Sustainability and Green Lists

In an earlier posting I talked about values washing kin to green washing and referenced the plethora of green lists out there to include Forbes’ Best Corporate Citizens, Most Ethical Companies, Newsweek Green Rankings (click for their green oil and gas company listings), and the Global 100 by Corporate Knights. I suggested that there is nothing better than these types of awards or lists to further confuse consumers and our citizens.

Research from the New Scientist showed that there is a huge gulf (their word) between perception and reality on the part of consumers.

I actually started this posting on EarthDay after receiving another list this time from Brandkeys, a consulting company specializing in customer loyalty. Their list in alphabetical order is of the 25 Top “Green” companies (see below). BP is on this list (but not on the ones above) and gave me pause even before the recent catastrophe. The press release notes that their research suggests consumers “want brands to walk-the-talk, and “green” has become the cost-of-entry in many categories, making larger and larger contributions to brand engagement and loyalty.” There are some excellent companies on this list including Seventh Generation and Tom’s of Maine in the consumer products category and the Marriott in the lodging industry. And many of these companies have strong sustainability initiatives backed up by a track record.

The problem is that this business of lists when it comes to the topic of green, the keyword for where sustainability and consumerism intersect, is the business of marketing, not sustainability and certainly not when it comes to environmental sustainability. In terms of marketing, it is my opinion that these lists mislead consumers, add to the confusion in the marketplace, and are based on unsubstantiated claims. The next question is what role do the CSR folks play in all this list making and is it responsible CSR?

Top-25 Green Brands from this year’s Brand Keys Loyalty Engagement Index:

1. American Express
2. Apple
3. Avon
4. BP
5. Coke
6. Coors
7. Dell
8. Ford
9. Honda
10. HP
11. Johnson & Johnson
12. Kellogg’s
13. Kohl’s
14. Marriott
15. McDonalds
16. Microsoft
17. Nike
18. Pepsi
19. Samsung
20. Seventh Generation
21. Staples
22. Starbucks
23. Tom’s of Maine
24. UPS
25. Wells Fargo

McKinsey Study on Managing Sustainability

This March McKinsey released an interesting Global Survey, “How companies manage sustainability.”

“Indeed 72% of respondents says considering sustainability is “extremely” or “very important” for managing corporate reputation and brands.”

The report covers the importance of sustainability being one of the top three priorities on the CEO’s list and energy companies might serve as a role model given they are closer to the dual issues of “potential regulation and increasing natural resource constraints.”

As to branding sustainability, in those cases where there is an authentic story and track record to back up claims, the marketer’s checklist ought to include getting the word out by publishing a sustainability section on the Corporate Website, embedding sustainability data in communication mainstream investors, issuing a sustainability report, communicating with socially responsible investors, and participating in rankings and indexing, although many of the lists these days are PR hokum. Here’s the chart showing these options with orange representing the more proactive companies. Download the PDF from this site.

McKinsey Global Survey 3/2010

Bottom line:

“Most companies are not actively managing sustainability, even though executives think it’s important to a variety of corporate activities. Those that do are reaping benefits for themselves and for society.”

Lloyds of London Weighs in On Unsustainability

Lloyds of London, the global insurance giant, issued something of a warning to businesses on its Web site just last Friday. “Pressure is building on businesses to address the environmental impact of their operations,” the firm wrote. “Moves by intergovernmental bodies and investors suggest that they could soon be made more financially accountable for the pollution they cause… some experts are even predicting that many of the world’s biggest companies could see their profits cut by one third as a result of more stringent regulation, the abolition of subsidies and increased taxes.”

Excerpt from the New York Times article: Can Business Do the Job All by Itself?

By TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: March 28, 2010

Process Matters

McKinsey released a report this month, The Case for Behavioral Strategy, which pulls out the fly in the ointment by doing the analysis on the question: “how much of the variance in decision outcomes was explained by the quality of the process and how much by the quantity and detail of the analysis.”

