Tag Archives: sustainability

Sustainability is a movement defined by a taxonomy we created called a content map which organizes all categories and keywords under three elements – overview, planet, people, and prosperity.

Consumer Expectations and Your Reputation

A Practical Guide to developing a Successful Corporate Sustainability Program is an excellent guide published by the company, Waste Management. If you are struggling to convince your management on the importance and relevance of a sustainability initiative for your company, this guide lays out the business benefits e.g. improved worker productivity, reduction in operating costs, and energy savings along with practical suggestions for implementation.

The guide also calls out what consumers expect from business. This should catch the eye of your CMO as well as the section that calls out reputation-building benefits.

Consumer Expectations
– Reduce pollution throughout of?ce and manufacturing operations (71%)
– Design products/packaging with more environmentally-friendly contents and minimal packaging (69%)
– Distribute and transport goods more ef?ciently (69%)
– Communicate environmental efforts to employees and consumers, so they can support those efforts (69%)
– Donate money to environmental causes (59%)
– Lobby for more environmentally friendly policies (57%)

Reputation-building Benefits

-Brand enhancement and protection
-Marketing advantage—price premium
-Appreciation in shareholder value
-Employee recruiting, retention and satisfaction improvements
-Customer loyalty
-and “Most Favorable” regulatory reporting requirements

And no faking it!

However, you should beware of using your corporate sustainability report strictly as a public relations tool. There are many advocacy groups that monitor these reports and check the validity of claims made in them.

While you may download a copy of “Practical Guide” of this report here and I suggest you visit the Waste Management site as well.

Cradle to Cradle Certification

The publication, Greener by Design, reported today that “McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) is taking its Cradle to Cradle analysis further down the product supply chain with its new Cradle to Cradle Approved Ingredient certification.

The new certification looks at the chemical components of ingredients and materials that will be in finished products, assessing their effects on human and environmental health, as well as their ability to be recycled or composted.”

Just as all Cradle to Cradle certified products are listed publicly, MBDC plans to provide a public database of certified ingredients.

Green Design Grant Announced Apply by Jan 23rd

Rob Coleman of the Rogue Element, a design and branding firm out of Chicago just announced their first annual Green Design Grant. The team will be giving away a year’s worth of design services to a sustainable or green organization in need of design services who couldn’t otherwise afford them.

This direct link takes you to a grant page with all the details. Pass this information on.

Rogue Element does not have any limitations about where your organization is located, or even if it is in more than one location. We work with clients world-wide. However, any travel costs incurred by Rogue Element while providing services under the Grant will need to be paid by the winning organization.

This is a great opportunity for a start-up or an organization needing a make-over. Rob’s team is talented, committed, and are voices of sustainability.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Best-in-class Tools for Sustainable Design

“The truth is we think of it as a responsibility to equip designers and engineering professionals with the right information so they can understand the social and environmental impact of their designs before they actually build them.” Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability at Autodesk. SF Business Times, September 28, 2008

Sustainability Advocate

Ruth Ann Barrett of EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability