Wasteful conservation rallies?

Has anyone else seen big displays urging people to conserve resources that are themselves enormous wastes of energy and material? For example, my college recently had a group promoting energy conservation...by giving out thousands of T-shirts and ons! Why did thousands of T-shirts need to be produced to get this message across? They also printed out all kinds of handouts (waste) and gave out plastic cups of drinks (waste). Can anyone suggest ways to urge large numbers of people to actually give a crap about conserving resources, WITHOUT resorting to producing and giving out thousands of pieces of cheap plastic crap and T-shirts?