Category: Consumer Issues

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , , ,
Wall Street bull statue
Creator: Sam Valadi
Credit: ZUMAPRESS.com/Newscom
Copyright: via ZUMA Wire

It’s been a pretty heavy news week, so you may have not heard about this incredibly stupid action in both houses of Congress.

Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill “that would prevent the Labor Department from enforcing a rule that makes it easier for plan managers to consider ESG factors when they make investments and exercise shareholder rights, such as through proxy voting” (as reported by Reuters). The Senate, with four members absent and the complicity of two Democratic Senators, did likewise one day later.

This push says that pension funds must not be allowed to even consider any factors pertaining to ESG–Environmental, Social, Governance. It doesn’t say they have to make sure that ESG investments perform as well as non-ESG investments (which, often, they do). That would be a reasonable law to protect retiree pensions. But this one would bar fund managers from even considering anything involving ESG.

For decades, smart fund managers have been shifting investment toward ESG, and their reasons are fiscally sound. From avoiding corrosive investments in “stranded assets” like fossil-fuel or nuclear processing infrastructure that’s been plagues, by leaks, spills, explosions, etc. to avoiding ethics scandals that destroyed once-respected companies like Enron and Arthur Andersen, ESG investing makes so much sense that, as no less an authoritative source than NSDAQ notes,

In 2020, net inflows into ESG funds in the U.S. reached $51.1 billion, a significant increase over 2019 when flows equaled $21.4, which itself was a record.3 Global ESG investing by end of the first quarter in 2021 was nearly $2 trillion4.

The article goes on to list six factors in ESG investment growth and notes that even during the pandemic, “funds with ESG strategies outperformed traditional funds.2″ (Click the link to see the footnote sources, too.) This updates and reinforces the research I did when writing my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, a few years ago. Every single one of the dozens of studies I checked at that time showed that ESG criteria lead to better financial results.

This growth started decades before the pandemic and was accelerating rapidly and consistently, as this 2020 article from Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, states:

Net flows into ESG funds available to U.S. investors have skyrocketed, totalling $20.6 billion in 2019, nearly four times the previous annual record set in 2018, [1] while ESG funds in Europe also attracted record inflows of $132 billion in 2019. [2] More than 70% of funds focused on ESG investments outperformed their counterparts in the first four months of 2020, [3] and nearly 60% of ESG funds outperformed the wider market over the past decade. [4]

One unintended consequence I haven’t seen addressed anywhere is the possibility of widespread rebellion by private investors that could put the whole pension system at risk, as stakeholders demand that funds embrace sensible, profit-driven ESG corporations in their portfolio choices while an inane law makes that commitment illegal.

Fortunately, President Biden has promised that he will use the first veto of his presidency to block a law that is just as crazy as the various “anti-woke” measures authoritarian Florida Governor Ron DeSantis keeps shoving down the throats of his state’s residents and businesses. Oh, and in the unintended consequences department, please read this Daily Beast commentary on how the anti-woke law even puts Fox News at risk.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business-general, Consumer Issues, General Commentary, Innovation, language, localism/locavore, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, travel Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seth Godin’s daily blog today used cars as a metaphor for different types of projects: “They apply to jobs, relationships, art projects and everything in between.” His four-part matrix has a horizontal axis from fast to slow while the vertical axis from feeling stable to feeling thrilling.

I took him literally, and wrote him this letter:

I value the metaphor but want to talk about actual cars for a moment:

  1. A client once gave me a ride in his Maserati. The thing that shocked me was how utterly silent it was at 60 mph. At that speed, it was about luxury, not power and noise–a Fast and Secure in your matrix. I think it would have been a different experience at 100+ mph.
  2. I’ve generally favored utilitarian car choices–cheap, reliable, boring. Mostly Toyota Corollas (including the Chevy Nova Corolla clone of 1988). But twice, I’ve been the accidental owner of sport sedans–high-performance cars disguised as boring. I bought a used 1975 Fiat 131 four-door sedan in 1981 when I moved from the city to Western Massachusetts, because I didn’t know any better–and only found out that Fiats of that era were notoriously unreliable when it was already our headache. We bought it for $1500 as economy transportation.
    Fiat 131 sedan: Clark Kent on the outside, Supercar in handling. Photo by by Bene Riobo via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)
    Fiat 131 sedan: Clark Kent on the outside, Supercar in handling. Photo by by Bene Riobo via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)

    It was unbelievably fun to drive–when it worked. We got the car at 65,000 miles, which is the prime of life for a Corolla. In the ~9000 miles/nine months we drove it, we had failures of the entire exhaust system, the entire brake system, even the bleeping steering column–and if it was cold, rainy, or snowy, we often needed  a tow. We were young and broke, used to public transportation, and not prepared to be owning a money pit. We sold it as a parts car for $500 and were lucky to get it. The second was a 2004 Mazda 3 hatchback that we bought new, thinking of it as an economy car that was a little peppier than most. Turned out it only got 30 mpg. It was also really fun to drive, and reasonably reliable. I guess it would be a Hot Rod but with zero visual indication of high performance. We gave it to our kid in Metro Boston in 2018 when my stepfather was killed and we got his ultra-low-odometer Honda Fit, six years old, 14,000 miles, not at all fun to drive (underpowered even compared to a Corolla) but incredibly well-engineered for storage. Definitely in the Boring quadrant. We’re still driving it, along with a 2005 Corolla. Oddly enough, Raf only got about a year out of the Mazda, which started needing expensive repairs. But at least it was 15 years old when it started to go.

Do I regret trading fun-driving cars for reliable ones? Not at all. The genuine pleasure of ultra-responsive steering, braking, and acceleration was fun, but ultimately, for me, the purpose of a car is to get me someplace. Appreciating the engineering that made at least the Mazda both safe and fun was like visiting a friend who spent ten grand on a really good stereo system. I could take joy in the moment but didn’t feel a need to own it. We live relatively simply and spend more on travel than on material things.
But I certainly have my own areas where I will spend more to get significantly higher value. It was true when I spent $3K on a Mac in 1984, recognizing that the much shorter learning curve compared to a pre-Windows IBM PC was going to pay big dividends in my career as owner of a writing business–especially in being able to produce resume while-you-wait and know exactly what they’d look like before hitting the print button. And while I’ve found ways to keep the costs down, I stock our kitchen primarily with organic and local items instead of chemiculture frankenfoods shipped from far away.
So let me ask you: what luxuries do you value enough to pay significantly extra for, and why? My own two areas, as noted above, are both experience-based.
Travel
I love travel because (at least the way we do it), it gives us chances to experience the world differently–to see different perspectives, different approaches to common problems–kind of like looking across from your chosen career to what the standard procedures are in some completely unrelated career (and what lessons can be found there).
Travel, for me, often involves staying with locals. But even if I’m not doing homestays, when I travel, I make a point of finding ways to connect with local people. I take public transportation, shop at independent local markets, wander through ethnic neighborhoods, strike up conversations, eat in places frequented by locals, take guided walks led by rangers, historians, and naturalists, visit artisan workshops…I don’t spend much time in the classic tourist areas.
And the insights I’ve come away with include noticing that…
  • Iceland’s non-vehicle power needs are met almost entirely by renewable hydro and geothermal (even as far back as my 2011 visit).
  • Quito has a public transit system (that I’ve since seen several other places) that combines the advantages of buses and trains, using dedicated rights-of-way and raised boarding platforms (aligned with the bottom of the bus door) that require turnstile-entry so when the bus comes, it can board much faster because all the passengers have already paid and no one has to climb stairs.
  • Peru and Guatemala figured out intensive high-altitude agriculture many centuries ago, and the Incan and Mayan agronomists were as sophisticated as any modern research team.
  • In much of the developing world, reuse and recycling are so integrated into daily life that nothing is thrown away if it has an iota of value remaining.
  • Judaism–and thus the Christianity and Islam that derived from it–has enough parallels with Hinduism (other than the schism between monotheism and polytheism) that it tells us there were active trade routes between South Asia and the Middle East thousands of years ago.
  • Two visits to Israel and Palestine, 28 years apart, gave me the chance to gain much greater knowledge on the conflict, and how it might be healed in ways that felt just all around. My wife and I met with the founder of an Orthodox Jewish peace movement, a Palestinian-American blogger who taken had moved to Ramallah and become a Palestinian citizen despite the restrictions on his movement this entailed, a man born in the 1930s who clearly remembered his entire village being evicted from the place they’d lived for generations, even right-wing Israeli settlers.

