Greenfest Chicago Followup: Silverleaf Resorts Snookered Organizers to Promote Timeshare Resort with Cruiseship Giveaway

What a week! I have felt down-right journalistic these past few days as I’ve poked and prodded my way though a story that first popped up during Chicago Greenfest a few weeks back; a story about Silverleaf Resorts, a very-NOT-green timeshare company giving away an even-less-green Cruise vacation smack in the middle of Greenfest Chicago.

We got their main booth rep Michael Stevens on camera saying that there was nothing green about Silverleaf Resorts or their promotion, that they were there “talking to all the people that love green”, and that they were just “marketing for our resort”. I was given a rambling, semi-incoherent answer to my very simple question “how are you green?” that wandered into the absurd. Apparently, in Silverleaf Resorts world, having 300 acres of land makes you Green.

You can read the original post here, watch the video for the full dirt:

After I got back from Chicago, I started zipping around emails to the two main orgs behinds Greenfest Global Exchange, Co-op America, and their PR firm Organic Works Marketing for an explanation on how Silverleaf Resorts got their booth. Did someone at Greenfest drop the ball in the screening process? Did Silverleaf “mis-represent” themselves in the application process?

It turned out to be a little of both- a small dash of the first and a heaping measure of the latter. Jim Kinsella of Silverleaf Resorts snookered to the organizers of Greenfest. Someone at Silverleaf Resorts verbally told the Greenfest screeners that they had two sites that were built with green materials and practices. I have yet to find any evidence of anything green from Silverleaf Resorts and they have failed to respond to my request for comment/clarification. But it’s clear that whoever was in charge of screening the Silverleaf Resorts application was too trusting and didn’t do the necessary footwork needed to verify their green claims.

Silverleaf Resorts promised the screeners that they would only exhibit information about one of their green facilities and made no mention of the cruise give-away.

During the Friday setup, the Greenfest Floor Manager didn’t see the giant Cruise banner SIlverleaf Resorts later put up and apparently didn’t do a walk through on either Saturday or Sunday, when I saw it up behind their booth.

If I had to wager, I’d guess that most of the exhibitors at Greenfest fall squarely into the Kind Greenie category of people. They’re mostly nice crunchy kind folks who don’t try to lie and cheat on their exhibitor application. I can see how it’d be easy for the organizers of Greenfest to get complacent.

I hope this serves as a wake up call to the great people running Greenfest. There are lots of Jim Kensellas and Silverleaf Resorts in the world and more of them will be trying to get into our space. Don’t make it easy for them- they’re welcome when they actually green themselves up, in the meantime we’ve got to keep beating them back down.

Rooting Out The Non-Green Booth at Greenfest Chicago: Timeshares, and Cruises, and Greenwash… Oh My!

I spent the last weekend in Chicago meeting up with the rest of the EarthFirst crew (they are in Chicago, I’m in Maine) and attending Greenfest. This year the event was held on the lake on the Navy Pier and I rolled into the event on Saturday to scout out things ahead of our planned Sunday shoot.

I was looking for things to riff off- any out of place companies or greenwashed marketing pitches, something that makes you think of that Seasame Street song “One of these things is not like the other…”.

It didn’t take me long to stumble on the holy grail of the Greenfest Greenwash, or should I say- the un greenwash. The people at this booth were either too stupid or too lazy to even throw a coat of green paint on.

The culprits: Silverleaf Resorts, a big ol’ timeshare resort corporation. They have resorts and facilities in six states and have thousands of acres of resorts, big ass hotel and event facilities, and even a waterpark in their portfolio. There is absolutely zero about them that is green. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

Silverleaf Resorts was at Greenfest to give away a Cruise vacation in exchange for giving them your contact info. The last I checked, modern cruise ships are big floating dirty cities that discharge their waste directly into the ocean, burn up scads of fossil fuels, and bring wandering, camera toting hoards to ecologically sensitive places all over the world.

So let me get this right- some very non-green company was in the middle of freakin’ Greenfest, promoting a ‘couldn’t be less green’ prize giveaway.

And their booth was mobbed!

W. T. F.

When I first found their booth I asked them what they did as a company to be green. One of the ladies behind the booth started prattling on about how they have 1,000 acres of land.

Yeah, and….

That was it, they have 1,000 acres of land. That was green to her. Then she stammered around saying something about CFL bulbs and reusable shopping bags. I got the distinct impression that it might have been the first time she had heard the term “green” in this context.

When we came back to Greenfest on Sunday with our camera crew, we set off to hunt them down and ask them what the fsck they were doing at Greenfest. Here’s what we came up with, enjoy the video:

Like our hipster host Jacob said, I hope Silverleaf Resorts does not show up at Greenfest next year. If we find them, I can’t promise we won’t unleash our full armament of green snark and sarcasm. It could get messy.