You may not know it, but today, June 30th, 2008, is Please Take My Children to Work Day. While it’s a bit late in the day to pawn your children off on your husband or someone else, I thought you would enjoy learning about this holiday. My friend Jen Singer, founder of MommaSaid, created the holiday to give stay-at-home moms the day off. (Full disclosure: I currently contribute a version of The Lean Green Family to Jen’s website here.)

If you’re interested, Jen was on The CBS Early Show this morning (this is a link to the segment) talking about her holiday, and the segment included video of Jen cleaning her house. Considering that stay-at-home moms spend about 100 hours a week working (see this Salary.com survey article for more on that stat), it made sense to show Jen doing what most of us moms spend a good deal of our day doing–cleaning up.

From my green perspective, I was so pleased to see Jen wiping down the bathroom sink with Clorox Green Works spray cleaner. So that makes Jen clever, funny, talented and green. Way to go, Jen!

For the longest time people have aligned the saying “sex sells” with advertising. That is, advertisers believe that if they put something remotely sexy in their ads, their target audience would be more likely to pick up on the message and, more importantly, pick up the product. Some examples include:

* Brooke Shields infamous Calvin Klein jeans ad in the 1980s that said “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” (Hey, when I was a high schooler in the 1980s, Calvins were the “it” jean to have so something must have worked there.)

* Have you heard about or seen David Beckham in his knickers for Emporio Armani? I wonder if those briefs have been flying off the shelves since those billboards went up?

While I’m confident that sex will continue to sell products until the end of time, now it seems that green is the new “sex” when it comes to selling something. According to this article called “Need Press? Repeat ‘Green,’ ‘Sex,’ ‘Cancer,’ ‘Secret,’ ‘Fat’” in today’s New York Times, marketers that put the words “green” or “the environment” in their press releases or product launches are getting better pick up.

As someone who is on the receiving end of many press releases and press kits, I can totally relate to this notion. For starters someone who is pitching me a green topic and can spin it to be relevant to this blog or the articles I write for magazines is someone I’ll pay attention to. On the other hand if I get a generic green-related press release or email, I might look at it but I’ll probably delete it without even responding.

With consumers I think it’s important to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your greenback, especially if you’re trending towards purchasing eco-friendly products. For example, my recent post about the Perf Go Green trash bags got picked up on another blog. This blog writer did a cost comparison to regular trash bags and found out that while the Perf Go Green bags might ease her guilty green conscience, regular trash bags were easier on her wallet.

Are there some eco-friendly products that you’ve wanted to buy, saw advertisements for that looked enticing, but when it came down to it, you just couldn’t justify the cost? I’d love to hear your examples.