The answer: process mattered more than analysis—by a factor of six. The fly being poor processes of which any one who has spent any time in large companies knows out trumps the numbers, but, well numbers are king. Or were. They are important, of course, but “superb analysis is useless unless the decision process gives it a fair hearing.” And, as you will find out reading the report, superior processes improve ROI.

Sustainability initiatives present an excellent opportunity to address unsustainable processes.

While in this post I called out the process message from the study, the story begins with the profound “cultural change” it’s going to take to “debais” strategic decisions. Well worth a read and for the C-level executives a chance to look at how they might be converting process or work problems to people problems. This is how social sustainability can begin to play a bigger role in “greening” our institutions and cities.

My mentor, Dr. Herbert Heaton, then Comptroller of the Rockefeller Foundation and a numbers guy, warned me of the inclination for decision makers to convert work problems to people problems, resulting in firings and lay-offs, and an inordinate amount of time spent accepting and rejecting people. My boss and mentor, Dr. Randy Hamilton, then of the Institute for Local Self Government, weighed in with the observation that “people hire in their image and likeness.” As I said, this study addresses the role bias plays in our decision-making. Here’s the hard part: “..in strategic decision making leaders need to recognize their own biases.” Now let me link all this talk about process and bias to employment.

The workforce of a company is its most strategic asset and addressing the bias inherent in the process of acquiring and managing this asset is what I move to the top of the list. The report doesn’t really talk about people-related decisions favoring instead to reference decisions around mergers, strategic plans that often ignore competitive responses, and investment projects. Social sustainability and prosperity go together, you can’t have one without the other and prosperity is our economic foundation.

Google Search, Part II.

In my recent post about Google search I cited the horse race on to own the search term sustainability using organic search and my experience with search results starting to vary based on my geo (Portland) and without me stipulating a geo search parameter. I cleaned by cache, google cookies and took my address information off Google profile and did this search today and nothing much changed. But then my friend, Barry, sent over an article from the March 2010 issue of Wired entitled Inside the Box. It’s all about Google search. And herein I read:

There is an opt-in feature that uses someone’s search history and location as a signals to determine what kind of results they’ll find useful. (This applies only to those who sign into Google before they search.)

I wonder where I opted-in? And I never notices whether I’m signed in or not. Will check on this.

ValuesTrashing?

New Scientist sponsored an “unparalleled quantitative assessment of companies’ global environmental impact” in conjunction with Earthsense of Syracuse, NY and Trucost, headquartered in London. They asked the question, “do the corporations that benefit from our environmentally conscious purchasing and investment choices deserve their green halo? If as consumers and investors we don’t have a good idea of what companies are “genuine” and authentic, it’s not likely we will move forward on rebuilding a greener, more sustainable economy.

I have referenced this study in an earlier blog post about values-washing, a sibling of greenwashing, where what companies tout as their values and what they actually do are two different stories, but did not note then the case referenced about Whole Foods in regards to the chasm between perception and reality. Whole Foods rated high on the consumer side, “shouting green,” but “Trucost’s modelling rated Whole Foods no better than conventional supermarkets such as Safeway. Part of the reason lies in the fact that Whole Foods has not disclosed all of the environmental data that Trucost needs in its rating system. Whole Foods promises “to produce a full inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions later this year.” But wait.

This last week friends brought to my attention a news story that Whole Foods is sourcing much of its private label brand (365 Organics) from China with the issue being “whether so-called ‘Organics’ are mislabeled with product packaging or labels that feature the Quality Assurance International (QAI) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) seals. This supposed transgression by Whole Foods was an ABC story and has been carried far and wide across the Internet. It appears, however, that Whole Foods is sourcing organic foods from China and the labels it afixes to its private label products is legit : “Since 2002, the USDA’s National Organic Standards have governed exactly what can be sold as organic in the US – how it’s grown, processed and handled – regardless of where in the world it’s grown, INCLUDING China.”

ValuesTrashing? It is getting increasingly difficult to know what to believe. The Web, however, is good for not only spreading mis-information but checking up on and ABC, as a source on the green movement, is interesting as they are owned by Disney, basically an entertainment company, “diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with four business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment and consumer products. ABC apparently isn’t all that much in to fact checking these days, but then Whole Foods wasn’t upfront about its process and partners in the food chain. More transparency is called for.

Google Search on Sustainability: What’s It All About, Alfie?

For more than a couple of years now I have been keeping very close watch on the results using the search engine, Google, and the search term, sustainability. My project, EarthSayers.tv, the voices of sustainability is designed to be right up there (not yet though) along with Wikipediad on the term, a kind of educational videopedia just for sustainability. My objective is to make sure that on that first page of organic search results it isn’t a who’s who of corporate America with no options to learn about sustainability from the experts, business and civic thought leaders, citizens, teachers, kids. Granted wikipedia is educational, but it is also written by unknown sources and is, as such, heavily processed information, like white bread.

Up to now the biggest organization, other than Wikipedia, showing up on the first page of results was the E.P.A. and the rest were smaller, research and consulting companies, mostly all business to business (BtoB) companies, not consumer (BtoC) companies. That was until this week when Walmart showed up.

Sustainability Defined

I have also been tracking using Google Insights on what they call “rising searches” related to sustainability. Worldwide, since 2004, walmart sustainability is no. 1 in rising search with wikipedia in the no. 2 spot. No other large corporations are on this list. Do the same query for 2009 and the rising searches include SAP (no. 1), Microsoft (no. 4), both beating out environmental sustainability, with Walmart coming in 8th.

Walmart is in middle of pack

For 2009 in the U.S. the “Walmart Sustainability Index” is no. 1 on rising search with the highest number of searches coming from Oregon, Vermont, and Hawaii. It won’t be long before SAP, Microsoft, SAS and other large corporations are what you will see on the first page of Google search. Why is that a problem? Because the single net impression will be that corporations define sustainability and the issues associated with it such as environmental sustainability. They will own the term, sustainability, worldwide. And yes, research shows the kids don’t go beyond that first page and neither do many of us adults. It will contribute heavily to what I called out in my previous blog as valueswashing.

But wait. While keeping my eyes on the big picture something else started to happen this last week. Out of the blue Portland-based sustainability organizations suddenly appeared.

How is that I asked? I emailed several friends in San Francisco and asked them to do a search. Similar results to mine, but no Portland. How about Berkeley?

One can put in to any search a geo parameter, e.g. Portland or a zip code, but in this case no such geo parameter was added. So how did the search engine know I’m Portland and my friend is San Francisco? I cleaned by cache, removed Google cookies. I have recently removed my city from my Google profile. No change so far. My money, though, is on the profile information in Google.

Factoring in your geo location into search is a boon to retailers and other local businesses. I’m just now sure how it’s working and I’m not sure I like a search having a parameter that I don’t choose. But then I’m a librarian at heart (and by education) so this makes me nervous, directing access to a body of information based on profile information.

Does this bother anyone else out there?

In summary, there is a horse race on to own the search term sustainability using organic search. At the same time, search results are starting to vary depending upon the geo you are searching from without you stipulating a geo search parameter. Stay tuned.

Values-washing Sustainability

Yesterday I wrote a long piece on the JustMeans site, where Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) folks hang out, about the ethical implications of a recent publication of the “2010 Best Corporate Citizens” by a group called the CRO*. To give you a taste of the list’s value, Exxon is number 11 in the CRO rankings. (correction it is 51, HP, Intel and General Mills are 1,2 and 3 in the 2010 list, it was no. 11 in the 2009 list)

But CRO is just one of many list makers.

JustMeans member, Madeline Ravich, did an excellent comparison of these lists that are proliferating (the CRO one was not included as it was just published but will be in her next review) to include 2009 Best Corporate Citizens, 2009 Most Ethical Companies, 2009 Newsweek Green Rankings (top 100 companies), 2010 Global 100 by Corporate Knights, and the 2010 Global ESG 100 by RiskMetrics Group. She notes: “It turns out, however, that there is, in fact, NO COMPLETE CONSENSUS. Upon double-checking my work, I figured out that the one company that I had thought made all five lists was, in fact, not mentioned in the Most Ethical Citizens.”

