Kickstart: Can your shoes make you green?

True story: I once attended a press event on sustainability in the auto industry where a rather clueless member of the local media kept asking the executives if they were sure people wanted green cars. "I prefer silver," she said.

So let's be clear, the new ad campaign from Adidas featuring Kermit the Frog deals with being green in more of a metaphorical sense, not strictly the color of his "skin."

Adidas is using Kermit to help promote its sustainable Stan Smith line of shoes, which uses recycled polyester and other plastics, including material collected from waterways.

Our sister paper Advertising Age writes that each pair of Stan Smiths now have an upper made from recycled materials. Adidas recently said it plans for nine out of 10 of its products to be sustainable, either through recycled materials or meant for reuse, by 2025.

In a one-minute advertisement released March 23, Kermit doesn't specifically mention Adidas (although he's wearing a pair of familiar white shoes) but instead focuses on actions taken by individuals.

"They say every problem has a solution," he says in the commercial. "You might wonder, 'Am I too small to change this whole world? Am I the only one pitching in?'"

Health care company Baxter International Inc. is rethinking the executive bonus.

CEO Jose Almeida is passing up his bonus of about $880,000 for 2020 and instead the company is changing the way it rewards executives, our sister paper Crain's Chicago Business writes.

Rather than traditional financial targets like net sales or cash flow, Baxter has identified other strategic priorities: patient safety and quality; being a best place to work, including initiatives on diversity, culture and talent; and growth through "innovation."

Baxter isn't the first, and likely won't be the last, firm to dig into the reasoning behind executive bonuses, but it will be interesting to see if other companies follow suit.

But don't feel sorry for Almeida. His total compensation for 2020 was $15.9 million, up 14 percent from 2019, CCB notes.

Entrepreneuers have been trying to hack the medicine bottle through various efforts. Rather than the familiar amber-colored polypropylene, how about putting individual doses in flexible packaging? Just tear off the section for your morning meds. No need to dig out each pill from its individual bottle.

Now the Israel-based group Tikkun Olam Makers (TOM) wants to replace PP with paper.

"The Prescription Paper Pill Bottle, a first of its kind, is 100 percent compostable and biodegradable," TOM says on its website. "Its open-source design adheres to FDA regulations for durability, light, water and child resistance. It's available to any pharmacy for filling prescription tablets and capsules. Once used then emptied, the paper bottle can be tossed into any compostable bin with its Rx label to decompose and be reused as fertilizer to safely replenish the soil in fields, gardens, and landscapes."

The catch? People and businesses that want to use the paper bottles will have to make them on their own at this point, which requires a series of steps to fold and shape them with a special coated paper.