When students shop the CU-Boulder Book Store this fall, they will see a new display featuring notebooks, binders, filler paper, note cards and other popular products that are made from recycled materials.
Environmentally motivated shoppers have this option because of a Leeds School of Business marketing class. As part of the course titled Marketing's Role in the Socially Responsible Firm, students completed initial research to determine which recycled products were available at the best price. The goal of the course is to teach students how to use environmental and socially responsible marketing as a competitive advantage.
The bookstore gave the students a list of the best-selling school supplies. The students conducted research and found vendors that supplied these products made with partial or 100 percent recycled materials. Â鶹ÒùÔº helped the bookstore select the products and set up the display.
Over the summer, Professor Steven Engel and his teaching assistants, Cary Sanden and Will Randle, worked with the bookstore to place orders, identify display space and coordinate advertising. The course will be offered again in the fall 2003 semester and will continue to identify other recycled products.
Â鶹ÒùÔº also will design and participate in marketing projects to communicate to the campus why it is important to consider recycling, in addition to price and quality, when making purchasing decisions.
"We all know resources are limited, but with this project students can easily make choices about which products are going to further our natural supply," said Randle. "Recycling goods does not end with a trash can, consumers must purchase recycled products. We are just making that a little easier."
The paper that CU recycles each day is processed by the CU recycling center and then purchased by Eureka, the company that makes one of the recycled products sold by the bookstore. "Having recycled products in the bookstore brings the campus recycling effort full circle," said Engel.
The Marketing's Role in the Socially Responsible Firm course is part of the Leeds School's business and society initiative that examines the impact business has on society. For more information on the initiative visit .