An Environmental Journey that has Come Full Circle
Guest post by: Jacob Givens, Director of Promotions and Marketing of Biofriendly
So often in life we are forced down diverging pathways—fearful that we are moving further away from our goals, only to soon discover that these alternate routes were critical in providing tools for our future success. This was exactly the case for Noel Carroll, CEO of Biofriendly, whose environmental journey led him down a road full of twists and turns that eventually came full circle to his goal of saving the planet.
The son of Australian immigrants, Carroll comes from a long line of environmentalists, who won the Queen’s Award for saving marine life in the polluted North Sea with their invention, the Vortoil oil/water separator. They continued their environmental journey by launching Biofriendly in 1999 to reduce the world’s air pollution problem with their breakthrough technology, Green Plus® fuel enhancer. The business was focused on selling Green Plus to help reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions in everything from automobiles to maritime ships to diesel equipment.
After graduating from college at the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, CA, Carroll provided assistance to his family’s business by designing and managing its website and launching the Biofriendly Blog. He also launched two of his own businesses, the first was the entertainment website, newgoldtooth.com, which created written and video content, most notably, the animated series, “Jeff Talks to God.” This company also created industrial and promotional videos for small businesses and non-profit organizations in Southern California. The second business was a web-based marketing and manufacturing company for soccer goal posts called Duralite Soccer Goals. As a lifelong player and fan of the sport, Carroll grew this passion project to the largest digitally-based soccer goal company in America. It was during this chapter of his life that he honed his promotion and marketing skills, developed an online presence, and discovered the power of the internet to grow and monetize a business. This experience created an opportunity for Carroll to partner with a group of close friends in the entertainment industry and co-found a production company called Good Cops Entertainment. The team went on to create multiple hit series under his leadership, partnering with Warner Brother’s digital gaming arm at the time called Machinima. This opened the door for Carroll to utilize his online savvy and social media techniques to help finance and produce their award-winning feature film, “I Had A Bloody Good Time At House Harker,” with Shoreline Entertainment. This was an illuminating time in Carroll’s life as he spent several years creating engaging online content and building an audience, which would contribute to his vision of how environmentalism-in-action can be communicated through media.
In 2018, Carroll was recruited as CEO of Biofriendly to help reshape and revitalize the company’s vision for the future. Carroll could see that even with the ongoing use of gasoline and diesel, and the established infrastructure of fossil fuels being used around the world, consumers were desperate to find renewable energy and green solutions. In fact, if Green Plus would be phased out in the near future by the lack of fuel—that would be a huge win for the planet. There was no better time than now to expand Biofriendly and grow the business into environmental education, media and content. With his extensive background in the entertainment industry, Carroll could see that the current green space was being bogged down by negativity, eco-shaming, and pessimistic news reporting. As one of his first actions as CEO, Carroll re-imagined the Biofriendly Blog he founded over a decade earlier and created Biofriendly Planet, an online media hub to entertain and inform with approachable, easy-to-use applications for daily life. Carroll knew that most people might feel intimidated by environmental changes, so Biofriendly Planet could be a safe space to reach people through positivity and teach simple green solutions. Since its launch the platform spawned daily sustainable columns, uplifting news updates, social media followings, and even a weekly series called The Biofriendly Podcast. This is only the beginning for Biofriendly and their drive and purpose to create a better tomorrow.
