Superman and PrintEco

A a childhood fan of the Superman films, I finally gave in to the temptation this weekend to go see Man of Steel while it is still in theaters.  I recall that in Superman III (1983) there is a scene in which Superman cleans up an oil spill and in the film that brought the original film franchise to a screeching halt, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), the man of steel rounds up all of the earth’s nuclear weapons and throws them into the sun.  In Man of Steel, the original narrative regarding the planet Krypton is altered to reflect our own world’s struggle to come to terms with and address global environmental concerns like climate change.  In the original narrative, Krypton is destroyed when its radioactive core becomes unstable. However, in Man of Steel we learn that the Krypton’s planetary instability is due to the fact that its people have exhausted their natural resources and begun digging too deeply into the core for energy and fuel.

With this in mind I was searching the internet to see if others had picked up on this and stumbled onto a blog run by the software copy PrintEco. The company designs software that, when installed, works with applications like Word and Excel to adjust documents to minimize the amount of extra space wasted in the printing process, thus claiming to reduce paper consumption by 24%. Curiously, PrintEco hosts its own Green-themed blog. The blog is a mix of advertising for the companies software and an open space for what I assume are employees to post on green issues in media and culture. In a blog entry titled, “How to Save the Planet Like Superman,” author Michael Ponte discusses his experience seeing the film and how he too noticed the subtle environmental themes that were less obvious than in the earlier Christopher Reeve films.  What I appreciated about the post, in addition to its content, was that there were no hidden plugs for the company’s products.

I’d love to hear what others think and if there are examples of other companies out there who encourage their employees to blog on green issues without having to use those blog entries as greenwashing. Can companies sincerely and ethically promote green products w/out greenwashing and allow employees the freedom to share their observations without having to always be on the pitch?