Heavy rains and flood waters flow across the impervious surfaces of roads and parking lots. That flow pushes pollution on those surfaces–plastic bottles, cigarette butts, motor oil–into stormwater management systems. That pollution then dumps into lakes and streams. This system is how so much plastic ends up in our oceans....
Tag: pricing
Innovative Pricing Turns Plastic Into Transit
It’s a different way to pay with plastic — bottles instead of credit cards. Cities like Beijing, Istanbul, Sydney, and Surabaya let you pay public transit fares with recyclable plastic. Innovative transit pricing is one way that public and social sector marketers achieve multiple goals at once....
Does Being Social Animals Make Us Lazy?
We’re social animals. That means there’s always someone else around, and that means it’s easy for people to shirk responsibilities....
Designing Elections
We have elections all over the place: within companies, nonprofits, homeowner’s associations, kid’s sports league. Civic elections are a social good. As with all social goods, marketing principles apply to elections....
Case Study in Nonprofit Healthcare: Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
For social goods like health care, the buyer and the end consumer are often two different parties. In much of health care, an insurance company or a government agency is the buyer, while the individual patient is the end consumer. At least in the United States, for-profit medicine companies exploit this split. They charge...
Continue readingDistributing Help to the Homeless
How do you deliver help to homeless people with no fixed address and little to no money? ...
Government Should Serve Citizens Not Customers
Government, along with public and social sector marketers, should serve citizens not customers....
Data-driven Design for Transportation Infrastructure Saves Lives
According to U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 47 percent of fatal traffic accidents in the U.S. occur in urban areas, resulting in nearly 15,000 deaths per year. That’s more than 40 people dying each day on urban roadways. If there was a data-driven design for transportation infrastructure that saved lives, shouldn’t we implement...
Continue readingBuilding Quality Infrastructure for the Social Good
Critics of government spending claim that building quality infrastructure for the social good is not affordable. Focus on utility and low cost, they say. No need for grand stone building with imposing facades. Their concerns touch on two core marketing topics, design and pricing....
The Power of Pricing: Paying for Public Infrastructure
In their recent report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave US infrastructure a grade of D+. ASCE also said bad infrastructure costs U.S. households $9 per day in higher prices, poor service, repairs, and wasted time. For just $3 per day, they say we could fix the problem. Those numbers sound...
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