Category: Eco-friendly

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Innovation, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Glass Doors in Metro Station
Platform entry gate on the Shanghai Metro (courtesy of Wikipedia)

[This is the first of three observation posts about China. In the coming weeks, I expect to also look at westernization/managing rapid growth and dissent.]

On our recent trip to China, we explored three different cities by underground rapid transit. Shanghai and Xian call their system the metro, while in Beijing, it’s the subway.

By any name, the train system is a wonder. Signs and recorded announcements are bilingual and clear, all the exits are numbered, the trains are fast, frequent clean, and quiet—and crowded.

Xian has only two lines, in part because several digs to expand the system have unearthed archeological treasures. It will have three more in the coming years. Shanghai and Beijing have many more.

In cities as large as these (8 million to 25 million), keeping people out of cars is very much a public good, Traffic congestion is already a misery, as is pollution. Plus, rapid transit is far more environmentally benign than transporting even 1/4 as many via private cars. In other words, the more people can use the trains, the better it will be on the street. Thus, it’s no surprise that the trains are very inexpensive, and cover a lot of ground. The zoned systems cost just 3 yuan (about 40 cents) for the shortest distance in Beijing and Shanghai and only 2 yuan in Xian; in Beijing, at least, much of the city core seems to be in the first zone. A ride all the way to the Shanghai airport costs 7 yuan. Regular commuters can get reusable fare cards and pay even less.

In Beijing, the system extends some 30 or so miles out to the Great Wall and the Summer Palace, perhaps even farther in some directions. The maximum fare of 10 yuan is based on a distance of 92 to 112 kilometers; the airport train costs 25 yuan (about USD $4).

Advertisers are likely to be a factor in the low cost; they monetize their captive audiences; Shanghai and Beijing are the first subways I’ve ever encountered that redesigned the standee straps to fit ads, and also project ads on the walls of the tunnels as the trains pass through. Oddly,  Shanghai had no ad placards in the usual place between the doors and the ceiling, though Beijing did.

To board a train, first you get your bags screened by the first of many security people you’ll encounter, then select the destination line from an electronic system map. At that point, you choose Chinese or English; select your station and number of passengers, insert your money, and take your farecard. Hold it over the turnstile sensor, enter, and either feed your ticket back to the turnstile or scan it (if you have more fares left) as you exit. Once on the platform, confirm the direction by checking the strip maps on the platform, which clearly show the stations yet to come.

On all three systems, at least some lines wall off the tracks from the platform, like an airport tram or an elevator (see picture above). Doors open in the wall when a train is docked. I was puzzled at this at first, as it seems an unnecessary expense and complexity. But then I thought about what rush hour might look like in a city of 24 or 25 million residents. With the walls, not only is litter eliminated as a safety hazard, but no one can fall or be pushed onto the tracks. However, in Beijing, several lines use open platforms, and their cars seem newer, so this experiment may be proving less-than-successful.

Western cities don’t face quite the daunting challenges of these megacities—but congestion, pollution, and resource use are definitely factors for urban planners. Here are a few principles they may want to borrow from the Chinese:

  • Make the line user-friendly to both locals and tourists—use clear signage
  • Keep it as affordable as possible
  • Keep it clean (all three systems were spotless, and we’d often see cleaners working the platforms)
  • Design the routes to bring people to the places they want and need to go, and run the trains often enough to keep up with demand
  • Label every exit not only with street names (useless to visitors, for the most part) but also with a letter or number; then locals can give directions that begin with the right exit number.

It’s worth noting that Shanghai also has a very high-tech ultra-high-speed magnetic levitation (MagLev) train, which costs significantly more to use and apparently takes a great deal of energy to run. Top rated speed is 430km/h. We saw it from the highway, but were never in a position to try it out. You can take it from the airport for 50 yuan (about USD $8).

Shel Horowitz’s latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, shows how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—using the power of the profit motive.

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Peace and War, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Dean Cycon, CEO, Dean's Beans, jamming with musicians in Rwanda
Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans, making music in Rwanda

This may be the most personal and vulnerable post I’ve ever written, particularly when I talk about the second word.

Every year, Chris Brogan challenges his huge reader base to come up with three words to provide focus for the coming year. This year, I decided to take the challenge. My three words are:

  1. Transform
  2. Win
  3. Love

Here’s what they mean to me, and why I picked them:

Transform

First, there’s the social transformation I want to bring about by transforming the business world. I want to end the biggest crises of our time, and I see the business community as the best lever. Appealing to enlightened self-interest—the profit motive—I want to make the bottom-line business case that just as going green saved costs and increased revenue, so too can addressing big picture issues like how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. When I first started talking a great deal about going green as a profit booster, around 2002, people looked at me funny. Now, it’s common business wisdom. I think the same will be true eventually for creating profitable products, services, and a company DNA that address these issues at their roots.

Second, the transformation in my own business. I see consulting, speaking, and writing on how business can bring about that transformation (and how any particular business can develop and market the right social change products and services for its own culture and markets) as a major part of my business in the coming year, and for the rest of my working life. While I’ve been thinking about these things for many years, have written books and given talks about it, I still have to find the markets that are willing to pay for what I know I can do for them. I go into the year with two possible markets that are quite different: small entrepreneurial and startup companies, and large, established corporations. I’ve developed two different websites for these audiences, because the agenda, methodology, timetable, and price structure will be very different.

All of this is a natural outgrowth of the green business profitability work I’ve done the past several years—but while it builds on the past work, it is different. I’m confident that I can make it work, but am still a bit fuzzy on the how. Which brings us to the second word:

Win

My original choice was “succeed,” but then I went to Chris’s post. He chose “win” as one of his words, and I think it’s like success, but stronger. It can also work as both a noun and a verb, as can my third word.

Also, I feel that on many levels other than the material, my life IS a success. I made a conscious decision about 30 years ago to have a happy life, and I’ve made good on that: I love the marriage I’m in, the house and community where I live, the places I visit, the local organic fresh food I eat, the books I read, the performances I watch, and so on. That decision rippled through all areas of my life. As early as 1985, it was the difference between feeling angry and frustrated and cheated when I had to spend an entire day of precious vacation mailing packages back to myself, as the old me would have—and thinking, even before I was married, about the wonderful story I’d have to tell my grandchildren.

But there are two areas where I need to replace that general feeling of success with a clear, strong victory: the economic underpinning of my business (which has now had two low-producing years in a row while I retooled for the transformation)…and the deeper impact of my work on the world.

The problem with having many interests and multiple skill areas is that it’s really hard to focus. When everything is fascinating, how do you choose? Yet, to succeed—to win—you have to close some doors so you can pass through the doors that remain open.

This is the lens: I’m using to help me choose what to focus on:

Over the past few years, I’ve worked hard to overcome a case of what my friend Noah St. John calls “success anorexia.” I’ve looked at my money/success blocks, and overcome a number of them. But, watching my own failures doing things that have worked really well for others, I realize there’s still some hidden piece, deep in my subconscious, that courts failure. I need to find that piece, hold it up to the light, make an alliance with—and redirect—the parts of it that act out of love, excise the parts that are rooted in self-hatred, and have a clear win. This will be difficult, because I don’t even know what it is that’s holding me back. But it’s essential.

Once that hurdle is overcome, I want to look at how to broaden my impact. I have a great message and great examples of how we can solve these big problems. But for that to really change the world, I need to find tens of thousands, maybe millions of people who are open to that transformational message. None of my books have ever sold more than a few thousand copies. My blog and social media audiences are limited. The number of people who hear me speak in a year is much too small. The second big win I need is to get myself in front of a far larger number of people. That this will help with selling more books, doing more paid speaking to larger audiences, and getting more consulting gigs—in other words, contributing to the win I’m looking for in my own blocks—is an extra benefit. At age 59, I have a limited time to make a big impact on the world. I want to leave a legacy of creating deep transformational change, because I love this planet. And that’s a nice transition to the third word.

Love

Love of others and of self, love of the ecosystem and the planet. In my youth, I was a very angry, loud activist who felt utterly betrayed by governments and corporations and wasn’t good at finding common ground or seeking alliances with those who thought or felt differently from me. Over the years, I’ve learned how mistaken I was—starting all the way back in the 1970s. Some might say I’ve softened but I don’t see that way. I’ve learned to approach with love, respect, and an understanding that almost all of us want a better world; we just have different ways of understanding how to bring it about.

Love is often about deep listening. It’s also about seeking a higher good for a greater number of people, without sacrificing the needs and desires of others. It’s about building the communication skills to allow environmentalists and Tea Partiers to discover their common ground (something I talk about very specifically in my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World).

Going deeper, this is what allows even the most hate-filled opponents to go past the hurt and build a better world for everyone. Nelson Mandela was a master of this. So were the people who formed the various Arab-Israeli joint projects such as the magnificent Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom community in Israel, where Jews and Arabs study and work together—the name, in both languages, translates as “Oasis of Peace”—or Combatants for Peace, which pairs Arab and Israeli former combatants to travel around and speak about cooperation.

It’s easy to love those who agree with you. It’s much harder to love those you might blame for the death of a loved one or the loss of your land. I have tremendous admiration for those involved in these sorts of cooperative efforts and I want to be more like them.

What are your three words?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , ,
Delegates at an international meeting
A similar international meeting (in Bonn, Germany)

After the failure at Copenhagen a few years back, I didn’t have big hopes for this year’s event. Yet, I’m beginning to think the big Paris climate change conference known as #COP21 may actually accomplish some real change.

Oddly enough, my optimism is rooted in something I would have seen a few years ago as a fatal flaw: that the results will be based in voluntary, not mandatory, compliance.

Why? Because:

  1. We can’t GET mandatory compliance. In the US, that would require a yes vote in each house of Congress, or even worse, the 2/3 Senate support required to adopt a treaty. But even as far back as Kyoto, US electoral politics had become a toxic swamp of attack-dog partisanship. No climate change bill with teeth is going to pass Congress any time soon. And without US (or China’s) participation, any agreement would be useless.
  2. The US and China have already agreed to take climate seriously, and have negotiated their own agreement. Weaker than I’d like, but a heck of a good start, and one that seems to have helped apply the brakes on China’s mad rush to coal (the worst scenario for averting climate disaster).
  3. The business community has woken up. Often a force for conservatism, the business world now understands the catastrophic consequences of failure to make meaningful progress on climate change—and the profits to be made in doing the right thing. If the government won’t act, they will force action through other channels. The emergence of environmental activism among evangelical Christians and even a subset of Tea Party activists who care deeply about the environment is also very encouraging.
  4. The growing use of carbon markets provides additional financial incentives for cutting carbon.
  5. New technology makes it easier to do more with less, use. our resources far more effectively, and solve engineering problems with biological thinking (for example, letting bridge engineers study spiderwebs). We understand now, for instance, just how much energy and carbon we can save by going for deep conservation.
  6. Early discussions about whether the world should agree on a 1.5 degree Celsius vs. 2 degree C cap in global temperatures compared to what existed before the Industrial Revolution means we’ve finally gotten past the question that’s been holding us back for so long: why do we need to contain rising temperatures in the first place? For the first time, the world is pretty much in agreement that it has to be done. Not just scientists, this time, but governments, too. Climate deniers (other than in the US Republican Party leadership, apparently) are now as marginalized as environmental activists were 20 or 30 years ago.

I could keep going, but you get the message—we can do this!

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
Urban bicyclists taking a break
Urban bicyclists taking a break

What surprised me about Seth Godin’s blog post today on cars vs bicycles was the way he based his pro-bike arguments in classic liberal altruism: protect the underdog, ensure the safety of the less powerful. This is even more remarkable because he lives in New York City, whre bikes have clear superiority over cars for many purposes. (His tounge-in-cheek pro-car arguments, on the other hand, were like the modern Republican Party: I have more power than you, so get out of my way.)

