Green Marketing

Sin, pay, move on. Repeat as needed.

I'm about to spend a few weeks in Italy, where businesses can buy energy from the Green Network. That sounds like a good, environmentally responsible thing, doesn't it? However, if you read about the company's goals, as stated to prospective purchasers, it's all about savings and getting a good deal on power purchasing. According to Green Network, that became easier after the European Community deregulated its energy market in 1999. So don't be confused by the pictures of waterfalls and mossy tree trunks. The green here is of a more conventional kind.

Anyway, it's probably a good idea to be a little prudent in checking out a company site where the latest bits of "environmental" news are from November 2006. Green Network advertises widely in Italian magazines such as Panorama or Espresso. The printed ads often imply some degree of environmental gentleness. However, even though the glossary includes many environmentally related terms, I don't see any claim that the company markets electricity from renewable resources. But the allusion is certainly obvious.

My boss gave me a gift certificate for TerraPass so I could see how this scheme for offsetting a person's environmental impact works. I'll do that soon after my return and will share the experience at the time, but it sounds like a traditional indulgence -- the kind of thing Martin Luther (one of the more conservative voices at the time) rebelled against in the early 16th century. Logically, it almost makes sense -- you do a not-so-good thing, but give somebody else money so they can do something good with it in order to balance your transgression. However, your initial action may have consequences that long outlast the actual event. And the redeeming balancing act may be completely unrelated or comparatively weak in impact.

Finally, there's the accountability factor to consider. My spam filters have not yet retained any messages asking to send money to somebody to offset my environmental trespasses, but it might happen any moment.

PS. I will be back blogging in mid-November. See you then.

Great green leap forward, maybe

Seagate Technology, one of our clients, will be presenting during a conference at the United Nations on November 27 and 28. The theme is the Positive Impact of ICT on the Environment and Global Climate Change. AIT Global is the facilitator. AIT Global is one of the sponsors, and the Global Alliance for ICT and Development is the other. Co-sponsors, however, include an industry-wide green rainbow of companies, such as Dell, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Xerox, and others. The companies are not meant to talk about their products, but about the environmental merits of technologies they develop and take to market. We'll be covering news from the event as we receive updates, and we'll also try to track some of the event's reflections in the messages published by media and corporations.

By the way, it doesn't cost anything to attend, just travel expenses. Probably not too much to ask to get to listen to, and maybe even interact, with the industry and civic leaders expected. So, please do register and participate.

Presenters listed as of today on AIT Global's Web site include:

• U.N., Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General (to be confirmed by GAID)
• Office for the Counsel on Environment Quality, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, James Connaughton, Chairman (tbc)
• NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), US Department of Commerce, Joseph Klimavicz, Chief Information Officer and Director, High Performance Computing and Communications, GAID, Sarbuland Khan, Executive Coordinator
• AIT Global, Mike Lackey, President
• IBM, Wayne Balta, VP Corporate Environmental Affairs and Product Safety: Topic - Environmental Leadership and Climate Stewardship
• Hewlett Packard, Patrick Tiernan, VP, Social and Environmental Responsibility: Topic - The business of environmental responsibility
• EMC, Jeffrey Nick, SVP and CTO: Topic - Redefining the Efficient Data Center: Energy, the Environment and Sound Business Practice
• Seagate, Joni Clark, Sr Product Market Manager: Topic - TBA
• Xerox, speaker TBA: Topic - TBA
• Dell Computer, Tod Arbogast, Director Sustainable Business: Topic - Life Cycle Approach to Environmental Leadership
• Sun Microsystems, David Douglas, VP ECO Responsibility: Topic - Eco Responsibility for Business & the Planet
• Tandberg, Fredrik Halvorsen, CEO: Topic - Key Elements to Engage Business Leaders in the Environmental Movement
• Verdiem, Kevin Klustner, CEO: Topic - IT Energy Efficiency - The Future Is Now!
• InfoWorld Magazine, Paul Calento, Senior Vice President, Strategic Development
• Computerworld Magazine, Tom Hoffman, Editor-at-Large
• ClimateSavers, Matt Banks, Executive Director: Topic - TBA
• The Green Grid, Bruce Shaw, Board Member of The Green Grid: Topic - TBA
• SNIA, Leo Leger, Executive Director (tbc): Topic - TBA

What colors do you see outside of the green buffer zones?

The Washington Forest Protection Association is running an elegant little campaign to promote what they call the Forests & Fish Law. Beautifully produced materials with lovely images of deer, salmon, and trees. What's interesting is that the law was passed in Washington State back in 1999.

"The Forests & Fish Law is an historic, science-based set of forest practices regulations that protect 60,000 miles of streams running through 9.3 million acres of state and private forestland. In 2006, the Forests & Fish Law was endorsed by the federal government, through a statewide Habitat Conservation Plan. As one of the largest and most comprehensive pieces of environmental legislation in the U.S., the law is designed to fully comply with both the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA) to protect Washington's native fish and aquatic species."

Practically, what the WFPA proposed for implementation are two types of buffer zones along streams in order to protect fish habitats. In the buffer zones, trees are meant to be left alone closest to the water and thinned or harvested with varying intensity once you are further away than 50 feet. If you have driven around the Olympic Peninsula or other logging areas in recent years, you may have seen such buffer zones, although most of the ones currently in existence appear to be much smaller than 50 feet wide and barely serve as windshield dressing for motorists.

I noticed the 4-page ad insert recently,for example, in Journey Magazine, published by the AAA in Washington. Why would the WFPA buy expensive advertising today to tout the merits of a law passed so long ago? The organization's annual meeting is coming up on November 15, in Olympia. Why not register, show up, and ask a few good questions? If you want to learn more about what they say about their good work, read a pretty green brochure. I wish they would talk about compliance and enforcement of the provisions of the law for sustainable harvesting of trees. Without that, we'll never know what really happens outside of the buffer zones.

Congratulations! What now?

So sorry that some people are a little ticked off because Al "President" Gore has won the Nobel prize! JunkScience.com is just about boiling over with green envy. Ecorazzi and others offer online "votes" for viewers to weigh in on whether Gore should run again for president or not. The quotes gathered by the Beeb are probably as representative a sample as many: an odd mixture of polite support, fervent distaste, and jealousy. A British judge recently ruled that An Inconvenient Truth is alarmist and must not be shown in public schools without acknowledgment of perceived inaccuracies in it. That was probably an excellent way to promote the film. With all the praise and hissing going on, a little sobriety wouldn't hurt anyone. The McKinsey Quarterly draws attention to a solid, worthwhile interview with Al Gore and David Blood on the topic of investing in sustainability. Would you please consider reading that instead of one more article about what Gore said or wore 8 years ago?

I don't expect that Al Gore will run for president once more. He already commands the stature and influence that take most former U.S. presidents years to acquire, if they even succeed. What I do anticipate is that more marketers will turn green in the wake of Gore's Nobel prize, more negators will enjoy creating a backlash (but of course that's nothing new), and it will become even harder for consumers to judge the truth behind green marketing claims.

If you wonder where green marketing's edge will be, consider the coming together of green and human rights issues. The U.N. has been trying to alert us to this theme since at least a generation ago, but it's too, ahem, inconvenient for most of us to spend a lot of time with. We're soon to lose that luxury. Count on it.

Slow down, traveler

Do you want to travel without ruining the environment, but are not sure if it's realistic to forego planes and the entire resource-intensive infrastructure that supports air travel? Can you afford a cheap plane ticket, but don't feel the money's there for purchasing carbon offsets? Travel was never so easy and so problematic. We can get almost anywhere on earth within a couple of days, leaving tracks that we often think of as invisible, even though we know about the environmental consequences. Does environmental responsibility entail voluntarily giving up some of your freedom of movement?

Informative, helpful resources don't help me resolve my ambivalence about traveling, but maybe I just need more time to overcome my resistance. New American Dream offers Travel Green Now with a decent collection of resources for further education and for planning environmentally responsible journeys. New American Dream provides a wealth of consumer education and insight on its site. Much of it has the voice of a helpful, compassionate mentor—somebody who understands that life is complicated enough without dealing with the green issues, and that most of us want to do the best we can, even when we're confused about it.

The site provides a link to better world shopper, which ranks companies and products according to their environmental and social footprints. It would appear that a lot of thorough research and consideration has informed the rankings you find there. The fact that a company has a great environmental marketing story didn't seem to sway the researchers. Do we consumers have the control to influence businesses to adopt the environmental practices we would like to see, or is that a green dream?

Watch where you jump, said the toad to the frog

Colleague Bart Preecs received a lovely green bookmark at an event last week. It's made from "circuit boards from outdated and defective PC board production and thus diverted from landfills," as stated below the URL ... myGreenElectronics.org. I'm not sure many people will use a relatively thick, stiff bookmark like this one when they take a break from reading, and many of these promotional gifts will end up in the landfill after all. It will just have taken more attention, time, and money to get there. But we should commend the company for using recycled materials to produce the equivalent of a business card.

Careful with that URL, though. It's easy to miss part of it. The idea is to visit myGreenElectronics.org, not greenelectronics.org. The one aims to help you reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink in your relationship with electronic devices. The other one offers very little in the way of environmental value. You find links to recycling companies or green-themed publications, but many categories simply provide commercial listings that could be anywhere. What's intriguing, of course, is that they are here, of all places.

Back to myGreenElectronics, which is facilitated by the Consumer Electronics Association. The ideas under rethink, for example, offer consumers a little reassurance, and then promptly send them to the site's product listings. You can find ostensibly green electronics of many different types through a handy search function. It appears extremely easy to get your products listed here, with little substantiation required for your green claims.

As you adjust your perspective, enjoy the vanishing distance between the two so-similarly-named sites. Any company that complies with hazardous materials regulations can make a claim for environmental responsibility, and I'm sure many of the companies and products featured under myGreenElectronics.org have that and more to offer. It's disturbing that green colors, names, and claims are expected to attract consumers, who need to do their own research elsewhere or play the green product lottery. And the ".org" is definitely misplaced. Twice.

Be green in Kirkland, where it's easy

As advertised in the October 2007 issue of the Eastside Business Journal, the city of Kirkland, Washington, offers a Green Business Program. If your business is active in one of seven basic categories (reduce waste, conserve water, reduce traffic, and so on), you can register and qualify by completing a brief online questionnaire.

Consider water conservation, for example. You can qualify if you practice a minimum of six listed activities. Most of these activities don't cost much, won't take much time, and may even have some educational impact. Some of them seem a little light, for example, the several "encouragements": "Encourage employees to wash personal and company vehicles at commercial carwashes that recycle their water." I'm glad Kirkland is making the effort, but it probably takes a little more to help the environment than basic tips like that. Then again, one also needs to win over those who think the whole green thing is a crock, and common-sense, practical suggestions might help accomplish that. It will be interesting to see if the city can show any program metrics or other results a year from now.

Puget Sound Energy and the Greater Kirkland Chamber of Commerce are co-sponsors of the program. We'll definitely check out PSE's environmental story another time. Unless one of you readers wants to comment on it now.

All that green in the Brazilian flag is probably there for a reason

This morning, I went to a meeting about business opportunities in Brazil, facilitated by the Trade Development Alliance at the Rainier Club in downtown Seattle. A delegation of about 30 business leaders from the State of Sao Paolo, tired after an intense week of meetings in Los Angeles, San Jose, and Seattle, got to meet business people from the Seattle area. The speaker was Roberto Giannetti, who fulfills many leadership roles, including that of executive director of FIESP, an organization that supports business interests in the Sao Paolo region. After highlighting recent accomplishments of Brazil's stable economy and democratic government, he talked quite a bit about the country's image. Environmental concerns played a big role in that discussion. "We need to make sure everybody understands that we have the Amazon region, which holds 12 percent of the world's sweet water, and that we are doing everything we can to protect it." He showed images from a PR campaign designed to showcase Brazilian accomplishments in keeping the Amazon rainforests viable.

More interesting: Members of the delegation seated at my table told us mostly ignorant Northwesterners about the widespread use of alternative fuels in Brazil, including bio-diesel made from inexpensive, easy-to-grow sugarcane. Public fleets run almost exclusively on fuels that are not oil-based. As we were told, many vehicles sold to consumers make it easy to use and switch between three different types of fuels, traditional gas being one of them. Proudly, the visitors pointed out that popularity and availability of alternative fuels in Brazil has been a staple of civic life for 30 years.

One very interesting company represented in the delegation was Teknergia, which specializes in energy management. See that area headlined "monitoramento on line" on the home page? Enter user name "acs" in the field on top, "acs123" as the password in the lower field, and you can see what some of their reporting deliverables and statistical analyses look like. There are now quite a few energy management companies, but Teknergia appears to have a more holistic approach that also includes strategic planning and enterprise-wide assessments of energy usage and available improvement opportunities.

Tired of green fluff? Try this approach

The American Wind Energy Association offers principles of green marketing that appear to be well founded and effective if followed. I wish they would have given more writerly attention to the summary of principles list, but many more organizations and businesses would do well to embark on a similar effort to make green marketing substantial, relevant, and verifiable. I quote from the summary:

Issues Related to Product Content and Related Claims

1.    Include power from emerging renewable resources (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal).

2.    Make a difference. Marketed renewables should be above and beyond any renewables requirements. Rate-based resources should be marketed only under certain circumstances.

3.    Avoid distinctions between "existing" and "new" renewables.

4.    Fully disclose product contents and provide information to allow ongoing product verification (in the absence of uniform disclosure requirements).

5.    Document claims that power from undesirable sources is not being supported.

6.    Do not charge excessive prices.

7.    Do not collect premiums in advance and avoid donation programs.

8.    Other issues.

9.    Support a universal system of price, fuel mix, and emissions disclosure.

10. Support public policies that advance sustainable energy goals.

Where did my pretty green car go?

Is there such a thing as a "green truth" anymore? Was there ever? It can be really difficult to sort out what's true, what's not, and what's in flux in what direction. If anybody has any "best practices" to share, please comment (politely if possible).

For example, NYT columnist and business writer Thomas Friedman takes Toyota to task for resisting effective fuel standards:

Representative Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said to me that Toyota could meet a 35 m.p.g. standard in Japan and Europe today, "but here—even though they bombard Americans with ads about how energy efficient Toyota is—they are fighting the 35 m.p.g. standard for 2020."

Mr. Markey said he has tried to persuade Toyota that "a lot of people have bought Priuses or Camry hybrids to fight global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil" and "they would be shocked to find out" that Toyota is lobbying against the highest m.p.g. standards for America.

Sad. If Toyota were to take the lead on this front, it could enhance its own reputation and spur the whole U.S. auto industry to become more globally competitive. Hey, Toyota, if you are going to become the biggest U.S. automaker, could you at least bring to America your best practices—the ones that made you the world leader—instead of prolonging our worst practices? We have enough people helping us commit suicide.

In the meantime, consumers harshly, occasionally unfairly and insightfully, debate the merits of the company's claims for the Camry Hybrid and other cars.

And Toyota's Irv Miller, Group Vice President of Corporate Communications, builds a case for the company's green accomplishments on Irv's Sheet, his realm within the corporate blog.