No Impact Man

The worst and the of best corporate efforts on climate change

Climate Counts, a non-profit that scores the commitment to reversing climate change of 56 major corporations in well-known consumer sectors–from apparel to electronics to fast food–today released their second annual company scorecard (read the full report here and the summary here).

Climate Counts gives scores from 0 to 100, based on 22 criteria used to determine if companies have measured the carbon footprint, reduced their impact on global warming, supported progressive climate change legislation, and publicly disclosed their climate action.

According to the Climate Counts web page, "our goal is to motivate deeper awareness among consumers-not only that the issue of climate change demands their attention, but also that they have the power to support companies that take climate change seriously - and avoid those that don't."

The worst of the companies (scoring 5 or less): Amazon, 5; Burger King, 0; Darden (owner of Red Lobster, Olive Garden and other chains), 0; eBay, 5; Jones Apparel Group (Anna Klein, Nine West and many other brands), 0; VF Corporation (Lee and Wrangler jeans and others), 4; Viacom (4), Wendy's (0), Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and many more), 1.

The best of the companies (scoring 65 or more): Canon, 74; General Electric, 71; Hewlett-Packard, 68; IBM, 77; Motorola, 66; Nike, 82; Proctor & Gamble, 69; Sony, 68; Stonyfield Farm, 78; Toshiba, 70.

The good news is that the Climate Counts scoring approach attracts a lot of press attention, effectively rewarding those companies that make worthy efforts and chastising those who don't. Last year, for example, Climate Counts was among the organizations that helped bring attention to Apple's slow start when it comes to environmental commitment (the company scored a lowly 2 last year and only 11 this year).

According to Wood Turner, Director of Climate Counts, this kind of scrutiny, through Climate Counts or by other means, can encourage corporations to make real efforts. In an email to me, he told the story of how Levi's made the effort to climb from a score of 1 in 2007 to 22 in 2008:

We got their attention with a score of 1 pt (out of 100) on June 19 [2007] and got a call from them late that afternoon.  They were bewildered but motivated.  They acknowledged that they were behind on climate change and that the score had very much gotten their attention.  They said simply, "You got our attention. What can we do?"  And we were more than happy to take them through our 22-criteria scorecard and our key benchmarks. 

They quickly moved to begin reporting much more openly about their concrete activities and future plans, expanding their environmental reporting on their website including information about their efforts to measure their climate impact and set goals to reduce it.  These are clearly just first steps, but on the pathway toward deeper corporate climate responsibility, they are absolutely important ones because they indicate a willingness to face even greater scrutiny from an increasingly engaged consumer -- to us, that's one of the hallmarks of climate leadership.

You can read what others think of the Climate Counts report at the Wired blog and the Environmental Leader. I'm thinking the Climate Counts approach is no replacement for legislation and a regulated cap and trade system, but until we get some politicians with backbones, by finding a way to focus and aggregate the power of consumers, Climate Counts is making a start.

What do you think?

The importance of authenticity in green marketing

I'm taking a little breather today, but will be back Monday. Meanwhile, I wanted to leave the designers and business people in the crowd with a little confirmation about what I've been saying regarding transparency and authenticity when it comes to going green. This from the wonderful blog La Marguerite (which quotes an article worth reading in Ad Age):

According to Jessica Hogue, research director at Nielsen Online, and author of [a new] report, “Corporations can’t do everything in one feel swoop, but need to be authentic and transparent about the steps they are taking.” She also suggests brands, study Footprint Chronicles, Patagonia’s recent interactive online campaign, that discloses the company’s both environmental good works and sins.

PS For those of you calling for personal tips, watch next week.

The "needle exchange" approach to planetary damage

There are two ways to reduce the harm to the planetary habitat we depend on for our health, happiness and security. One is to reduce the amount of resources we consume or degrade--air, forests, atmosphere, water, etc--and the other is to make the consumption of those resources less harmful.