So why is this list making and shaking so important? Well, two reasons, both of them related to what I am calling values-washing.

First, very large corporations know the messaging of social responsibility has become very valuable because customers, especially younger ones, are showing preferences for buying from companies with sustainability related values – environmental and social – as well as those companies with green products. Advertising products as green when they are not is called greenwashing. What I am talking about I will call values-washing. These lists establish credibility for those practicing both green and values-washing.

The lists and buzz that surrounds them create confusion in the marketplace among consumers, as do the many conferences and consortiums targeting the professional class that are themed around sustainability, corporate responsibility and good citizenship.

Recent research from the New Scientist shows that there is a huge gulf (their word) between perception and reality on the part of consumers. They cite as one example the media firm Discovery Communications: its environmental impact, per dollar earned, is almost indistinguishable from TV and movie giant Viacom. Yet Discovery has a stellar green reputation that Viacom does not enjoy – which could be due to Discovery’s content, which includes Animal Planet TV and websites such as TreeHugger. Why does this not surprise me?

It was obvious to me a few months down the road of building EarthSayers.tv, the voices of sustainability, that the sponsors of the site had to be drawn from credible, and as I later discovered, certified ‘for benefit organizations’, or become, unwittingly, a values-washing site.

Secondly, there is the Supreme Court decision that will allow Corporations to throw even more money at creating sustainability shell organizations, and here again lists, conference sponsorships, and awards are all very important to establishing credibility for sustainability-related claims and statements. Organizations representing “high powered boards” are already using the Internet very effectively to steer our citizens searching for information to networks of professionals such as the CRO one above, but also carefully embedded elsewhere in Facebook, even in citizen actions sites such as Care2.

Seeding the Web with free speech

This AMA notice suddenly appeared when I was about to sign a petition for reducing antibiotics in our farm animals on the Care2 site. Note it is not the AMA’s Patient Action Network.

Part of seeding includes establishing groups on magazines such as Ode and Eons, not to mention social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. There is blogging on Salon.com et. al with quality content coming from the growing ranks of “journalists-turned-PR-Pros.” Seeding the Web is easy and not as expensive as TV or print campaigns and one can be less transparent. How do I know this? Because I have been seeding the Web for EarthSayers.tv and know first hand how easy it is. Because I have years of online marketing experience and know the importance of search. Because research shows the top results or page one of organic results is generally only what we see. This is especially true for children. And because organic listing are more trusted than paid ones. Page one of Google Search Results is the single net impression for sustainability.

We have made placing EarthSayers in the top three results of a search on sustainability our number one objective. We are now in the top for ‘voices of sustainability’ and working towards top ranking on the term, sustainability. We are blogging, twittering, creating groups, and have gone all organic.

Here is the search playing field.

Look at trends for sustainability search, 2009, and you see environmental sustainability and sustainable are top ranked.

But note “rising searches” in the same period finds conferences and consortiums easing out environmental with Walmart in no. 5 position. Worldwide it’s SAP in no. 2 position with Walmart nearly edging out environmental sustainability. Search results on the term, sustainability used to be primarily Wikipedia, the EPA and a variety of B2B research and consulting companies.

As my dad would have said, it’s a horse race. What do you see today? This ranking has appeared only beginning this week:

Perfection

What I hear all the time about our quest for sustainable lifestyles at home and in our work is that “no one is perfect.” But that obscures the fact that individuals at work and in their homes should act ethically. What should be placed front and center on the Web is not perfection, but ethics and the core values that earn our respect and business. Values-washing is easy and it’s not ethical.

This is not to say that the companies referenced above or in the myriad of lists or at business conferences do not have green products or sustainability initiatives. What I am saying is that the landscape of sustainability should not be defined solely by large Corporations or by the folks who remain anonymous on the much-referenced Wikipedia. It is this belief that fueled our investment in EarthSayers.tv, the voices of sustainability, to show value and not be the storyteller, but the medium for the sustainability stories. The Web supports hearing directly from the thought leaders representing all sectors of our economy as well as citizens from all walks of life, but it is a horse race and we need sponsors to keep in the running. For our part at EarthSayers.tv, we are seeking sponsorship from companies that are certified as “for benefit.” We do not want to compromise our values, as our reputation is what “brand” is all about.

