Now that I’m looking for innovative uses of SMS, I see them everywhere — even on yogurt containers. This recent Stonyfield Farm lid suggested I send a text message to get climate-related information on a company, so I did:

SENT TO 30644: cc stonyfield farm

RECEIVED REPLY: Climate Counts has ranked STONYFIELD FARM 2nd out of 11 Food Products companies. UNILEVER leads this sector. Learn how to change the world at http://climatecounts.org. To get action alerts & let companies know climate change matters to you (up to 6 msg/month), reply ACTION

Getting a minimal readout on a company’s environmental behavior via SMS is a novelty, but not that useful. For that reason, I don’t think we’ll suddenly see shoppers texting as they stroll the aisles. The power of branding is too strong and our ecological sensitivity is too weak. An SMS will not help anyone decide between Coke and Pepsi, and I’m not buying a Toshiba laptop over an Apple, despite Apple’s relatively poor environmental record (sorry), because there are too many other factors at play.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen an SMS-based service promoted on a yogurt container. Can you imagine seeing that only a few years ago? I wouldn’t have known what to make of it.