I’m a big believer in convincing by harnessing the reader/listener/viewer’s enlightened self-interest. So I’d rewrite his pro-bike list with these eight positive reasons:

  • In dense urban areas, you’ll get there much faster on a bike than in a car, for trips of up to five and maybe as much as seven miles, especially in rush hour
  • You can park within a few feet of your destination (in big cities, I often start looking for a parking space half a mile/one kilometer ahead, and sometimes don’t find a space until a mile/2KM on the other side)
  • In less populated areas, the bike provides a healthy, fun workout
  • You notice more on a bike: stores and restaurants to check out, architectural details, big scenic vista, some ripe and yummy fruit to pick on a wild raspberry vine, that gorgeous hawk soaring above you
  • You enjoy that wonderful feeling of being outside with the breeze and sun
  • Your carbon footprint during your trip is reduced by orders of magnitude
  • You get to smile and be smiled upon by other people; positive human connection, no matter how fleeting, is a good thing, and hard to achieve encased in a ton or two of steel and plastic
  • Bikes are waaay cheaper—bike economics: outright purchase of something between $200 for a decent used street bike on up to, say, $600 for a new one of better quality, maintenance costs of $50-$100 per year, fuel cost of zero; car economics: at minimum, $5000 plus hundreds or thousands in annual maintenance for a functional used car with a remaining lifespan of three years or more, plus costs of fuel and insurance, on up to several tens of thousands for a new one.

Of course, Seth is using the bike vs. car argument as a metaphor for the caring vs. selfish economy. But as an avid biker (going back to commuting to high school in New York City, and continuing through my current rural lifestyle)—and a benefit-focused marketer, I had to point out that bikes do actually offer a number of real advantages.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Eco-friendly, Environment, General Commentary, localism/locavore Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Over the past several months, I’ve been learning more about biomimcry: emulating nature’s designs to solve problems humans need solved. Often, the results are aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly, and energy conserving.

While, as far as I know, he wasn’t paying attention to energy use or design challenges like harvesting rainwater in the desert, the famed late-19th/early-20th century architect and artist Antoni Gaudí certainly was a biomimic. Here’s what the Barcelona Tourist Guide says about Gaudí:

Most of Gaudí’s constructions have an organic look to them. This basic concept of using nature as the primary influences for his creativity is reflected in the use of the natural curved construction stones, twisted iron sculptures, and organic-like shapes—all of which are characteristic traits of Gaudí’s architecture.

I just visited Barcelona, where Gaudí left his mark and helped inspire the whole Modernist movement that gives today’s Barcelona so much character—and I found myself thinking often about biomimicry, and how the Modernists used nature forms to create a powerful aesthetic. Many of our other great inventors took inspiration from nature as well; Da Vinci and Buckminster Fuller were also biomimics.

In addition to his world-famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia Basilica, commenced in 1882 and not yet finished, he did several residential buildings, a palace for his patron, and even a stunning municipal park.

But the Sagrada Familia is probably the single best reason to visit Barcelona. It’s just magnificent. The interior and exterior are completely different experiences. The exterior is almost like it was done by an out-of-control cake decorator with a compulsion to sculpt every available surface; the interior is serene and calm, yet soaring and spiritually uplifting. It feels almost like some of the great mosques in Istanbul.

The exterior is iconic; you’ve surely seen photographs.

Exterior shot, Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona
Arch and four towers of the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudií

But to me, the deeper experience of this building is the sacred space within the walls. This brief movie clip gives at least a little taste of the Sagrada Familia interior experience. 

 

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Media Ethics, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

A couple of Facebook friends (both well-known marketers based in Canada, as it happens) posted a link to an article called “FDA to Crack Down on Home-based Soap Makers.”

Having seen government overreach in such areas as raw milk, I clicked over and took a look. And found very little information. Rather than spend my morning following links on a Google search, I merely posted this response:

But the article says very little about what the proposal actually would do. European cosmetics standards are a GOOD thing, and, as I understand them, would make it far harder for big corps to sell us harmful “personal care” products. Which doesn’t mean this law isn’t overreaching–just that I don’t know because the article doesn’t tell us. Seems like an easy way around this would be a minimum number of bars per year underneath which producers would be exempt. But even artisanal soapmakers *should* disclose ingredients.

Artisanal organic soap bars
Would small-batch organic soaps be affected? No.

Later, I saw another comment from someone who did take the time to do the research; businesses with less than $100,000 in sales are exempt.

In short, this article is an attempt to stir up hostility with a nonexistent controversy. And it seems that Senator Dianne Feinstein is not an evil tool of the personal care companies after all.

I wonder, if we dig deep enough, if we would find some of the big chemical-based personal care products companies—or perhaps an opponent of Senator Feinstein—have a hand in this disinformation campaign. The list of industry giants supporting the new legislation (and thus, imposing tougher standards for themselves) is a long one but it’s certainly not every company.

Incidentally, I’ve said for years that the tough European Union rules on personal care products were a huge marketing opportunity for companies that meet the standards. Whether based in the US or Europe, the first few companies that demonstrate they meet the tougher standards ought to go be very successful in the stores.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Value is about not just price, but quality. This busy market obviously understands.
Value is about not just price, but quality. This busy market obviously understands.
If you want to market on price, look at words like “affordable” and “value.” “Cheap” can be deadly.

As a service provider, I did lead on price for a number of years. Back in the days when much of my business was resume writing, I used a simple half-inch in-column ad in the Yellow Pages (remember them?) with the slogan “Affordable professional resumes while you wait.” The year they changed it without permission to “Affordable professional resumes while U wait,” I successfully argued that proper grammar was a key selling point in my line of work and they killed it—and got the cost of the whole year’s ad refunded. I turned out to be wrong; that ad brought me plenty of clients. But I personally would not patronize a writing service whose face to the world was ungrammatical.

Those ads ran in the 1980s and 1990s, and resume writing is only a tiny fraction of my current business. These days, I stress value, not price–for all the services I offer. Some are still quite inexpensive, like writing a press release or book cover—or, for that matter, the occasional resume I still write. Others, including strategic consulting on green and social change profitability as well as book publishing consulting, can be fairly pricy.

I would have moved away from marketing on low price anyway, as my business matured. But if I hadn’t, my business would have dried up. The market is very different now. Nobody is a prisoner of their own geography any more. I can’t compete on price with some clown on a bottom-feeding service bidding site who throws an article into a word-blender and spits out crap for $5 a shot. But I sure can compete on value and quality.

As a consumer, I’m price-sensitive on some items, but quality will trump price, and so will politics. Yesterday, I spent $40 or $50 at the farmers market. I could have bought the (theoretically) same items at a supermarket for half the price, but not the organic/local/fresh choices I purchased. But I also stopped at the local independent discount store and picked up some just-past-date polenta for a buck. I cooked it last night and it was fine. I have a less gourmet one in my fridge that I paid $3 for at a different store and it doesn’t expire until November, which means the one I ate tonight was probably packed last summer. But that’s OK, it was fine.

I learned all the way back in the 1980s that price and value were not necessarily the same. After a couple of bad experiences with cheap electronics, I started buying better quality components for my stereo, better telephones, and so forth—and being much happier with my purchases. I learned that I could get a good deal through a remainder catalog, and that a $100 item with an original list price of $300 was generally going to be a much better value than a $75 item that had never sold for more than $100. And when I bought my first computer, I went with the expensive but easy-to-use Macintosh and was very happy I did.

I will shop at that local discount store, but I won’t shop at that very famous low-price big box store beginning with a W. While I recognize that they are among the best in the industry on sustainability (something very important to me), I’m also painfully aware of how much I dislike their store siting and closing policies, their community relations, labor practices, supplier practices, and a bunch of other stuff. Plus, I’ve heard that the quality is often less than stellar. I give them kudos in my speeches for, among other things, developing a massive market for organic foods among people who have never been inside a Whole Foods. But I personally choose not to shop there.

But I’m perfectly happy to drive inexpensive, functional cars. Right now, we have a 2004 Mazda, bought new for $17K, and a 2005 Toyota Corolla, bought at six years old but with only 26,000 miles on it, for $10K. I expect both to last several more years. When we bought the Corolla, one of our other options was a used Prius with 99,000 miles, for $12K. The Corolla seemed like a MUCH better deal. It wasn’t the lower price so much as having only 1/4 as many miles.

In short, as a consumer, I’ll definitely factor in price, but it won’t be the only factor. How about you? As a business owner and as a consumer, how does price factor into your decisions.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business Ethics, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I just took a first stab at writing an Environmental and Social Change Business Bill of Rights. Adopting these principles would level the playing field and enable green, socially conscious businesses to compete as equals—and in that competition, they will win almost all the time.

But this should not be just me spouting off. I got the discussion started, but I want to learn what others would be important in that kind of a campaign (and who has energy to work on it.

Also, I’ve got seven points here. If we continue to model it after the US Bill of Rights written by James Madison (who later became President of the United States), we need ten What did I leave out?

We, the people of Planet Earth, hereby declare that every nation and the planet as a whole have certain inalienable rights, including Life, Sufficiency, Peace, and Planetary Balance. To these ends, we call upon the governments of the world, at all levels, to establish these rights through mandating the following policies:
1. Manufacturers shall take full responsibility for their products at all stages in the product lifespan, including manufacturing, distribution, use, collection, reuse, disassembly, recycling, and disposal. Retail and wholesale channels shall accept used products and convey them back through the supply chain to the manufacturers.
2. Passing off costs to others, as externalities, is not acceptable. Pollution, waste, destruction of others’ property, etc. will be paid for by the entity that causes it.
3. All new construction or major renovation shall meet minimum standards of energy, water, and resource conservation, as well as fresh air circulation. Such standards shall be incorporated into local building codes, meeting or exceeding LEED silver or stretch codes.
4. All newly constructed or significantly renovated government buildings shall be Net Zero or Net Positive in energy and water use, producing at least as much energy and water as the building uses. Private developers shall receive incentives to meet this standard.
5. All subsidies for fossil (including but not limited to oil, diesel fuel, airplane fuel, natural gas, propane, and coal), nuclear, or other nonrenewable energy sources shall be phased out as soon as practical, to be completed within a maximum period of three years.
6. All subsidies that promote fossil-fuel-powered vehicles over cleaner alternatives, including subsidies to infrastructure exclusively or primarily for their use, shall be phased out as soon as practical, to be completed within a maximum period of ten years.
7. Average fleet vehicle mileage standards shall be increased to 70 MPH for passenger vehicles carrying up to six people, and to 40 MPH for trucks and buses within ten years. Non-fossil-fuel vehicles shall be designed to make a contribution to stationary power needs.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , ,

This is big: The Guardian reports from Davos that Unilever is actively considering going for B Corp certification.

If you’re not familiar, B Corp is a legal definition of a profit-making corporation set up to promote environmental and social responsibility rather than a primary goal of maximizing short-term shareholder value and damn the torpedoes. In other words, it is legally allowed to pursue the greater good, even as most corporations are restricted by law and their charters. Maryland became the first of 28 US states to pass B Corp enabling legislation, in 2010.

It’s still a new movement. Only 1203 certified B Corps exist in the world, as of late January, 2015. Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s unit was one of the first B Corps, back in 2012—and Ben & Jerry’s CEO Jostein Solheim is leading the effort, apparently with strong support from Unilever’s sustainability-minded CEO, Paul Polman.

The B Corp certification process is long and arduous for an entity as complex as Unilever, one of the largest consumer products corporations in the world; it’s likely to take years. But just the act of engaging in the conversation is a game changer:

  • Unilever’s tacit endorsement of the B Corp movement confers legitimacy; if one of the largest and most successful business organizations in the world can embrace it , other companies will say, “perhaps we should look into this.”
  • The B Corp movement is still not very well known, compared to similar movements such as Fair Trade. With Unilever coming onboard, a lot more people in the business world will hear about it—and take it seriously.
  • It will provide Unilever with substantial marketing advantages for several years. If the company is able to harness them properly, it can expect to sway many now-neutral customers to Unilever’s vast portfolio of brands. (As a marketing and profitability consultant to green/socially conscious businesses and the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I can speak with some authority on this :-). )
  • Most importantly, it will show the entire business world that corporations don’t have to be rapacious; they don’t have to put short-term gain above the earth and its citizens (human and otherwise). It could even provide major leverage to overturn the body of corporation law that says corporations are legally required to put short-term profit ahead of all other considerations. And since most business people actually do want to do good in the world and many have felt burdened by this charter, this could create a seismic shift throughout the entire business community. (Some on the hard left will disagree that most business people actually want to do the right thing. Go ahead; the comments field is waiting for you.) Of course, there are a myriad of profit-making opportunities out there for activist companies willing to create and market goods and services that meaningfully reduce hunger, poverty, war, catastrophic climate change, and other suffering—you don’t need to be a B Corp for that. But as B Corp certification slowly becomes the default, it will speed that change.

In short, I’m heartened and excited by this news, and wish them success.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, localism/locavore Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday, two long-awaited and seemingly unrelated milestone events occurred in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts (where I live) and Vermont.

  1. Passenger train service was restored to Northampton and Greenfield, MA. The first commercial passenger trains since 1987 to use the Connecticut River tracks between Springfield, MA and Brattleboro,  VT made initial northbound and southbound runs between New York City and St. Albans, VT (a tiny village at the Canadian border). While only one train per day in each direction will make this run, it marks a rare expansion of long-distance passenger rail service in the US. Plans call for adding a stop at Holyoke, MA once that station is rebuilt in 2016, and there’s discussion of running several commuter trains a day at some point in the future—which would allow people to actually substitute train travel for driving.
  2. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, opened in 1972,was taken off the grid and permanently shut down. This GE Mark I plant, which uses a reactor design nearly identical to Fukushima’s, has been operating unsafely since its earliest days—I’ve seen an excerpt from the long, long official government safety issues report of March, 1974, and it isn’t pretty—and illegally under Vermont law for nearly three years (since March, 2012).

The forces that created these two events were very different: government efforts for the train, a combination of citizen activism and market conditions for the shutdown. But several common threads across the wider map of society show that these victories are actually linked. Both were responses to growing perceptions that:

  • We need to think bioregionally
  • We have to create energy and resource sustainability
  • Both of these milestones will create the kind of economic impact we want to see: moving toward conservation, renewable, safe energy sources and transit-oriented development boosts, smaller, local businesses and encourages changes in consumer use patterns
  • Both are better for the environment (do NOT let anyone try to tell you that nukes are environmentally benign—the claim of lower carbon footprint is false if you count the entire fuel cycle, and the environmental consequences of an accident are catastrophic)
  • Citizens, individuals, can make a difference—in our use patterns as well as our advocacy
  • Change is possible, even when it looks hopeless

Of course, there’s more work to be done.

To make the train viable, they really need extend service to Montreal, as was true in the distant past. Reasonably priced service between NYC and Montreal  (also serving population centers en route: Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford, CT; Springfield, MA; Burlington, VT) will keep a lot more of the seats occupied and create economic viability that will be hard to find if the train ends in nowheresville. Even from NYC, when you count time driving to the airport, time at the airport, and time getting from the airport to an inner-city final destination, train travel within a few hundred miles would not be that much slower than flying, and a good deal more pleasant. From Northampton or Greenfield, MA, it’s a no-brainer. Rather than drive 40 or 60 minutes south to the airport and getting there 90 minutes before a flight, ride the comfortable train in the direction you want to go. By the time you would have boarded the plane, you could already be in central Vermont, half-way to Montreal.

And to really boost the economy without Vermont Yankee, we need even more activity on solar, wind, geothermal, deep conservation, etc. We have to make up the loss to the power grid, and replace the jobs the plant had provided. The good news? Investment in these technologies creates a lot more jobs—22 times as many if you count construction jobs, and 148 times as many permanent jobs—than the same expenditure in nuclear, and a lot of that filters down to the more economically marginal who can get good jobs in these sectors.

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