Let’s hope I am successful at gaining the financial support of the companies and individuals out there who are true sustainability advocates and sponsor EarthSayers.tv, the voices of sustainability.

Note:

CRO is “Led by its high-powered 16-member Board of Governors and in partnership with the 6,900-company NYSE Euronext, the fast-growing Corporate Responsibility Officers Association…” and unlike the site, Business Ethics, the Magazine of Corporate Responsibility, is not affiliated with any organization offering credibility such as Open MIC which values “diversity and competition, creativity and innovation, openness and transparency.”

Portland: the Most Sustainability Conscious U.S. City

Portland is #1

Since 2004 the growth of the search term on sustainability has been slow and bumpy, but UP. And the state with the highest volume of search? Oregon with Vermont close behind and in 2009 close to closing the gap. And while Eugene outpaces Portland if you look at the period 2004 to the present, Portland outpaces all U.S. cities in 2009. Denver is close behind. It would be a good thing for the cities lagging behind to benefit from the expertise here in Portland from the leaders among all economic sectors. Starting from the bottom of the top ten, cities such as Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Diego, Minneapolis & St. Paul, Seattle-Tacoma, Raleigh-Durham, Boston, and Phoenix would benefit from a transfer of skills and expertise. This is part of the reason EarthSayers.tv has started the Portland Sustainability Leadership Channel (PSLC). We collect already available videos from around YouTube that feature Portland’s leaders. Aggregating the content increases the likelihood of finding Portland’s leader from among the YouTube sea. Its search function is extremely limited. The PSLC is then linked to EarthSayers.tv giving them national and international exposure. We twitter and tweet as well. Both YouTube (#4 on search volume) and twitter (no. 1 on fastest rising by 1250%) are heavily searched terms on Google and, as such, are busy places to reach an audience. While EarthSayers is new and growing, over the last two months there have been over 6,000 visits, with 2,000 of them being unique as visitors return 3x. We also create original content (thanks to filmmaker Barry Heidt) by interviewing leaders. The folks we have interviewed so far include Rob Bennett of the Portland Sustainability Institute, Marcelo Bonta of the Center for Diversity and the Environment, Dennis Wilde of Gerding Edlen Development Company, Mary Vogel, urban designer, of PlanGreen, Willem and Evan of Where Are Your Keys, Peter Bauer of Urban Scout Rewilidng, Lindsey Newkirk of Elysium Events, Kristy Alberty of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, Carl Grimm of Metro, and Kate Miller, consultant, sustainable Lighting.

Sustainability, Climate Change, and Global Warming Trends

What other steps could be taken to promote Portland’s planning and urban design professionals, green building experts, and business owners who have worked hard at the business and civic levels and contributed to Portland’s sustainability reputation? They have helped Portland “turnaround” from the un-development following World War II that Michael Mehaffy has written left Portland “a hollow shell bisected by freeways, invaded by trendy but lifeless buildings and deserted by families heading for the suburbs.” Transformation was in order. Portland attracts people and jobs in a large part because of its sustainability reputation or brand. Now would be a good time to help the many consultants and professionals here in Portland export their skills and expertise to help other communities and in the process rebuild their own businesses clobbered by an economic collapse. We will continue to grow the Portland Sustainability Leadership Channel and seek support from the business community to fund our efforts (Chelsea Peil is the curator of the Channel and is extending invitations to companies with high integrity and a sustainability track record to be channel sponsors at a very modest rate for the branding- chelsea@earthsayers.com), but this is not enough. Let’s put our heads together and come up with more ideas for marketing the talent and brains of sustainability from right here in Portland.

Asset-based Collaboration for Sustainability

First, the “our and the us” of collaboration.

For us here at EarthSayers.tv the “our and the us” are the leaders of sustainability, the experts, teachers, business and civic leaders, citizens from all walks of life. It’s the organizations, old and new, in the sustainability movement encompassing the “isms” such as environmentalism; concepts such as biodiversity; principles such as permaculture, issues such as climate change, projects such as The War Room, and new technologies found in using our planet’s gifts with the conservation principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle. We call these leaders sustainability advocates and the organizations “for benefit,” building on the fledgling movement started by the Corp B people, searching for a common ground that drives prosperity, not just profits, a new sector of the economy.

It’s not about the money.
When we approach for benefit organizations we believe we have something useful to you and you have something useful to us. And it’s not money. That’s been sucked out of the system so efficiently no government, business or non-profit can figure out where it went or if it will ever come back. No one seems to know where the end of the nozzle is and who has their hands on it. Right now it isn’t pointed in our direction that’s for sure. But if there is some money left on the table, we need to share it using cooperative revenue models.

It’s about our assets.

People
On our part, one of our assets, and the most important one, is our people. Yours too. We can do things you can’t and vice versa, and the proof for collaboration yielding more creative and useful solutions is indisputable. The commerce model of buyer and seller is competitive in nature, so let’s call what we do partnerships and stress collaboration among our people and your people.

Online and YouToo.
Another asset is our Websites that reach out into the World and, if we all cooperated, would be linked to one another, creating higher rankings, a bigger reach, more followers, more investors for all of us. What drives our Web development is open sourced, flexible, leverage-prone, and the source of connecting with the world, including the monied nozzle handlers. It’s a Web not a city center block of discrete buildings, where what we share is hidden underground, and the power is in private ownership and profits at all costs.

The Crowd
The third is our contacts, stakeholders, shareholders, colleagues, clients, members, and friends. How would they benefit from our working together? And would they find the benefit useful enough to return to us financial resources for the sustainability of our organizations to continue with our work? The only way to know the answer to this is work together on strategic initiatives, get feedback, learn from our efforts.

Reputation and Innovation
Fourth is reputation and innovation. Why do I put these two together? Well, typically, innovation doesn’t have a track record, it’s a solution to a problem, a new “brand” and hopefully an original one that solves a big problem. Without a track record. reputation must be earned and cannot be compromised early on by large sums of money or questionable affiliations so the innovative folks need a reputable partner(s). Get my drift. We may have the innovation, you the reputation or vice versa, but we need each other.

Secondly, the process of asset-based collaboration
Ed Morrison and his team at I-Open.org are innovators in civic engagement. They design and deliver engaging civic forums that encourage citizens to engage in conversation about complex topics, while building stronger civic networks. These forums point toward action: translating ideas into transformative initiatives. The basis of this action is a process Ed calls Strategic Doing. Central to strategic doing and to asset-based collaboration are four questions that lead towards a mutual goal ” to articulate a clear direction and then to define initiatives that align with this direction…Thick, trusted networks evolve that are strategic. They help us learn faster, make decision faster, and act faster.”
The four questions:

What could we do together? Exploring our assets to find new opportunities.
What should we do together? Focusing on one opportunity at a time and defining, clearly, the “strategic outcomes” we want.
What will we do together? Launching new initiatives by aligning our resources with “link and leverage” strategies.
What are we learning together? Learning what works by executing and measuring what happens.

Our job as leaders, Ed points out, is to “keep people focused and the process open…And leadership is a shared responsibility, distributed within the group.” A world view of asset-based collaboration using the discipline of strategic doing and beginning with the four questions is where we are at, come join with us.

About Ed Morrison

Ed Morrison is founder of I-Open, the Institute for Open Economic Networks, based in Cleveland, Ohio and is a member of the staff of the Center for Regional Development at Purdue University and
Economic Policy Advisor for the WIRED initiative in North Central Indiana. Our thanks to Ed and his staff for their generous sharing of ideas and information and for the work they are doing in our economically challenged communities, especially my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio.

Sustainability Advocate

Ruth Ann Barrett of EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability