost if Saudis are given such easy access to the area.

Already there is indication that Qatar’s link to the Muslim Brotherhood is causing divisions on the Arabian peninsula. This move is seen as yet another step towards the radical Islamification of Egypt.

IBRedSea activist Ahmed Abdel Rasoul said that no environmental impact assessments have been carried out to ensure that Egypt’s natural resources will be protected as the progress continues.

One less-discussed side effect of the bridge will be development. While some of the peninsula resorts cater to an upscale clientele, most of the ramshackle beach huts lining the coast will be inadequate for Saudi visitors, which means that grand hotel development plans and other infrastructure will swallow up a great deal of what nature remains.

:: Egypt Independent

The post Egypt is Close to Bridging the Distance to Saudi appeared first on Green Prophet.

I considered myself an entrepreneur at the age of 15, when I set up shop on the cobblestone streets across my dad’s apartment on the island of Lefkada, Greece, to sell stones I collected from local beaches and then decorated.  Although it was a great idea, and surprisingly lucrative, it probably wasn’t groundbreaking enough to have become a featured story for a project like Jo’Preneurs, a new social initiative happening in Jordan. 

Jo’Preneurs: Stories of Young Jordanian Entrepreneurs, officially initiated this year, has thus far created 15 documentaries, each highlighting the journey of an individual or a small group of entrepreneurs in realizing a dream come true.

Reflecting upon “their inspiration, their challenges, their execution, their drive, and their insight,” the featured entrepreneurs speak to the camera to tell the community about their business risk-taking, from personal standpoints.

The room setting or backdrop suits the style or product with which the entrepreneur identifies.  For example, hanging behind Tamer al-Masri and Michael Makdah, the cofounders of a T-shirt design company, as they talk are six different T-shirts bearing the duo’s own contemporary graphics.

Suleiman Bakhit, founder of Aranim Media Factory, speaks in front of a shelf housing some of the superheroes and action figures from his comics.

There are teasers of a handful of these documentaries currently on YouTube; non-Arabic speakers won’t understand but can at least get a sense for the presentation of the documentaries.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHq5WlI8zPY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwR2FBCbKBs[/youtube]

Credit for Jo’Preneurs goes to the creator and director, Shadi A. Eideh, and the producer, Lara Al-Safadi.  Jo’Preneurs is not meant to be simply a platform for sharing success stories of Jordanian entrepreneurs; it dares others to refuse to let great ideas slip away and instead do something about them.  As the slogan goes, “They did it. You can too.”

::jopreneurs.com

Image of man with light bulb head from Shutterstock

The post Jo’Preneurs Sheds Light on Bright Ideas appeared first on Green Prophet.

During a recent trip to Iran, EuroNews correspondent Ali Sheikholeslami found that many Iranians are becoming unwitting vegetarians as they can no longer afford to buy meat. Following international sanctions against the country’s nuclear ambitions, inflation has soared, the Rial has crashed to about half its former value against western currencies, and locals are feeling the pinch.

Nichoas Kristof from the New York Times saw a different Iran filled with one night stands and thrill-seekers, but the newest round of sanctions will be felt by those who are already living on the margins.

Chicken of the poor

Sheikholeslami spoke with a retired teacher who asked to remain anonymous. With a monthly salary of no more than €360 a month, the €2 per kilo of chicken price hike doesn’t fit into his budget.

“We’ve turned to aubergine, the chicken of the poor,” the man joked. It has been three months since he has purchased any meat, which now costs about €6 per kilo in some parts of the country.

In January, EuroNews asked a Finance Ministry official whether a huge devaluing of the Iranian currency could be attributed to the sanctions that restricted Iran’s central bank. He brushed off the suggestion, no doubt wanting to appear immune to the west’s punishment for its ongoing nuclear weapons planning.

Stiff upper lip

But the latest round of sanctions, which prohibits countries in the EU from purchasing oil from Iran, will make it harder for officials, or residents, to keep a stiff upper lip.

Overall, Iran gets approximately 80% of its export revenue from oil, which have already fallen by 40% this year according to the International Energy Agency. Of those, the EU previously purchased 585,000 barrels a day, accounting for roughly 23% of the country’s exports.

EuroNews estimates that the latest round of sanctions could result in quarterly losses of €6 billion.

Even though British Foreign Secretary William Hague claims that the Iranian people will be largely insulated from the effect of sanctions, as food and medicine will be exempt, these economic restrictions are designed to put enormous pressure on the government to reconsider its nuclear ambitions. And each new wave inevitably brings greater hardship to the people.

:: EuroNews

image credit: Man with Aubergine, Shutterstock

More News from Iran:

Iranian Game Warden Fined After Shooting Poacher in the Foot

Iranian Artists Fight Smog with the Tehran Monoxide Project

Bamboo Dome Shelter Pops up in Iran

Iran’s Energy Minister Looks to Green Energy after Sanctions

The post Iranians Turn to Aubergine, Chicken for the Poor appeared first on Green Prophet.

The idea seemed flawless: battery-powered cars that could run on 100% electricity and could be recharged almost instantly by swapping batteries at special charging stations. But despite all the optimistic predictions, Better Place, the Israeli company that has been trying to build the world’s first operational infratructure for electric vehicles (EV), has been facing a series of obstacles in moving ahead with its technology.

Israel Corp., which holds 32% of the company’s shares, reported that Better Place lost over 1.5 billion NIS ($433 million) since 2009, 760 million NIS ($204 million) of which was lost over the course of 2011 alone, and deployment of battery recharging and swapping stations has been delayed in both Denmark in Israel from the scheduled date this April to the summer.

Heavy spending

Better Place has secured millions in funding from private investors around the globe and has been spending heavily in the last few years as it attempts to build complete EV infrastructure in Israel and Denmark that will include not only battery swapping stations for long distance travel but also hardware, software, installation mechanisms, and charge sports in parking lots, urban centers, offices and residences to support use of EVs.

The company has also been spending on research and development as it prepares to bring its EV to the Israeli market later this year. They are already being sold in Denmark with Renault that is directly marketing the vehicle.

Better Place hopes that once its EVs are sold in Israel later this year–the company estimates it will sell 4,000, according to Ynet News–it will see major returns on investment. But prospects for EVs are dim these days as initial excitement for the product has waned and been replaced with concerns over cost and range of the battery-powered vehicles.

Waning interest

An IBM report released last November found that consumers are generally not interested in paying a lot of money for a car that they think will drive only short distances. Even if batteries have higher mileage now than they used to, EVs are perceived as impractical and an unattainable purchase for the middle class.

Israel Corp.’s report found that Better Place’s sales have matched those bleak predictions. Better Place was expected to sell 115,000 electric cars in Denmark and Israel between 2011 and 2016, but the company is far behind those numbers.

In Denmark, Renault has been mostly selling the Zoe model which is more compact than the Fluence sedan EV, and has announced that it will stop selling swap-in battery cars and only sell the permanent battery cars and those are considered more practical on the market.

Meanwhile, Better Place’s flashy futuristic recharging stations have mostly been sitting idle in Israel and Denmark. Globes reported that the Danes have been using the spots as ashtrays, something Better Place has had to publicly ask them not to do.

Image via: Hakan Dahlstrom

More on Better Place:

Better Place Puts 100 EVS on Israel’s Roads
Danish Council Rejects Blue Better Place Chargers
Better Place Unveils its Mammoth Recharging Plan

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For those times when you can’t use electronic delivery methods and just need those paper products, eco-friendly suppliers like Flyerzone come in handy.

As much as we may try to avoid the need for paper products (or find creative ways to reuse paper), sometimes you just need to get something printed on good old-fashioned paper.  Business cards are a classic example (and not everyone can stamp their business cards on the back of used railway tickets in the style of Israeli green business guru Erez Steinberg).  So when you do need to create a paper product – such as leaflets, business cards, flyers, stationary, invitations, posters or postcards – it is best to go through an eco-friendly supplier.  UK-based printing company Flyerzone fits the (paper) bill. Better news, they deliver around the world.

Flyerzone provides an easy way to order design and printing projects online, with a large and growing catalogue of “design agency quality” templates that can be easily tailored to your specific needs.  (Above and below are examples of a few of their flyer and business card templates.)

The designs are created by an international community of designers who constantly add new designs to the site.

In addition to providing aesthetically pleasing products, though, Flyerzone tries to act responsibly towards the environment as well.  The paper used in Flyerzone printing projects is only sourced from well managed forests that are certified under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).  In addition, there is a wide range of recycled paper options (some 100% recycled, and some 50% recycled). They have an excellent policy that rewards its employees who think green with bonuses and benefits.

Flyerzone buys its inks in bulk, too.  All printing is done with vegetable-based inks that are pumped straight from large drums (as opposed to smaller cartridges in wasteful packaging).

