Tag: sustainability

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, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Gratitude, Innovation, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

One of Seth Godin’s recent posts was a fascinating look at framing problems. He cited nine factors that make it easier to address them.

Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Riffing on two of the nine, I wrote him this letter (I’ve done some minor editing for clarification since sending it to him):

Non-chronic–rationalization is our specialty, and the reason we learn to rationalize is so that we don’t go insane when faced with long-term, persistent issues. We bargain them down the priority list.  

Solvable–see that earlier riff about rationalization and chronic problems. If a problem doesn’t seem solvable, we’re a lot less likely to stake our attention on it.

Maybe this is one key to why I haven’t yet really made a full transition to marketing myself as a consultant at the intersection of profitability and solving *chronic* problems such as hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. I have done some messaging on these problems being solvable even though they are millennia-chronic, other than climate change, which is only 200 years old as a major problem. But maybe they still feel too big and scary for most people to see themselves as part of the solution. 
And yet, in our brief lifetimes…

A lot of the progress is very recent, and I think much of the credit goes to the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (adopted in 2000) and their successors, the  17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (adopted in 2015),

So here’s the question: What advice would you give me in marketing my consulting, speaking, and writing to a population that is so shut down about solving these massive problems that they don’t see the progress we’re actually making? (And may I quote your answer in the blog?)

Shel Horowitz – “The Transformpreneur”(sm)

<End of my letter to Seth>

I got back a one-sentence reply agreeing that we’re making progress and noting that the progress happens more easily when we tell those stories.

So, here’s your opportunity to go where Seth doesn’t go. Let’s get a nice discussion going on how we can convince people that we can–and should–solve long-term, systemic, chronic problems. Please leave your comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language Tagged with , ,

My hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, MA, noted today that the City of Northampton’s Office of Planning and Development has been renamed the Office of Planning and Sustainability.

When I moved to town in 1981, Northampton was in the midst of a building boom and developers were snapping up large farm and forest parcels on the fringes of town. Sprawl was the order of the day.

Now, huge amount of acreage have been protected, both in Northampton and all surrounding communities; Hadley, the neighboring town where I currently live, has preserved thousands of acres. And the City of Northampton has openly changed the mission of the planning department to embrace sustainability.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , ,

Kansas State Representative Dennis Hedke is definitely in the running for Idiot Politician of the Year. This clown has introduced HR 2366, a bill that

would prevent public funds from being used “either directly or indirectly, to promote, support, mandate, require, order, incentivize, advocate, plan for, participate in or implement sustainable development.” The prohibition would extend to “any activity by any state governmental entity or municipality.”

The bill defines sustainable development thusly:

“sustainable development” means a mode of human development
in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the
environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but
also for generations to come, but not to include the idea, principle or
practice of conservation or conservationism.

In other words sustainable development—development that has the audacity to meet human needs now and into the future—would become ineligible for any government funding in Kansas. Forget about a school building designed to last 90 years, or even 25. Forget about economic incentive programs that use the green economy to create jobs in impoverished. How could sustainable development make an enemy?

Especially since the business case for sustainable development is so strong. All the research I’ve seen shows that sustainability pays huge dividends to companies, governments, and consumers.

If this ridiculous bill were to become law, presumably government money could only be used to build buildings or bridges that disintegrate in less than one human generation…that have zero energy efficiency features…that will lock their owners into a downward spiral of spending more and more money to feed an avoidable fossil-fuel “jones.” And how you can separate conservation from sustainability or sustainable development is beyond me.

One could even read the definition as preventing any contracts with companies like GE, Ford, General Motors, Walmart, even oil companies that have also invested in solar wind, or hydro.

But wait—it gets worse! There’s a nice little bit of reactionary censorship and thought-control in the legislation—just the sort of thing that right-wingers who claim to love freedom should oppose:

This prohibition on the use of public funds shall apply to: (1) Any activity
by any state governmental entity or municipality;
(2) the payment of membership dues to any association;
(3) employing or contracting for the service of any person or entity;
(4) the preparation, distribution or use of any kit, pamphlet, booklet,
publication, electronic communication, radio, television or video
presentation;
(5) any materials prepared or presented as part of a class, course,
curriculum or instructional material;
(6) any current, proposed or pending law, rule, regulation, code,
administrative action or order issued by any federal or international
agency; and
(7) any federal or private grant, program or initiative.

And yet this guy claims to be such a defender of liberty that the bill contains this explicit agenda:

to support, promote, advocate for, plan for, enforce, use, teach,
participate in or implement the ideas, principles or practices of planning,
conservation, conservationism, fiscal responsibility, free market
capitalism, limited government, federalism, national and state sovereignty,
individual freedom and liberty, individual responsibility or the protection
of personal property rights…

What kind of nutcase would write and submit such a law? How about one who happens to have a day job as a geophysicist whose clients include some 30 oil and gas companies (according to this article in TriplePundit). And one who has also introduced legislation to have school teachers argue against the evidence of climate change. Liberty, apparently, does not extend to those with whom Rep. Hedke disagrees.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Innovation, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , ,

For more than three decades, I’ve been suggesting that we need to see flat roofs as resources: they can provide space not just for solar energy, but also for gardens.

And growing up in New York City, where far too many people think that food comes out of cans or mysteriously arrives in the supermarket, this is especially true. New York has an enormous supply of flat roofs, many of which have terrific sun exposure.

So it gladdens my heart to see a project like this: utilizing flat roof space for year-round greenhouses in a long-depressed South Bronx neighborhood. On the roof of a public housing project designed to be green, in fact. My Western Massachusetts neighbor Joe Swartz (@SwartzFarm on Twitter), who is involved with this project, shared the first picture on a list we both participate on.

(The first link has an excellent picture. The second link has a crummy picture but a short informative article about the whole project.)

This is by no means the only example. It’s simpler to build without greenhouses, of course, if you don’t mind closing down for the winter. Here’s a 6,000 square-foot no-greenhouse rooftop commercial organic farm in northern Brooklyn, on a warehouse right across the river from Manhattan.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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

Ray Anderson, CEO of InterfaceFLOR, took his company from a traditional petroleum-based carpet maker to a green pioneer whose name comes up frequently when people talk about merging deep sustainability
AND profitability

Anderson pioneered the idea of modular carpeting, so that if one area is worn out, you can just pop in a couple of new carpet squares instead of replacing the whole darn thing.

In his last years, Anderson created an ambitious program geared toward making Interface a zero-waste company.

Triple Pundit gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Ray Anderson, one year after his passing—written by Giulio Bonazzi, Chairman and CEO of Italy-based Aquafil Group—a supplier and friend to Anderson whose company created a process to recover and recycle polyamide 6, a carpeting component.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

The new planned city of Masdar, just outside Abu Dhabi, only welcomed its first residents in 2009. Designed from the get-go to minimize the effect of desert heat, and keep motor vehicle traffic out of the city center (replacing them with a system of underground minicars), this green city is very much an experiment in progress, according to this article on Triple Pundit. Considering how many cities in the United Arab Emirates are showplaces of out-of-control energy consumption, Masdar is pretty exciting.

Already this experiment is bearing fruit. Hot desert cities have a lot to learn from this model—and so do the rest of us. Read the article.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government Tagged with , , , , ,

More remarkable for who he is and where he posted than his actual content (which is good but nothing particularly new): it was a pleasant shock to come across this article on Huffington Post making connections between fossil fuels and endangered species by Major General Michael R. Lehnert, recently retired as the Commanding General of Marine Corps Installations West, entitled (somewhat misleadingly) “Top 10 Reasons to Support Clean Energy.”

I’ve known for a few years that the US military has been taking an ever-greater role in sustainability (perhaps to atone for its prior role as one of the worst polluters in the world). Still, it’s exciting when they go public like this.

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

Here’s a company that’s been selling hand-made recycled art papers since 1998 (think about really cool and classy invitations)—and has just developed a new paper line using post-brewery barley as one of the ingredients—and being smart marketers, billing it as the first beer paper. They sponsored this morning’s HARO, and thus, I learned about them. I clicked over half expecting some very rough page put up by a few carousing fratboys–boy, was I wrong! These people love the earth and love what they do, which is obvious on every page of their site.

The firm is called Twisted Limb, out of Bloomington, Indiana. I love their sustainability page, too.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail