Category: Green Business

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Green Business, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Kafka must be having a good laugh over this.

LEED certification for US government buildings has been a huge success story:

Since 2003, the General Services Administration (GSA)’s 91 LEED-certified and 219 pending buildings, totaling over 14 million certified square feet of space, can take credit for:

  • Lowering emissions by 20 percent
  • 20 percent lower energy intensity
  • Switching 16% of overall energy use to renewables
  • 14% reduction in water use since 2007

In and out of government, both the business case and the planetary case for LEED are clear:

In the last twelve years, LEED has aided the development of better products, better designs, better engineering, and better buildings. LEED has now grown into the most widely used high-performance building rating system in the world.  Today more than 12,300 commercial projects and over 20,000 residential units have achieved LEED certification.  An additional 1.6 million square feet of space is certified every day.

The business case for LEED is unassailable.  It saves U.S. businesses and taxpayers millions of dollars every year.  Furthermore, an organization’s participation in the voluntary LEED process demonstrates leadership, innovation, conservation stewardship and social responsibility, while providing a competitive advantage. All of these are reasons why small businesses, Fortune 100 companies, homeowners, governments and non-governmental organizations are using LEED to save money and save resources every day.

Now the latest idiocy in Congress is to try to force the GSA to abandon the well-respected LEED rating system. Why? To protect the interests of toxic chemical manufacturers whose products can’t qualify for LEED certification.

Earth to Congress: getting rid of toxics is part of  how you get green buildings. Duh!

If you think Congress should allow the GSA to continue using LEED in its building design criteria, here’s a petition you can sign. It’ll be turned in Tuesday, so go and sign it now before you get distracted.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , ,

When making any marketing purchase, you want to know what it will bring you. Too many business owners forget that step, and buy blindly, wasting a ton of money.

This morning, I got a call from a promotional products salesman that illustrates this all-too-well. This a  real conversation, as best as I can transcribe it from memory:

Me: I don’t do advertising specialties, because I don’t even meet most of my clients. I get them from my books, from online networking, from my speeches…

Salesman: Would you like more traffic to your website? We do these beautiful laser-engraved pens with your website URL.

Me: I already get about 50,000 visits a month to my site.

Salesman: Well, imagine hundreds of thousands more visitors.

 

Pens with URLs no one will type in
Would you type in a URL from these pens?

Me: You think I’m going to get hundreds of thousands of visitors by giving out pens? Let me ask you—when was the last time you visited a website because someone gave you a pen with the URL?

Salesman: Most of the pens I’ve seen don’t have URLs.

Me: Well, I’ve seen plenty that do. I read every printed pen I get. And I can’t think of a single one that got me to type in the URL.

First of all, the guy is out of touch. URLs have been appearing on pens for years. I did a quick survey of ten random custom pens in my stash; half had a URL, and some of the others, like a pen from Hyatt hotels, didn’t really need one because the URL is obvious. If you’re going to do any kind of promotional product, you want your URL nice and prominent on it. And second, he was so completely clueless about the ROI for me. The ROI for him is obvious: a commission. But what’s the benefit to me? Zero.

Mind you, I’m not dissing the category of promotional items. I’ve seen examples that work well: an auto sunshade with huge block letters on both sides, promoting a mayoral candidate (she won)…a mug that stays on your desk as a reminder, month after month, a solar calculator promoting a solar energy consultant…lawn signs with the silhouette of the mountain a local environmental group was trying to save, along with both phone and URL (they won).

In fact, I’m actually planning to experiment with a small run of imprinted seed packages; I believe they will harmonize with my message of business growth through green principles. I’ll hand these out when I speak at green business conferences, and maybe throw a few out to the audience for answering questions correctly in general business conferences.

Promotional products make sense when there’s not only a good fit between the marketing vehicle and the brand, but also a good fit between the utility of the product and the visibility of the marketing message. On that last, it’s the difference between items like pens or worse, sunglasses, where the marketing message is hard to read and too small to do much branding anyway—and something that actually might be useful for marketing, say, a t-shirt or tote bag, where the message can easily attract attention.

What are some of the best and worst marketing purchases you’ve made (or seen), from an ROI perspective? Comment below.

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business Tagged with , , , ,

I’ve heard of Health Care Without Harm, but this press release reminded me of them. Isn’t it ironic that the people who are supposed to keep us from getting sick have, in general, some very UN-eco-friendly practices? I hope HCWH becomes a catalyst for change, and in three to five years, doing healthcare in environmentally sensitive ways will be the norm. We’ve seen it in other industries, after all.

Meanwhile, congrats to the group on receiving this impressive award:

HCWH President Gary Cohen and Regional Director Bill Ravanesi Accept EPA New England Region
Environmental Merit Awards
Awards for Health Care Without Harm Work on Sustainable Health Care

(Boston, MA) Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) President Gary Cohen, of Jamaica Plain, MA, and Bill Ravanesi, HCWHBoston Regional Director, of Longmeadow, MA, today accepted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) New England Region Environmental Merit Award for their work in the region on behalf of Health Care Without Harm. The awards, which are the highest awards bestowed by the EPA in the New England Region, were presented for “extraordinary accomplishments to protect New England’s environment” in the Environmental, Community, Academia & Nonprofit category. A
Nonprofit

In its commemoration of Cohen and Ravanesi’s work, the EPA stated, “Health Care Without Harm, dedicated to helping create a more ecologically sustainable health care industry, consistently has been a leading advocate for green chemistry in the health care industry, locally and nationally. The organization, with Gary Cohen as its founder and executive director, was a major force behind the decision of one of the country’s largest health care providers to convert its intravenous equipment to more eco-friendly alternatives.”

The EPA noted HCWH’s support of the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), a coalition of major health systems and organizations committed to improving sustainability and safety across the health care sector. Partners Health Care, of Boston, MA, is a founding sponsor of HHI.

“We are honored to receive this award,” said Cohen. “We are proud of the hospitals in the New England region of the country who in many ways have been leaders of the sustainable health care movement. Even though the work of Health Care Without Harm is international in scope, the idea is to make communities healthier for families, and our work in the region, we hope, will make New England healthier for all of those who live here.

The agency praised the work of Bill Ravanesi, who is responsible for working directly with hospitals in the area and is currently working on an initiative organized by the Boston Green Ribbon Commission on extending sustainability throughout the city. “Bill Ravanesi . . . helps New England hospitals in toxicity and waste reduction, green building services, energy efficiency and climate change programs, focusing on sustainability and resiliency,” said the EPA. “He is responsible for organizing program development and implementation, legislative and regulatory advocacy and policy reform initiatives and has engaged hospitals all over New England in adopting new ways of doing business that meet the challenge of environmental responsibility.”

The awards were presented today in Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mass.

HCWH is an international coalition of more than 508 organizations in 53 countries, working to transform the health care industry worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. For more information on HCWH, see www.noharm.org.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

A blogger on Sustainable Business, Marc Stoiber, wonders why a major sustainability milestone achieved by Translink, the Vancouver, British Colombia transit system, went almost unnoticed by local and national media.

The funny thing is…transit systems control their own media, one that reaches the two most important audiences they have. If I were the company’s marketing director, I’d put inside placards on the front and back of both sides of every bus and subway (four signs in each car) to reach the actual riders—and exterior signage to reach the next-most-important constituency: Vancouver-area residents not yet using public transit.

The interior placards would not just brag about the accomplishment—they’d say thank you to the riders for their part. And those exterior signs would recruit new riders to join the tribe, e.g., “become part of the greenest commute in North America.” And I’d supplement this with a nice social media campaign, which itself could be a subject for exciting press releases, etc.

Then, the local media and perhaps the national media would almost certainly pick up the story—but even if they didn’t, the message would be out there, and if done right, ridership would grow.

Stoiber goes on to discuss the very creative marketing of another transit advocate, Jason Roberts—who put up a website for the a nonexistent light-rail transit line in Dallas, Texas called the Oak Cliff Transit Authority—and was able to organize so effectively around this public vision that the project actually got funded! You might call Roberts’ story “If You Dream It, They Will Come—IF You’re a Marketer and Organizer Who Can Create and Gather a Tribe.”

Vancouver Transit execs: I’d love to consult with you on how to build big awareness. I already have one Vancouver-based green company as a client.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , ,

You may have heard the slogan, “the greenest building is the one that’s already built.”

Think about it: You’re using existing resources, and those resources are already on-site. For the parts of the existing building that you can adapt or fix, you don’t have to mine or cut down anything, you don’t have to transport anything, and you don’t have to clear a new site out of farmland or forest.

Here’s a nice article on TriplePundit about a renovation of a former military barracks in Ft.Carson, Colorado into an office building. The project cost only a quarter of what a new building would have cost, and is green enough to be submitted for LEED silver certification. And that’s particularly interesting, because my understanding is that military barracks were typically built cheaply, quickly, and with little thought for conservation.

Another great example is the Empire State Building—which spent $20 million to achieve annual energy savings of more than $4 million. That works out to better than 20 percent ROI—at a time when you can’t even get 1 percent in a savings account. Not a bad investment!

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, People Helping People, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Very interesting article on Sustainable Brands, “Climate Change – Good For Business” by John Friedman.

Friedman cites Richard Branson on the opportunties in the environmental field:

“I have described the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as one of the greatest threats to the ongoing prosperity and sustainability of life on the planet,” he says. “The good news is that creating businesses that will power our growth, and reduce our carbon output while protecting resources is also the greatest wealth-generating opportunity of our generation.”

And I agree. I have profiled many entrepreneurs over the years who are succeeding with creative green businesses. In many cases, they are creating whole new market sectors—such as an entrepreneur who saves water by selling a spray fluid that largely neutralizes the odor and stain of urine, thus substantially reducing a family’s need to flush.

What is perhaps most interesting about the Friedman article is his historical perspective of energy and transportation not only as wealth-generators, but as environmental problem-solvers for their time:

A high percentage of the wealthiest people in history – excluding despots and conquerors – have made their fortunes in the areas of energy, transportation and construction. The Rockefeller fortune was based on oil (energy), Andrew Carnegie (steel), Cornelius Vanderbilt saw the revolution from wind to steam engines and built an empire in shipping and railroads. Henry Ford took the automobile from the purview of the wealthy to a staple of the average American household by increasing production efficiency, thereby reducing costs for consumers and creating an entire industry that was much of the basis for the American economy for decades…

Indeed many of these changes in industry and transportation have followed the evolution from individual power (feet or paddles), to animal power (horses and horses and buggies) to steam (initially powered in the U.S. by wood and then coal) and finally to internal combustion and electricity. It is important to note that in addition to increasing speed and efficiency, many of these changes were furthered by the desire for more environmentally friendly alternatives [emphasis added]; streetcars and buses in New York were seen as a solution to the manure that was lining the city streets.

Of course, there’s an obvious caution here. The message from the past, viewed through the lens of 2012 and catastrophic climate change, is that sometimes, solutions to old problems cause greater problems. This is a principle that must inform us as we go forward, to avoid blundering into even worse situations as we fix the urgent problems we face.

The good news: we know a lot more about what works and what doesn’t. For instance, we already know that nuclear power is not a solution to climate change and has enormous catastrophic potential. We know that fracking to drill for natural gas not only pollutes water but probably causes earthquakes.

And we also know that we have to be careful to develop solar, wind, hydro, tidal, magnetic, and other clean, renewable energy sources in ways that are both environmentally and economically sustainable.

This is our mission, our duty, our responsibility. Let’s get it done—the right way.

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Technology Tagged with , , ,

The technology to capture energy generated by people working out on exercise equipment has been around for years. I read about eco-pioneers who would bike in order to watch TV, probably at least 20 or 25 years ago.

Yet even in very green-conscious Massachusetts, it’s taken until now for a fitness center to use the power its members generate.

Congrats to Energia, of my own town of Hadley, MA, for being the first partially human-powered fitness center in the state (and one of only 70 in all of North America, to get with the program (pun intended).

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Technology Tagged with , , ,

And changing the face of our cities by thinking not only building by building, but even through a region that crosses an international border.

This TED talk on rethinking architecture is well worth watching (even if it’s a bit slow at first).

Besides, where else can you see a downhill ski resort in flat, urban Copenhagen—made out of…you’ll just have to watch the video to find out.
With thanks to @FabianPattberg

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

This is quite exciting: solar systems for remote, off-grid areas in developing countries, set up with near-zero upfront investment and a pay-as-you-go model, converting to full ownership when the system is paid for.

If you’ve read The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, this will make sense right away. If you haven’t read it, you might want to grab a copy. This is the future: bringing technology to the poorest of the poor, not as charity but as a profitable business model that maintains affordability even among customers who have almost nothing.

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