Unused paper and printing plates are recycled by Flyerzone, and used chemicals are disposed of responsibly.

:: Flyerzone

The post Eco-Friendly Flyerzone Makes Paper Printing Less Guilty appeared first on Green Prophet.

Cyprus may have a long way to go in terms of being eco-friendly, but GreenGraffiti has brought it a little closer.

Graffiti may conjure up images and smells of atmospherically harmful spray paints and underground punk rock enthusiasts, but it doesn’t have to.  Well, the punk rockers can stay, but graffiti can be green without sacrificing any of its cool.  Graffiti can be made out of natural materials instead of spray paints, and even be used as a more sustainable form of advertising (instead of wasteful and polluting billboards).

And that is the message that GreenGraffiti, a sustainable communications company that helps companies advertise through eco-friendly graffiti, is trying to promote.  That, and the idea that you can have “profits with principles”.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IKadDBLT1Q[/youtube]

Founded in Amsterdam in 2007 when Jim Bowed challenged Dutch green guru Eckart Wintzen to create marketing materials without paper or ink, GreenGraffiti has developed into a communications leader that has created over 150 campaigns and worked with multinational corporations such as Starbucks and Domino’s Pizza.

Instead of printing advertisements on standard billboards, GreenGraffiti uses templates to sustainably imprint messages all over the urban landscape.  It does this through a few different media: chalk and milkpaint (seen below), moss, sand, snow, and reverse graffiti (seen above).

As shown in the video clip, reverse graffiti is a process by which a message is “cleaned” onto a sidewalk using a template and a power washer.  Advertisements created this way can last between two weeks and several months, and the water used by GreenGraffiti to create them is offset through the GreenAdsBlue foundation.  (GreenGraffiti is completely carbon neutral.)

“Using our business as a tool for social and environmental improvement, we aim to be the world market leader in sustainable communication,” says GreenGraffiti.  “And make the world a little better along the way.”

Now that GreenGraffiti has arrived in Cyprus, hopefully it can make the island a greener place too.

:: GreenGraffiti
:: Cyprus Mail

Read more about Cyprus:
Cypriot Law Threatens to Discourage Cycling
1 Million Migrating Songbirds are Killed for Pickled Dish in Cyprus
Bike Sharing Launched in Nicosia, But Environmental Commissioner Has His Doubts

The post Going Green GreenGraffiti Hits the Streets of Cyprus appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Dead Sea Works would have the public believe that it is saving – not destroying – the Dead Sea.

Greenwashing campaigns have become abundant in recent years as the green trend has been growing in popularity.  With greater environmental awareness among the public over the past decade or so, businesses attempt to attract positive attention by emphasizing (whether justifiably or not) their greener qualities.  Unfortunately, more often than not, these green claims are exaggerated or completely fictitious.  Such was the case this week when the Dead Sea Works, a company largely held responsible for the increase in Dead Sea salt accumulations and decreasing water levels, claimed that it was actually saving the natural wonder in a new media campaign.

The $1.5 million dollar campaign is the company’s first attempt to appeal directly to the public, since it has previously stuck to behind-the-scenes lobbying tactics.  It is believed to anticipate a demand by the State of Israel that the company pay for the project to dredge the salt from the Dead Sea.

Why take responsibility if you can somehow convince the public that your actions are good for the Dead Sea?

The animated, simple vocabulary campaign focused on happiness and joy – two things the Israeli public won’t be if the Dead Sea Works continues its work and eventually leads all the surrounding hotels to sink.

Dead Sea Works has transformed the southern part of the Dead Sea into an evaporation pond in order to exploit the lake’s minerals, which has caused the water levels in the northern section to dangerously drop.  Furthermore, the area around Ein Bokek – where several hotels are located – is threatening to rise and flood.

Hopefully the company’s new greenwashing campaign will not deter the State of Israel from requiring that Dead Sea Works be responsible for dredging the salt out of the evaporation pool, otherwise this will just rub Dead Sea salt in the wound of this increasingly disastrous environmental situation.

: Haaretz

Read more about the Dead Sea and its relationship with the Dead Sea Works::
Time Running Out for Saving Dead Sea Hotels
Sinking Hotel! Salt Imbalance in Mined Dead Sea Threatens Tourism Industry
Ahava is Good For the Skin, But What About the Dead Sea?

Image via: MaMaVe

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