In other words:

Resources Used x Environmental Harm  = Total Planetary Damage

Strangely enough, I adapt this equation from a paper published by Robert J. MacCoun in the American Psychologist in 1998 about the then new "harm reduction" paradigm for treating drug addicts. The somewhat controversial harm reduction movement in drug treatment arose out of the need to decrease the prevalence of HIV cases, about a third of which were among intravenous drug users in the United States.

Central to the harm reduction paradigm, according to MacCoun, "is the belief that it is possible to modify the behavior of drug users, and the conditions in which they use, in order to reduce many of the most serious risks that drugs pose to public health and safety."

HIV transmission among intravenous drugs users is caused by sharing needles. The idea was, that if you can't get addicts to stop using drugs, then at least you might be able to prevent transmission of the virus by providing new needles, educating them on "safe use," or getting them to take their drugs orally instead of by injection.

So in drug treatment, the equation goes:

Total Drug Use x Average Harm per Use = Total Harm

What intrigues me about this approach is that when you accept that the message of "just say no" simply isn't going to reach all drug users, you can begin to develop methods of reaching those who are intransigent. You can help them try to prevent their own deaths and the spread of disease. It doesn't mean that you don't promote abstinence, but it means you can reduce the harm caused to and by those who will never abstain.

The same message applies to consumption of resources. There is no question that excess consumption both causes damage to the planetary habitat and has the potential to make people less happy. A "reduce consumption" message is good for the planet and good for the people.

But some people aren't ready to hear it. The message of "just say no" to consumption simply isn't going to reach all consumers, or for that matter, producers. On the other hand, we may be able to convince them to take approaches that do less harm.

We may not be able to get some individuals to clean with vinegar and baking soda, for example, but we may get them to switch to Clorox's new brand of household cleaners Green Works (no pun intended). I'd like us to get away from disposable products, but I accept that we may not get Kimberly Clark to stop using trees to make tissue. We may, though, one day, get them to manage forests sustainably.

In other words, in my equation at the top, we may not be able to get them to reduce their resource use, but we may be able reduce the Environmental Harm and, therefore, the Total Planetary Damage.

Some people resist the harm reduction paradigm to consumption. Just as in the drug treatment world, they are worried that a harm reduction approach waters down the message of abstinence.

But the fact is that many drug treatment agencies, particularly in Europe, have found that once they develop a relationship with users through the needle exchange program, they are then able to help the users to move from needles and onto oral use. From there, with a relationship developed, they can help some of them decide to completely abstain, people they never would have reached under the "just say no" model.

Perhaps we can do the same. Perhaps, by introducing consumers and producers to the idea of reduced harm, we will get them to thinking in such a way that will eventually get them to thinking about reduced resource use. Perhaps we will help them to move from recycling to reusing to reducing.

First to green wins, Clorox decides

I've written before that the big companies should make enviros the target market. To be enviro, these days, is to be cool, ethical, caring and driven by values. And as people become aware that enviro-concerns are really human concerns, that toxins in our environment mean toxins in our bodies, and that a happier planet makes for happier people, the importance of green products in the marketplace is only going to increase.

Whoever gets there first is going to win in the long term.

I don't say this because I approve of greenwashing, the practice of making products seem green as a cynical marketing tactic. Of course, I abhor the practice and think, from a business point of view, it is an ultimately short term way to work, because it will backfire when customers realize they have been betrayed.

But what I want to say to the designers and product managers who come across this blog is that investment in truly sustainable product design is going to pay off and pay off big. Treating the earth kindly is not a philanthropic exercise but a profitable one (I give a few guidelines, by the way, for what I think will win enviro-customer loyalty, here and here).

And if Clorox's introduction of the Green Works line of biodegradable home cleaners is anything to go by, I'm not the only one to think so. When such a huge consumer brand thinks green is the way to go, you better worry whether it might be the way to go for your business, too.

Back when Clorox took over Burt's Bees, I wrote that I was suspicious of the giant corporation's intentions to maintain the brand's environmental credentials. I wrote that some sort of certification or transparency was needed in order to allow customers to reassure themselves.

Marketing on the basis of environmental ethics requires more than just a product. It requires a way for customers to reassure themselves that you remain true to those ethics. Indeed, I suspect that the skepticism of enviros like me is one reason big corporations have shied away from the market, fearing it could end up working against them.

Clorox appears to have overcome the transparency problem and potential customer skepticism with the endorsement of Green Works by the Sierra Club (see New York Times story here).

That the Sierra Club is taking an undisclosed amount of cash for the endorsement is potentially problematic. By profiting from Green Works sales, Sierra Club finds itself in the position of both running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds. And schemes like this can get watered down if they become widespread.

But I still think this is an important step forward.

This partnership between an environmental organization and a corporation big enough to get green products into the mass market means that a huge amount of toxic cleaning products will be displaced and demonstrates that a major corporation can move green out of the niche. The agenda of the environmental organization moves forward, money is made, and all of us end up with a safer water supply and a happier planet.

This a victory all around, and I hope brand managers and CEOs of the major corporations take notice. If you aren't, like Clorox, the first to introduce truly sustainable products to the mass market in a trustworthy fashion, you're going to lose. If you are the first, you'll win.

Meanwhile, here's the Sierra Club's rationale for making the endorsement:

• Until now, a big stumbling block for families who want to live a greener lifestyle has been the high cost of "green" products. However, Green Works is priced anywhere from 30%-50% lower than the price of other natural products currently available.
• Research indicates that people will likely be more willing to give an eco-preferable product like Green Works a try because they trust that the Clorox name means that it will clean well.
• While most consumers do not have access to green cleaning products because they do not shop in the specialized stores where they are distributed, Green Works products will ultimately be found on the shelves of approximately 24,000 stores, giving most of the public access to these cleaners.

PS All the same, out of loyalty and sentimentality, and because it uses fewer plastic bottles and is completely organic and has no chemicals in it whose names I don't understand, I am still sticking with my Dr. Bronner's based cleaning regime.

Environmentalism and social justice

The environmental advocate should strive to be the social justice advocate's identical twin. That is not to say that they should be the same entity, but that environmentalism should proceed as though they come from the same egg.

Social justice and environmentalism are born together. They have the same DNA. At best, the environmentalist shares the blood and guts of the social justice activist: compassion (our race's highest function and most glorious capacity).

What gets called "environmentalism" is often associated with saving future generations from catastrophe, it's important to remember that many in the current generation are already suffering from present-day environmental and social catastrophes.

That is, the true challenge facing us is not just to preserve the planetary habitat that we depend on for our health, happiness and security, but to do so while ensuring a dignified quality of life for all peoples around the world and around the United States. We need to reduce our dependence on unsustainable resources, increase our development of renewable resources, and increase equality of access to resources in general.

To hell with the polar bears, I once wrote on this blog (though, of course I think they are wonderful). Caring about animals or the people of the future more than the children of today seems absurd. "Is a green economy only about reclaiming throwaway stuff," said Van Jones, co-founder and board president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, "or is it also about reclaiming throwaway communities, throwaway people, throwaway children?"

Van Jones is a modern American hero for his ability to articulate and promote the natural alliance between environmentalists and advocates for social justice.

To quote Sun Magazine writer David Kupfer's recent synopsis of Jones' achievements:

"Recently Jones has been connecting two issues that have largely been seen as separate worlds: the abysmal conditions of U.S. inner cities and the need for a healthier planet. To stem global warming, Jones argues, the mainstream environmental movement must make itself relevant to low-income Americans; why should a single parent working two jobs care about greenhouse gases if there are far-more-immediate concerns at hand? Jones calls for the creation of a 'green-collar' job corps that will train urban youth of color to retrofit U.S. cities so that they are environmentally sustainable."

What follows are some excerpts of Kupfer's Q&A with Jones (thanks to No Impact Man reader Karin Sullivan for alerting me to it):

The stake people of color have in the environmental movement: "It’s the people of color who are disproportionately affected by bad food, bad air, and bad water. People of color are also disproportionately unable to escape the negative consequences of global warming. Look at Hurricane Katrina. People of color need equal protection from the worst environmental disasters and equal access to the best environmental technologies..."

The call to arms needed to avert catastrophe: "...even now, during the presidential campaign, you don’t hear a full-throated call for the sort of World War II–level mobilization that it’s going to take to avert ecological catastrophe. If you look at the scientific data on global warming, you can see that we can’t avoid a wholesale disaster unless we put this country back to work — putting up solar panels, weatherizing buildings, and constructing wind farms on a massive scale...

...We can’t rely just on markets and technologies and consumer behavior. That sort of eco-elitism is a dead end. Eco-populism is a better model for dealing with these problems. We need a greater faith in communities, government action, voters, and work."

Ensuring that sustainability benefits and is supported by all economic classes: "...you can’t have a sustainable economy when only 20 percent of the people can afford to pay for hybrids, solar panels, and organic cuisine, while the other 80 percent are still driving pollution-based vehicles to the same pollution-based jobs and struggling to make purchases at Wal-Mart...

"...As we move toward a sustainable economy, if we do not take care to minimize the pain and maximize the gain for the poor, they will join forces with the polluters to derail the green revolution...

"...It’s important from both a moral standpoint and a purely crass political point of view that we create a 'new-deal' coalition among green businesspeople, labor, the poor, and people of color. You unite groups by offering immediate, as well as long-term, benefits for each constituency. For poor people, that could take the form of job opportunities, better mass transportation, and free bus passes..."

Promoting successful environmental policies through the politics of inclusion: "Environmentalists sometimes don’t understand that what motivated them to get involved in political activism and change their lifestyle isn’t going to inspire everyone else. It’s not just a matter of their explaining louder and louder why everyone should be like them. That’s not the politics of inclusion; that’s the politics of elitism. The reality is that working people will support ecological solutions, but not for the same reasons that the eco-elites support them...

"...most low-income people and people of color I know had no interest in seeing [An Inconvenient Truth]. They already have enough problems. They don’t need new crises to worry about. Around here we say that the people who already have a lot of opportunities are the ones who need to hear about the crises. So if you have a house and a car and a college degree, then, yes, you should hear about global warming, or peak oil, or dying species.

"But poor and low-income people need to hear about opportunities. They need to hear about the expected reduction in asthma rates when we reduce greenhouse gases. They need to hear about the wealth and health benefits of moving to a sustainable economy. Otherwise you are just telling people who are already having a bad day that they should have a worse one."

The link between the huge U.S. prison population and environmentalism: "To me it’s no surprise that the country that has the world’s biggest pollution problem also has the most prisons. We’ve got a disposable mind-set: disposable products, disposable species, disposable people. We don’t see our sisters and brothers, much less all the animal species, as sacred. The failure to honor the sacred is at the root of both problems.

"Most of our prison-population growth has come from convictions on nonviolent drug offenses...Drug users need treatment, not jail time. We know how to take care of people who are in trouble with drugs, because we do it for rich kids. We should do the same thing for poor addicts, because it’s the right thing to do and we’d save money doing it."

To read the entire, excellent article, go here.

Photo Courtesy of Arnold Creek Productions.

My grandfather's cuff links

My grandfather was a big wig, first, in the OSS and then, through the 50s and 60s, in the CIA. In fact, my last book, Operation Jedburgh, told the story of secret World War II operation that my grandfather helped oversee.

Now, I am not uncritical of the actions of the CIA through those years and certainly not lacking in introspection about my grandfather's career. But I am, nevertheless, incredibly proud to have been his grandson (he passed in the early 80s).

Grandfa, as I called him, grew up on a farm in Ohio, raised by his mother and some uncles. His father had left. But he got himself into and through Yale University and went on to become a senior U.S. government official. Toward the end of his life, I asked him to show me his medals. Tears rolled off his chin as he showed me his Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Part of what I have left of him are his cuff links: one pair in gold, one in mother of pearl, one that are shaped like crowns with a red jewel on top. I also have another pair of cuff links that Michelle, my wife, gave me, but I only ever wear them if I'm scared of losing my grandfather's.

It's not that I don't appreciate the cuff links that Michelle gave me, but they just don't carry the same meaning. Plus, I got married wearing my grandfather's cuff links, gave my first book reading wearing them, went to every important friend or relative's wedding or funeral wearing them.

Now, the cuff links connect my grandfather's life with my life. They aren't a replacement for our relationship. They are not, like so much of what we consume, a surrogate for the human bond. Instead, they serve the purpose of maintaining my relationship with my grandfather across the barrier of life and death.

This is not fanciful. I feel it when I put them on.

So in moving towards a sustainable, nondisposable economy, where products are made to last instead of being thrown away and bought again, we have a yet another opportunity. The opportunity to live a life where, by manufacturing durable products and repairing them, we get to surround ourselves with long-lived material elements of our lives that become imbued with meaning and memory.

Think of eating at a kitchen table with your grandchildren at the same table you ate with your grandmother. Think of proposing to your fiancee with the same ring your grandfather proposed to your grandmother. Think of shaving as an old man with the same razor that your dad gave you when you first learned to shave.

Think of getting, as I do, to remember your love for your grandfather and the times he made you blueberry pudding every time you get dressed up.

The bottom-line problem with sustainability?

According to Heather Rogers' Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, 80 percent of products sold in the United States are designed to be used once and then thrown away.

Now, this is a leap of logic, but for the sake of a thought experiment, let's assume that 80 percent of the energy and raw materials used by manufacturing industry are used to make products designed to be used only once.

There is so much talk about shifting away from the cradle to grave and towards a cradle to cradle paradigm so that materials, once thrown away, can be truly reused to make new products. That's a great and important idea.

But returning to my admittedly-naive thought experiment, if 80 percent of the manufacturing sector's energy and materials are used to produce single-use products, doesn't that mean that designing those products to be used, say, twice would automatically save 40 percent of the sector's energy and materials?

Suppose, in addition to cradle to cradle design, we made product durability and ease of repair an issue? Suppose we simply designed all our products to last twice as long? In many cases, that's not, by the way, so technically difficult.

The real difficulty is that durability undermines business models that depend on consumers buying the same products over and over again--repetitive consumption. So maybe the holy grail is to figure out how to manufacture durable, repairable products and still turn a profit.

Read a lot more about this in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

When economic growth isn't progress

Policy makers and even the voting public make the mistake of thinking that growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is an indicator of societal progress. In reality, though, GDP is nothing but an indicator of national spending with no distinctions between those transactions that add to our well-being and those that diminish it.

• Chop the top off the mountain to take its coal, and you'll get economic growth in the area. Question is, if you taint the water to the point where people can't even touch it safely, can you call that progress? (By the way, there's a great, new film on this subject called Burning Our Future)
• If community earnings rise 20%, but the time parents can spend with their children drops 40%, can you call that progress?
• If the washing machine industry grows by 20%, but that is because their products are engineered to last only 50% as long, can you call that progress?

All of these scenarios would contribute to a growth in GDP, but a decline in human happiness and well-being. That's why Redefining Progress developed the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).

GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that GDP is based on, but then adjusts it by assigning monetary values to factors that affect human happiness and well-being. Those factors include, among others:

• The impact of economic growth on happiness, depending on how much of it actually ends up in the hands of the poor people who need it
• The amount of "leisure time" available within the culture for things like childcare, housework, volunteer work, etc.
• The negative costs of crime-associated legal fees, medical expenses and property damage. Perversely, an increase in crime, because of these costs, can actually increase the GDP, a clear case of economic growth not indicating an increase in happiness.
• The economic externalities like long-term environmental damage associated with carbon emissions, ozone depletion and deforestation.

The point is that if policy-makers adopted a metric like GPI, they would be guided toward adopting agendas that much more tightly focussed on the happiness of the electorate than on far-less-meaningful growth in the economy.

"We believe," Redefining Progress says on its website, "that if policymakers measure what really matters to people—health care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators of well-being—economic policy would naturally shift towards sustainability."

Sustainable development vs reducing consumption

Michael Shellenberger of The Breakthrough Institute sent me a post from his blog that is written by Siddhartha Shome and starts like this:

Car A gets a fuel efficiency of 46 miles per gallon. Car B gets about 50 miles per gallon. Car A is called the Toyota Prius and is hailed by environmentalists as a step towards solving global warming. Car B, a new car called the Tata Nano unveiled by an Indian company, is reviled by environmentalists as disastrous for global warming. The New York Times devotes an entire editorial condemning the Tata Nano. Columnist and author Tom Friedman calls for the Tata Nano to be "taxed like crazy." The reason for this extreme criticism? The Tata Nano is cheap - very cheap. It is a revolutionary new car design that will cost only about $2,500 and will bring car ownership within reach of millions of new people in the developing world.

Now, I don't dig Shome's post in its entirety, but I will say this: the No Impact, tighten-your-belt approach clearly doesn't apply in the developing world. That is to say, I won't be going to India or Kenya and bragging about reducing my impact.

Here in the United States, where we waste resources to the point of making ourselves unhappy and unhealthy (remember my quality of life vs resource use curve), focusing on impact reduction through reduced consumption may well be part of the equation. That doesn't follow where consumption hasn't even begun and people are still living on that part of the quality of life curve where increased resource use will make them happier (again, see the curve).

That's why the investment in the development of new and the implementation of existing renewable energy and technology is so important. Because I sure ain't going to be the one to tell the Indians they shouldn't have cheap cars. Besides, think of the jobs we would have created for the American economy if we innovated a car like the Tata Nano that did even better on emissions or maybe didn't even run on gas at all? There's no reason we shouldn't have.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not turning my back on the importance to American happiness, health and security of wasting fewer of the planetary resources we depend on--reducing consumption. And I'm also not a fan of the automobile. But in this case, the problem is not Indian entrance into consumerdom, but the United States's non-entrance into sustainable development.

A word on sustainable design

I visited the Greener Gadgets conference on Friday and attended the panel on new forms of mobile renewable energy. Among the presenters, one talked about a mini-windmill you could strap on your arm to charge your cellphone and another spoke of longer-life laptop battery.

To get the windmill to charge your cellphone for a whopping, um, four minutes of talk-time, according to the HYmini webpage, you need 20 minutes of a steady 19 mph wind. You get the wind, say, by attaching it to your bike handlebars or wearing it on your arm when you go snowboarding.

On the other hand, Boston Power's seemingly more boring and conventional lithium ion battery, newly introduced and dubbed the "Sonata," does nothing more revolutionary than last for three years and charge quickly.

Which is the greener product? You got a windmill and a laptop accessory. A no-brainer, right?

But here's the thing. The mini-windmill, when it comes down to it, is essentially a toy that does not replace but is bought in addition to the regular plug-in cellphone charger. And the fate of this impractical gadget will more than likely be its owner's desk drawer, not a place we want to be storing precious planetary resources.

The long life of the Boston Power battery, on the other hand, depending on usage, allows it to replace two or three conventional laptop batteries. The durability of the Sonata means less toxicity, less metal pollution and less resource use, something that is good for the planet and something that customers already want.

The point is that if your goal is to truly create a truly sustainable product, make sure you are leveraging consumer demand to create green practices, not leveraging ostensible green practices to create consumer demand.