I started working on the Absolut series before I even knew about the Discovery purchase; Treehugger has never made any pretense about being a not-for-profit site and this has nothing to do with Discovery.

Absolut approached us with their concept of “visions of an absolut world” which was is actually pretty interesting and unusual, where the public can contribute visions. Absolut wanted to seed it with a few slicker visions and came to us and a few other bloggers.

My first post on it, which you have linked to, said: “TreeHugger was asked to participate and, of course, contribute a blog. We had some fun with a theme we have been following for a while on TreeHugger: downloadable designs.”

We set up a completely separate site to be part of their “vision”, clearly marked with Absolut, and I picked a theme that I have been following for a couple of years, which I now had an opportunity to build a site around and explain the idea.

Whenever I did a post on TreeHugger proper to tell people about the other site, I clearly mark it with “absolut downloads” in the title and link.

Did we disclose enough? should we have said in big letters on every post “this is paid for by Absolut”? I weighed that and thought it overkill; we are a for profit site and everything we do is paid for by the ads. I thought I disclosed enough in every post by putting them in the title.

Treehugger has always trod a difficult line, trying to do good and attract people to the movement while making a living at it. This was our very first shot at something like this within the blog and we thought a long time about what we would talk about and how we would deliver it. It has offended some, but I hope that being over there in the Absolute visions website may have attracted more.

Regards, Lloyd Alter

I think its because they want to appeal to the masses and by having some major sponsors to support them to get a lot of money. But the masses don’t really care about the green movement. Increasingly the masses are caring but you don’t have sell like this.

The green movement is small but growing exponentially. It does not need corporate sponsors like Bud Light! They could at least look for an organic wine to promote!!!

(I am still going to email, mike at treehugger I think it is, for a link trade!)