All of these observations find their way into my world view–and my consulting practice.

Food
I’m willing to spend considerably more money for a fabulous food experience. I’d much rather pay $20 for a memorable meal in a restaurant featuring local specialties than $4 for fast food that’s indistinguishable and unmemorable. I shop local and organic because it offers both superior taste and superior health and nutrition. I buy fair-trade chocolate and farm eggs because I can enjoy their wonderful taste–and also I enjoy knowing that I am NOT propping up a system based on child slavery (non-fair-trade chocolate) or animal cruelty (industrial eggs).

But I will also find bargains! One of my favorite meals in my life cost 75 cents and fed two of us: we were in the Mexican heartland, walking to a national park. We inhaled the aroma of fresh tortillas and stopped into the tortillarilla to buy half a kilo of still-warm corn tortillas. At the little neighborhood market, we found a large, perfectly ripe avocado. We took our finds to that park, sat under a giant poinsettia tree, and enjoyed a feast that I still remember as divine. This was way back in 1985 and burned into my memory, happily, for ever–one of many wonderful food memories I keep there.

And What About You?
So, once again, I’ll ask you: what luxuries do you value enough to pay significantly extra for, and why? Please share in the comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles

After reading this post, The Problem with Green Standard Offerings, on the Indoor Health Council’s blog, I wrote a response worth sharing with you (slightly edited for readability):

Cleaning by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

 

 

You write, “focus on the main issue, health-focused cleaning; directing energy to one and not two main goals: health or sustainability, not both, or you compromise the program.”

We need a reframing here.

The question is not whether to choose health over green practices (of course we do!). The better question is how to achieve the health outcomes while also creating positive environmental impacts.

As one very easy example, how much packaging do we really need? Does it really increase safety to wrap every component of a kit individually, place the wrapped components on a foam tray, wrap the entire inner contents, box the wrapped set, and then add another layer of shrinkwrap around the box, stick the box in a case with 11 others, shrinkwrap the case, stack cases on a pallet, and then wrap the pallet?

For that matter, could some of the components in that kit be used again? Why do we design so many products to be used once and then thrown away?

My comment ended there–but that’s only the beginning of a much larger discussion. Some other questions to raise would include:

  • When can we use nontoxic natural cleansers and disinfectants such as baking soda and peroxide—and when do we actually need something stronger?
  • Can we get our cleaning agents in eco-friendly formats such as pellets to be dissolved in water, rather than harmful ones such as aerosol cans?
  • What are the most ergonomic ways to clean that protect our hands, shoulders, and backs from injury?
  • How do we most effectively train cleaning personnel to understand health, environmental, and safety issues?

Please feel welcome to add your own questions in the comments.

 
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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Consumer Issues, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Mindset, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Science, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Technology, travel Tagged with , , ,

I just came across a query letter I wrote in 2020. It raises a lot of questions that are still very much worth asking—and attempting to answer.

Globe showing various crises around the world
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care



In many ways, these questions were easier to answer back then. Unfortunately, as a society, we missed the window to create those kinds of sweeping changes when the active threat of Covid made them easier—but we can still make the effort. We can still transform society, our relationship with other beings, and the planet in our own lifetime. It’ll just take more effort.

Here’s the relevant section of what I wrote back then (I’ve removed a long paragraph with my credentials, as well as my closing.)—and I’d love to get your comments:

Hi, there, 

As an experienced journalist and award-winning, best-selling ten-book author with several books on social enterprise as a profit center, I propose an article, Leveraging the Great Pivot: How COVID-19 Creates Long-Term Post-Pandemic Opportunities for Racial Justice, Economic Advancement, and Environmental Healing. Probably in the 1500-2500 word range.

The premise: For decades, activists have been told we can’t fix the crushing problems of our time, like hunger, poverty, racism, war, catastrophic climate change, etc. Yet, starting in early 2020, the entire world pivoted and everything changed. As education, many types of business, and even cultural events shifted online or reinvented themselves, we learned how resilient, adaptable, and creative we are. And that process created opportunities that could never have happened in the pre-pandemic world. 

These massive global, national, regional, and local shifts prove we can reinvent the world as the place we really want to live in–and we can replicate the shift in other areas. As a society, we have to do this pivot strategically, and it has to involve many sectors: government, nonprofits, activists, community organizations, academia—and the business community. 

Just look at how the massive expansion of the racial justice movement since May has changed perceptions around the US and around the world. And that’s one small piece of a big multi-issue cauldron of solution-driven thinking and activism; a lot of good work is going into solving those big crises, as well as protecting our fragile democracy. 
The question is: pivot to what?

Could health care coverage be shifted away from employers so the next time an emergency shuts hundreds of thousands of businesses, their laid-off employees don’t lose their safety net? Could this be the US’s chance to adopt the single-payer model most of the rest of the world uses? And to shift from treating the sick’s symptoms to maintaining wellness across the population so fewer people get sick in the first place? Can this be the moment to finally get away from fossil and nuclear, to combine clean renewable energy with massive systemic conservation so we’re no longer squandering our children’s heritage polluting and carbonizing our planet while depleting scarce resources? Is it time for decent affordable housing to be seen as a right? What are the best ways to create more housing that also protect the environment, create pleasant yet affordable neighborhoods, and avoid negative consequences like urban sprawl?

We can ask similar questions in every sector: criminal justice, job creation, transportation and shipping (moving both people and things), replacing armed conflict with peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring a pluralistic society that honors both its majorities and minorities, etc.

After four years of Trump and a year of COVID, it won’t be enough to go back to the “normal” of 2019, or even of 2015. But with the pandemic comes the luxury and responsibility of critically examining every aspect of society. We need to figure out what the goal of every institution is–and how to achieve or surpass that goal as we rebuild. Just as many developing countries skipped landlines and clunky desktop computers and went straight to smartphones, we need to ask questions like:

  • What are we *really* trying to accomplish?
  • Is this the best way to meet that goal?
  • How could we improve it?
  • How could we make it more inclusive?

Then we brainstorm with these ends in mind, using a seven-step process that opens up new thinking and lets us implement new solutions.
To make this concrete, think about spending millions of R&D dollars to create a pen that can write in zero-gravity. But the real goal isn’t to have a pen that can write in space—that’s a means to an end. The real goal is to be able to write in space. And suddenly, with that framing, the solution is obvious: use pencils—or computers! Maybe you create a pencil lead that can make a darker, easier to read impression, create a Velcro mount for your device so it doesn’t go flying across the cabin, or make other little tweaks—but you’ve accomplished the basic goal, with resources you already have.
Business has a vested interest in reinventing itself, as dozens of industries were rendered obsolete, as supply chain issues showed up unexpectedly, and as those sectors that strengthened and grew had to adapt. Small businesses can survive and even thrive, but not as it was in 2019. Whether a manufacturer switches from making luxury goods to PPE or a retailer learns how to blend online and (protected) in-person approaches, pretty much everyone has to pivot. Why not seize the opportunity to have that reinvention foster racial, gender, and class equity…green the planet while creating jobs…match product introduction and production not to advertising-created materialism but to solving real needs and getting paid for it?
In the activist world, meetings that might have had 10 local people in a room can now draw 500 from around the world—and provide digital tools to mobilize action, such as Spoke, a texting platform that can allow volunteers to send 1000 or more text messages an hour and respond individually and personally when someone replies.
 In my own professional development this year, from the comfort of my own home, I’ve attended dozens of far-away events. Some had hundreds or thousands of attendees from dozens of countries (among them a worldwide UN conference, multiple 50th-anniversary celebrations of Earth Day, and gatherings on more niched topics such as the special situation of Jews of color). I could not have afforded the time and money to go to so many conferences, and several times, they’ve overlapped. But I was able to participate in more than one at a time, or listen to what I’d missed on replay. I’ve also participated in some thinking and brainstorming calls from widely scattered groups of thinkers and researchers working on global solutions to these and other problems. As somewhat more exciting examples, local cultural performers with no previous broader following are finding global audiences—and the sound technicians who can replace awful-sounding Zoom calls with concert-quality production are keeping busy.

Even on the personal side, some of the restrictions can be reframed as empowerment—just as we can think of a wheelchair user not as “confined to a wheelchair,” but “liberated with a wheelchair,” because it allows that user to go places that would otherwise be off-limits. My wife and I hosted a Passover Seder with family and friends from three generations and 9 different states from Massachusetts to California–most of whom would never have come in person.

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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Ethics: General, Innovation, Marketing Trends/News, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

On November 30, without much fanfare in my world, a new Artificial Intelligence tool called ChatGPT was released that could be as disruptive as Google or smartphones or affordable green energy. Less than a week later, on December 3, my programmer son-in-law blew our socks off with a demo. He showed us how he kept building more and more complex prompts to a query that in its final form compared the philosophies of Descartes, Nietzsche, and Bugs Bunny (who the software even correctly identified as fictional). The written response was cogent and fairly convincing–and went a lot deeper than, say, Wikipedia. And in its basic form, it apparently doesn’t even crawl the Internet!

Just one day later, Chris Brogan raved about the tool and gave another example in his newsletter; he asked ChatGPT to write a newsletter article about itself. While it didn’t produce work that I would turn in to a client, it’s better than at least 50 percent of the business writing that crosses my desk. He also used another tool, DALL-E, to create shockingly realistic graphics of things that don’t exist. Chris doesn’t have a public archive of his newsletters, so, unfortunately, I can’t link to his article and examples.

One day after Chris, the New York Times jumped in. One of its examples gives instructions for removing a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR (I hope the sandwich isn’t as old as the VCR!). Here are the first five sentences:

King James Version VCR cleaning tip written by ChatGPT
King James Version VCR cleaning tip written by ChatGPT

And today, one week after Chris wrote about it, Seth Godin devoted his daily column to preaching that the existence of ChatGPT, which can generate adequate (if mediocre) copy in seconds, means that we should pride ourselves on our artisanship–on creating work that is significantly better than a machine can do. (I like that approach!).

Oh, yeah, and the tool’s developer, Open AI, has a nice little flowchart of how it works (that I suspect ChatGPT helped prepare).

While news and opinions about ChatGPT seem to be popping up everywhere, you might shrug your shoulders and think, “so what?”

That would be a dangerous mistake! Dozens if not hundreds of industries could face fundamental shifts. Writing of all kinds (commercial, academic, literary, philosophical, instructional, etc.), obviously. But also design, fine art, computer programming, marketing, teaching, office administration, human resources, engineering…it would be a long list. It raises issues around ethics, staffing, training, research, library science, intellectual property–and perhaps most crucially, a future where bots and AI engines make decisions independent of their human creators.

In other words, this might be how we get to HAL, the infamous AI computer that went rogue in the 1968 movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Why am I going on about this? Because I want you to be forewarned and prepared.

Before deciding if my advice is worth paying attention to, you may find it helpful to consider my history with technology trends:

Although I’m not a professional trendspotter, I do pay attention. I’m a sponge for news and keep notes that sometimes find their way into books, blog posts, or speeches. I may not personally use some of these technologies, but knowing that they’re out there and what they can do influences my consulting recommendations.

I tend to wait for new technologies to be reasonably affordable and user-friendly, so I’m rarely in the very first wave, but it’s not unusual for me to be well ahead of others. I got my first computer (an original Mac) in 1984 because the learning curve was far less than for PCs of that era, my first laser printer in 1985–and that combination allowed me to disrupt and dominate my local resume industry by offering low-cost while-you-wait service. I got my very underpowered first laptop in 1986, which gave my travel and interview journalism and book writing a huge jumpstart. I made my first Skype video call, to New Zealand, in 1998 and had been on Zoom for about three years before the pandemic made it popular.

I knew about the online world in 1984. But it was too hard to use back then. I tried it for the first time in 1987 (and even dipped my toe into social media as it existed in that era), using Compuserve. But I didn’t like the primitive and buggy interface, hated trying to keep track of user names that consisted of long series of numbers with a random period in the middle, and was constantly frustrated by the balky connection that kept tossing me off–and left after a few months. I waited until 1994 and AOL’s easy interface before going back. And within a year, I had my first of many overseas marketing clients: a vitamin company in the UK.

In the green world, I follow innovations fairly closely. I put solar on the roof of my then-258-year-old farmhouse in 2001, LED lighting throughout the house around 2013-14, and a green heating system somewhere around 2015. I’ve been telling people for years about powerful innovations like a Frisbee-sized hydroelectric power generator that doesn’t require a dam, wind turbines made of old 55-gallon drums that spin on a vertical axis and can generate power at a far larger wind speed range, and the disruptive power of 3D printing.

But sometimes I wait, even if I’m recommending certain tools to others. I didn’t get a smartphone, digital camera, 3-in-1 printer, or color monitor until the bugs were worked out and the prices were slashed. Now, I wonder how I ever managed without those tools. And I still don’t have an electric car or a color printer.

So with this background, I will call ChatGPT a very big deal indeed.

It’s likely that I’d see the potential impact anyway, but it’s especially obvious because I’m reading a book called The Anticipatory Organization by Daniel Burris, which focuses on the need to focus on disruptive trends and the benefit of being the disruptor rather than the disrupted. (I’ll be reviewing it in my January Clean and Green Club newsletter; if you don’t subscribe yet, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com, scroll to “Get your monthly Clean and Green Club Newsletter at no cost,” and fill out the simple form. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too :-).

Once I get a chance to play with ChatGPT directly, I will probably have more to say about it. Unfortunately, with all this buzz, there’s now a waiting list, so I’ll have to delay that particular experience.

 
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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

After reading this post on the Indoor Health Council’s blog, I wrote a response worth sharing with you:

Cleaning by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Re: The Problem with Green Standard Offerings: You write, “focus on the main issue, health-focused cleaning; directing energy to one and not two main goals: health or sustainability, not both, or you compromise the program.” We need a reframing here.

The question is not whether to choose health over green practices (of course we do!). The better question is how to achieve the health outcomes while also minimizing negative and maximizing positive environmental impacts. As one very easy example, how much packaging do we really need? Does it really increase safety to wrap every component of a kit individually, place the wrapped components on a foam tray, wrap the entire inner contents, box the wrapped set, and then add another layer of shrinkwrap around the box, stick the box in a case with 11 others, shrinkwrap the case, stack cases on a pallet, and then wrap the pallet?

For that matter, could some of the components in that kit be used again? Why do we design so many products to be used once and then thrown away?

My comment ended there–but that’s only the beginning of a much larger discussion. Some other questions to raise would include:

  • When can we use nontoxic natural cleansers and disinfectants such as baking soda and peroxide–and when do we actually need something stronger?
  • Can we get our cleaning agents in eco-friendly formats such as pellets to be dissolved in water, rather than harmful ones such as aerosol cans?
  • What are the most ergonomic ways to clean that protect our hands, shoulders, and backs from injury?
  • How do we most effectively train cleaning personnel to understand health, environmental, and safety issues?

Please add your own questions in the comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, localism/locavore, Mindset, poverty, Psychology, Science, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

A whole bag of usable produce thrown away. Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumpster-a-plenty.jpg

I have a moral problem with food waste when others are going hungry. In the developed world, our hunger crisis has nothing to do with insufficient supply–and everything to do with throwing out vast quantities of usable food, and the people who need it being unable to get it. 30 to 40 percent of all food grown in the US is tossed. Some gets thrown away because it spoils–but 1) a whole lot of perfectly good food goes to the landfill, and 2) if one area has gone bad (like mold one side of a block of cheese), in many cases, the item can be trimmed and most of it saved. Smell, taste, and appearance can help you decide what can be salvaged and what should go in the compost.

Where it does food waste come from? To name a few: Restaurants cooking more than they sell. Uninformed consumers who think food has to be dumped once it passes its sell-by date. Produce wholesalers who reject fruits and vegetables because of non-uniform appearance. Commercial processors who are not set up to capture and process every bit.

This New York Times article describes two apps, Too Good to Go and Flashfood, that match unsold food with ready bargain-seeking buyers. I think this is terrific–a win-win-win. It reduces costs for restaurants, who still get paid a reduced price rather than having to pay to throw it away. It reduces costs for consumers who’d like a good meal and don’t mind taking whatever’s available. It reduces pressure on landfills, which are overrun with wasted food, and on the environment and climate, which take multiple hits when food is wasted.

Grocery stores need similar programs. One step in the right direction is services like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market, both of which sell reject produce direct-to-consumers.

On the consumer side, the biggest results will come from education. We need trainings that demonstrate:

  • What foods really aren’t safe past their expiration dates, and which are perfectly fine (in general, meat products should be used or frozen before their expiry dates, opened refrigerated dairy is typically good for at least three days beyond, and unopened often for a week or two, while many processed foods are shelf-stable for years)
  • How to preserve various foods
  • Where to donate if you have too much food that’s still good
  • How buying locally grown organic foods minimizes waste (including the huge environmental burden of transporting foods across oceans and continents
  • What makes sense for your size household to buy in bulk, and what’s much better to just buy as much as you need inn the near future
  • How to use smell, appearance, and small tastes to determine whether food is still ok
  • When it makes sense to trim bad parts off, and when to discard the whole thing
  • How to use leftovers without getting bored with them
  • Environmentally friendly options for disposing of spoiled food (compost, slops for animals, etc.)

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Marketing Trends/News, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

One area where sustainability can really easily interface with consumers–and give them a direct role in becoming more sustainable–is the very simple step of adding signage (including website notices) that indicates how far a product has traveled. Informal observation (not any real research) at a store that was doing this showed me that it significantly raised consumer awareness and drove purchasing choices toward more local options. Similarly, signage can clue people in about what progress you’re making on the social equity issues you’re addressing.

Another is revealing what goals were met in the making of the product, which were not meant, and how the failure to meet a sustainability or equity goal is pushing your company to do more.

And a third is to open actively monitored channels where customers and other stakeholders can make suggestions on your sustainability and social justice improvements. Think of it as a form of zero-cost consulting help (but recognize that however well-meaning they are, they are unlikely to know the true costs and feasibility levels of their suggestions. ALWAYS respond to any serious suggestion (ignore and block the addresses of the ones who spam your form, though). Engaging in real dialog is not only excellent PR, it’s also excellent market research.

Are there benefits to this approach? Absolutely! Consider Marks & Spencer, a major UK retailer. In 2007, they started measuring and reporting on 100 environmental metrics, calling this initiative “Plan A.”

Very quickly, the results provided so many benefits that the company started measuring an additional 80 metrics. As Bob Willard reports in his book, The New Sustainability Advantage (which I cite in mown book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World),

The company expected to invest £200 million in the program, but by 2009-10 Plan A had broken even and was adding £50 million t0 the bottom line. In response, M&S added another 80 commitments to the original 100 in Plan A. (p. 159)

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , ,

Those of us in the US are probably used to hearing people go on and on about our high status in rankings of desirability. And in some ways, we are. (I am a US citizen and a lifelong resident, so in this post, I’m going to use “we” and “our” when referring to Americans.)File:Life expectancy vs healthcare spending.jpg

  • We are super-cosmopolitan, able to create cities where hundreds of different ethnic, racial, and religious groups not only live and work together but enjoy each other’s food, music, etc.
  • We introduced modern democracy to the world–a huge improvement over the divine right of kings
  • We have enormous diversity in geography, agriculture, weather conditions…whatever you want, you can find it somewhere in the US
  • US technology leadership sparked enormous progress in fields as diverse as computing, clean energy, and space exploration

BUT on a lot of other metrics, we fall alarmingly short. Consider, for instance:

I could go on,  but you get the idea. In metric after metric, the US was once the leader and now lags.

Isn’t it time to reclaim that greatness?Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Customer Service as Marketing, language, Mindset, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

I just experienced such a screwed-up customer service encounter that I have to share it.

Do you pass the squeak test? - Victus Catering ConsultancyIn August, I received a letter from my primary care doctor announcing that he was cutting back on his patient hours. He has been my doctor since about 2003. In November, as COVID seemed to be easing, I called to schedule a physical exam for the first time in several years. I explained that I had several concerns and I really trusted my doctor’s diagnostic ability and asked if it was possible, despite his scaling back, to schedule with him. And I was given an appointment for today at 2:40 p.m.

Yesterday, at 4:12 p.m., less than 24 hours before my appointment, I received a call from one of the nurses that they were canceling my appointment because my doctor was scaling back and “needed to reduce his patient panel.” I said that they’d had four months to figure that out, that canceling on less than a day’s notice was extremely rude and unacceptable, that I had been willing to wait so long only because it would be with MY doctor. To their credit, they did offer me an appointment with a different doctor on Friday but I said very politely that I had specific reasons for wanting this practitioner and they had no right to snatch it away at the last moment for an issue they could have fixed at the time the appointment was set. She said the practice manager would call me.

This morning, the practice manager called back. Her customer service skills were atrocious. First she insisted that because I had received the August letter, that “it wasn’t our fault.” I explained repeatedly that I had been willing to wait more than four months only because I was promised an appointment with my chosen doctor. I actually had to say (several times) that while I understood it wasn’t her fault personally, it was absolutely the fault of her organization. I said I wanted a real apology that accepted responsibility organizationally, and she eventually admitted that yes, the organization made an error that was causing harm to me, and that she would review the interaction where I booked the appointment and find out why the person I spoke to had made an appointment that shouldn’t have been allowed.

Then I asked her how she was going to “make me whole.” She didn’t seem to understand what I meant. I said “how are you going to make it right for me?” She said there was nothing she could do. “I can’t talk to the doctor!”

Me: “Why not?”

Her: “I can’t talk to him.”

Me: “Could you explain the circumstances to him and ask that just this once, could he make an exception because of the promise made to me that it would be with him. I could find a new primary care doctor going forward but he really should keep this appointment as a one-time exception. I understand  if it can’t be today. I don’t mind if it’s later this week.”

Her: “The nurse spoke to him after talking with you. He wanted the appointment canceled.”

Me: “I doubt that she explained the full situation to him, that I was willing to wait the four months specifically in order to see him, and that you gave me inadequate notice. Would you please explain the full situation and ask him if under the circumstances, he would make an exception? Again, if it doesn’t work with his schedule today, I can be flexible about when I see him.”

Her: (big sigh). “Okay, I will ask him and call you back.” No word from her.

2-1/2 hours after she called and only 2-1/2 hours before I was due to show up, I called again. After checking their automated confirmation system, which had only the rescheduled appointment with the different doc on Friday. I spoke with a very pleasant receptionist who told me that the practice manager was in a meeting and would call before the end of the business day. I explained that this was about an appointment for today and I really didn’t want to discover after-the-fact that she had reinstated it. The receptionist said she’d have her call within the next hour. I wasn’t holding my breath and was not surprised that she hadn’t called as of the time I would have needed to arrive, or even by the time I probably would have been done. I have no way of checking, but based on her general attitude, I would be very surprised if she actually bothered to communicate with the doctor.

Customer Service is not my primary jam, but it is something I speak and write about fairly often. Done well, it’s an essential marketing function that turns customer problems into loyalists. The flip side of that is that bad or absent service converts loyalists into enemies–people who will speak up and leave poor ratings, tell their friends to avoid that business. Not the sort of messaging you want following your business around.

If I were training this organization, I would:

  1. First instill a culture of actually serving customers (patients, in this case)–of understanding that it’s not about your convenience but about making the customer feel heard and appreciated–and meeting customer needs.
  2. Teach compassionate listening skills and sincere, immediate apologies that accept responsibility.
  3. Empower the staff to offer suitable make-goods and think creatively about what the right make-good is in a particular situation. This is one time to be led by the customer; it’s totally okay to ask, “what can we do to make it up to you?” Often, their answer will be much more modest than you might have expected. In this case, I gave her what I needed: to have her offer to talk to the doc and see if he would reconsider–and even that faced a wall of resistance.
  4. Teach and model appropriate responses that make the customer feel heard.
  5. Teach the importance of keeping promises–as Google did several years ago when they actually went back and re-listened to the customer service call where I was told misinformation and cheerfully refunded the $200+ I’d been charged for following the advice I’d been given. They’ve now kept me as a cell phone customer longer than three previous companies.

As a customer of this organization, I not only had the bad experience above, but my wife has been getting the runaround for months on a chronic problem, with calls not being returned and a generally desultory attitude. At this point, they will be getting negative reviews in public places from us and we will make inquiries about other area practices that are accepting patients. I recognize that our area has a doctor shortage and we might be stuck with them, but we are tired of being kicked around and we certainly won’t recommend them to others.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail