Author Archives: Ruth Ann Barrett

The Chief Inspired Protagonist

This is the title of Jerry Hollender the President of Seventh Generation and a leader of the growing sustainability movement. We are very grateful to Jerry for his comments about EarthSayers.tv in his latest blog posting, the Inspired Protagonist.

You can subscribe to his blog, but here is his posting for today, December 3, 2008.

I sometimes wonder, after I’ve spoken at a conference, whether I learn more from listeners than listeners learn from me. Take, for example, an email I recently received from Ruth Ann Barrett, a marketing executive who’s previously worked for Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.

Ruth Ann recorded a talk I gave at the Economist magazine’s recent conference on building sustainable businesses. I spoke of Seventh Generation’s corporate responsibility reporting and the challenge of creating metrics that are meaningful and helpful for consumers. Ruth Ann thought my remarks were interesting enough to post a snippet on YouTube. But what really interested me was learning about a new venture she’s leading, EarthSayers.tv.

EarthSayers.tv consists of a group of high-tech veterans who aim to grow sustainability awareness and education on the Internet. When you Google the term “sustainability,” you get a little less than 30 million results. Do the same for “Britney Spears,” and you get nearly 100 million. EarthSayers seeks to change that sorry state of affairs by increasing Internet traffic for those sites that really matter. Through its video and audio clips of the “unfiltered voices of sustainability” — the pioneers, innovators, and unsung heroes — EarthSayers.tv is also helping people to enter the “learning cycle” and do the right thing for society and the environment.

EarthSayers.tv has launched a prototype; I encourage you to check it out.

Six Business Benefits to Sustainability by John Friedman

John Friedman wrote an excellent article on the Six Business Benefits of Sustainability. I picked it up at JustMeans, an online community focused on creating a values-driven economy. Here they are in summary form:

License to Operate (Speed to Market)

Cost Reduction or Avoidance

Market Opportunity/Advantage
(Impact of actions, and not intentions)

Employee Engagement

Access to Investment Capital
(From 1995 to 2003 assets involved in social investing have grown 40% faster than all professionally managed investment assets in the U.S.)

Sustainability as Critical Business Issue – 69%

Survey results by CoreNet Global and Jones Lang LaSalle, November 10, 2008 as reported in The Earth Times.

Of the more than 400 Corporate Real Estate Executives (CREs) surveyed, 69 percent said sustainability is a critical business issue for their real estate departments. When CoreNet and Jones Lang LaSalle asked the same question in 2007, 47 percent said it was a critical issue. Furthermore, 40 percent this year rated energy and sustainability as a “major factor” in their companies’ location decisions, with an additional 36 percent calling it a “tie-breaker” between locations that are otherwise competitive.

Companies are increase their focus on Energy and Sustainability to reduce costs.

The Five Inhibitors to Sustainability

While adding content to EarthSayers.tv, I am always inspired and educated. Here is but one example.

EarthSayers are individuals who are taking active steps to motivate and inspire us to change. The 7th Generation Project, for example, is a U.K.-based not for profit social capacity and network project seeking to address the interwoven layer of human, earth and economic sustainability.

In their video (it is on EarthSayers, but you are clicking through to it on Youtube because until we get funding to build the site out, it is easier and quicker to send you to Youtube), they identify the five key inhibitors to change:

1. Awareness
(I had no idea it was so serious)

2.Capacity
(I don’t know how to fix it)

3. Action
(What can I do about it)

4. Leadership
Why are we NOT doing anything about this?

5. Community
I can’t do this on my own.

EarthSayers.tv is focused on all five inhibitors. Awareness and capacity through the content on EarthSayers.tv and the EarthSayer Leadership Network, as proposed, is being designed to address inhibitors 3 through 5.

We are going to have to bring more ideas like EarthSayers.tv to the fore that address these inhibitors one by one and with great innovation and activism. I hope what I write stimulates you and inspires you to start addressing some or all of these inhibitors with innovative products and services. We can do it.

“Strategic Doing”

One of the advantages of growing a Website dedicated to the sustainability movement is the like-minded people you meet. Recently I fell upon a Website, I-Open.org and read, “I-Open is focused on the habits we need to innovate in the “civic space”. My eye fell on the offer of a whitepaper, “on new models of economic development.”

I read the paper and can highly recommend it. The author, Ed Morrison, addresses building an open civic process called “strategic doing.” Particularly germane to our site, earthsayers.tv, was his reference to the “appreciative leader” who “understands a fundamental insight about human behavior: people move in the direction of their conversations.” I highly recommend you visit the I-Open site and download a copy. Today.

Once you make the habit of spending some time each day listening to an EarthSayer, someone speaking up for us and our planet, it becomes clear that the language of sustainability is strong and vibrant, but most of all it is inspiring. There is often an “I can do that” response to hearing an EarthSayer – an architect or a business leader or an artist or teacher – talk about how they are adopting sustainable principles and practices at home, at work, or in their communities.

We are beginning a conversation with the I-Open folks as together we have much to offer organizations in both the public and private sectors. The intersection of Web 2.0 technology and social and environmental consciousness offers us the opportunity to be creative and innovate.
Join with us in the conversation.

What Consumers Consider Important

From an article “Cause Marketing Offers Huge Payoffs, Study Finds” in Sustainable Life Media publication of October 7, 2008.

Additional research conducted by Cone Marketing identified the specific factors consumers consider important when deciding to support a company’s cause efforts. For example:

84% would prefer to select the cause their purchase would support

83% say personal relevance is key

80% believe the specific nonprofit associated with the campaign matters

79% say they would be likely to switch from one brand to another, when price and quality are about equal, if the other brand is associated with a good cause

85% say they have a more positive image of a product or company when it supports a cause they care about

Consumers are more receptive to cause messages than ever before, the report suggests.

More than half (52%) of respondents say companies should maintain their level of financial support of causes and nonprofit organizations, despite current economic woes.

Not an Option

There is much talk in the news about how when the economy tanks, sustainability and its consumer-focused cousin, the Green movement, are moved aside.

A recent article in Sustainable Life Media reported on a study by Cone Marketing and Duke University Fuqua School of Management that found “Consumers are more receptive to cause messages than ever before. More than half (52%) of respondents say companies should maintain their level of financial support of causes and nonprofit organizations, despite current economic woes.” Sadly, the article also noted another study by Duke indicating “marketers appear to be taking the opposite tack… chief marketing officers from Fortune 1000 companies predict that more marketers will be shifting away from their cause-related messages over the next year as a result of the souring economy.

One wonders what planet these CMOs are living on if they think they can move away from sustainability practices and products.

A year ago, Andrew Zolli in a March 2007 Fast Company article addressed the conflicting beliefs of “corporations having pressing obligations to civil society and the planet as a whole that go well beyond the economic sphere” and the clinical, value-neutral capitalism championed by Mr. Friedman who warned against “burdening business with wider goals.” Mr. Friedman argued it was “pure and unadulterated socialism.” Mr. Zolli went on to write:

“The clinical, value-neutral capitalism of old is about to follow the recently departed Friedman to the grave.

There are several reasons why this is so, but the first should be obvious to any one but the most hardened anti-environmental skeptic: If we don’t do something soon, we’re screwed. A quick (and necessarily depressing) look at the numbers suggests that supplies of our most basic commodities–potable water, fossil fuels, arable land, clean air–as well as critical industrial commodities such as aluminum, steel, and even silicon, are all under stress.”

I just don’t get where anyone has the idea that the movement towards sustainability is optional.

Sustainability is the New Watchword in Business

This is the October 26, 2008 headline of an article by Sandra Constantine off the Massachusetts Business News. She reports that Diane Wolverton, speaking at the “Women and Green” Business Owners Conference at Mount Holyoke College, calls sustainability the “new triple bottom line.” She is the director of the State Small Business Center in Wyoming.

I can do that.

Today I submitted a proposal to Google’s “Project 10 to the 100th,” which is a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible. They are funding up to five ideas selected by an advisory board and have committed $10M to the program. I asked for help in building out a collaboration platform (community) on EarthSayers.tv. Community is one of eight categories.

According to the Website, “A selection of Google employees will review all the ideas submitted and select 100 for public consideration. The 100 top ideas will be announced on January 27, 2009, at which point we will invite the public to select twenty semi-finalists. An advisory board will then choose up to five final ideas for funding and implementation. We plan to announce these winners in early February.”

Here are some of the answers I provided on their entry form:

What one sentence best describes your idea (150 characters)
Increase sustainability awareness through community collaboration and with Web content that inspires people to say, “I can do that.”

What problem or issue does your idea address (150 words)

Low awareness.

Presently a Google search on sustainability yields over 31M results, up form 15M in 2007, a good sign. However, the U.S. is sixth in search activity according to Google Trends, behind Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and Canada. This is the measure of low awareness.

Where to start?

On the video search engine, Blinkx, there are over 73,000 sustainability search results, up from 20,000 in 2007, and for the prototype we aggregate our content via a database connection to Blinkx. The sheer volume of the results and the heavy duplication of content begs for further organization and clear direction to the question, “where to start?” As one business leader once exclaimed: “Searching is one thing, finding is another.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how (150 words)

The sustainability learning cycle begins for millions of people with a Google search on the term sustainability.

“The most important problem in the world today is not global climate chaos or violence. It’s people’s feeling of powerlessness. It is the problem beneath all the problems.”

?Frances Moore Lappe at the World Future Council.

They deserve to hear and see the people actually involved in the sustainability movement so they can learn by example and be moved to believe, “I can do that.”

Only recently has an educational resource appeared on the first page, Wikipedia, and we see EarthSayers.tv as a video-based companion resource with greater inspirational power.

Sustainability Advocate

Ruth Ann Barrett of EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability