Green Marketing

Help wanted: Develop the vision, complete the Wikipedia entry on green marketing

After seeing too many misleading and confused entries on Wikipedia, I trust this resource less than ever. Unfortunately, most everybody seems to be using it for reference, especially if nothing else seems easy to digest or comprehensive. Maybe the best strategy in dealing with Wikipedia is helping to improve the parts one cares about.

Thus, would you, too, please take a look at the Wikipedia entry about green marketing and help update and complete it? Current content seems firmly rooted in the dark ages of about 1995 and doesn't do much to address the social and environmental potential in green marketing.

One of green marketing's challenges is the lack of standards or public consensus about what constitutes "green," according to Joel Makower, a writer on green marketing. In essence, there is no definition of "how good is good enough" when it comes to a product or company making green marketing claims. This lack of consensus -- by consumers, marketers, activists, regulators, and influentials -- has slowed the growth of green products, says Makower, because companies are often reluctant to promote their green attributes, and consumers are often skeptical about claims.

Despite these challenges, green marketing has continued to gain adherents, particularly in light of growing global concern about climate change. This concern has led more companies to advertise their commitment to reducing their climate impacts, and the effect this is having on their products and services.

I would hate those words to remain the somewhat dystopian conclusion of the entry. Indeed, consumers are skeptical (good for them) and green marketing needs to be completely credible, or it will end up unseen in the recycling. One almost senses relief, as if the author's mindset had been one of, "If green marketing is generally dubious, I don't have to worry about it. I can continue as before."

Wrong. We can't and shouldn't. Green marketing will grow to become one of the main vehicles in the self-presentation of organizations. A company without a strong, credible green story will face questions about the lack of it. Customers and partners will prefer to deal with businesses that can demonstrate green credentials and have made environmental responsibility a key element of their mission.

During the next few years, we will see green marketing fluff largely evaporate. Or, at the least, audiences will become sophisticated enough to tell quickly whether a company's environmental claims are meaningful and believable, or not. We will also see a deeper, more wide-spread understanding of the social-justice and human-rights aspects of environmental sustainability. The potential benefits to societies and environments can be enormous. Better and more green products, services, strategies, and ideas will become widely available. Green marketing can play a heroic, visionary role in helping to bring about these positive changes.

That's what's missing from the Wikipedia entry and from too many discussions on the topic. I'm not willing to believe that so many people really want green marketing and environmental initiatives to fail. I prefer to think they don't know any better. Yet. Therefore, we need to tell them.

Seattle will get greener and more inclusive, right?

If you have the time to read this blog, you're probably not too anxious about your day-to-day survival, not homeless, not living on the wrong side of the tracks in a neighborhood adjacent to an environmentally disastrous dumping ground. Green history shows chasms of race and class. For too many of the struggling disadvantaged, environmental concerns were and are a concern they can't quite afford. And, far too often, environmental activists are not fully aware or considerate of how race and class play out in the consequences of their actions.

Matthew W. Klingle, an assistant professor of history  and environmental studies at Bowdoin College, draws attention to some of these issues in this book Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle. The book was reviewed earlier this week in the Seattle Times, and Klingle was a guest on Weekday, a daily call-in program running on Seattle's NPR station, KUOW.  The station also posted the preface to the book as a PDF.

From the Seattle Times review:

"Klingle details who was on the losing end of the struggles. Indians lost the shellfish and fishing in Seattle—a foundation of their culture—as tidelands were filled and rivers rerouted. The poor lost their hunting grounds to public parks, and sometimes resorted to poaching. People saw their homes destroyed for Thomson's regrading crusade.

"Conservationists don't escape unscathed.

"The author notes the elitism of early outdoors clubs such as the Mountaineers, where people could only join with the backing of two club members, as well as the fight over who had the right to camp in places such as Mount Rainier National Park. And there are decisions such as the one to clean Lake Washington partly by rerouting sewage effluent into the already-polluted Duwamish River, home to poorer communities and the fishing grounds of the Muckleshoot Indians and sportfishermen."

In the meantime, as if complacency was undesirable, Seattle and its city government are busily working away at greening the city. Mayor Greg Nickels has created national visibility with a green agenda. The latest, promising initiative is Seattle Climate Action Now. Of course, this being that time of the year, one finds pointers for waste-free holidays. But there are also many resources for those interested in wise choices regarding transportation, water and waste, consumer goods, and home energy, or who want to participate more. There's also a useful calendar of environmentally themed events around the city.

Seattle Climate Action Now at least makes an attempt to overcome the green diversity hurdle by including residents who don't speak English as their first language. The Get Started Guide is available in Amharic, Cambodian, Chinese, Korean, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, and Thai. That is excellent, although other materials are currently English-only.

Klingle discusses the social justice aspect of environmentalism and the need for an equitable ethic of place. Will the information and tools available through Seattle Climate Action Now help in that regard, or is that approach too cautious, too eager to accommodate the already-engaged amen corner?

NEC may be next, again, with a bright future in bioplastics

We are currently doing a project with Seagate, NEC, and Wave Systems. I was intrigued by NEC's environmental campaign.

Astonishingly, the company's environmental charter hails back to 1991, when most businesses were deep in the dungeon as regards any kind of environmental accountability. The charter's seven principles represent soft goals that would need to be backed by action plans with measurable goals in order to become meaningful:

• To produce energy- and resource-saving products, while giving careful thought to environmental and safety issues in development and planning.
• To encourage the development of environmental technology on all levels: production, sales, distribution, use, and disposal of a product. To introduce materials, engineering, and recycling methods that will minimize adverse effects on the environment.
• To respect and adhere to national and regional environmental regulations. To strive to strengthen and enforce even stricter NEC environmental standards.
• To contribute positively to society through an environmental management program with a global perspective, while educating and raising the environmental consciousness of all company members.
• To provide a structured administrative organization for environmental management, with executives in charge of different areas, to delegate responsibilities and to be in the forefront of environmental matters at all times.
• To maintain and strengthen an independent environmental management system and to implement improvement measures based on internal environmental company audits.
• To contribute to environmental protection by continuously making public announcements on the latest NEC developments in environmental technologies and management methods.

However, it doesn't look like the company is taking a passive approach to environmental responsibility. In addition to the almost predictable statements about low-power devices and efficient workplaces, NEC runs a forestation program and intends "to plant an average of 300 hectares (750 acres) of forests every year until 2011, and to maintain these forests for 10 years after that." That's a serious commitment.

Elsewhere, NEC actually offers substantiation for the effectiveness of using technology smartly to mitigate environmental impacts.

These changes in the way we work will also be useful in reducing environmental impact. The NEC Broadband Solutions Center that opened in Tokyo in January 2004 is one example. At this center, the number of desks is only about 70 percent* of the number of full-time employees. And the use of paper is minimized. When paper consumption volumes are converted into CO₂ emissions, the emission volumes are about 70 percent of what they used to be.

The use of electricity has also been reduced through the introduction of energy-efficient notebook PCs.

When the environmental impact reduction effects of these high-performance workplaces are converted into CO₂ emissions, the overall result is a roughly 41 percent reduction compared with that of conventional working environments.

That's far more tangible and credible than the vaguenesses one encounters elsewhere, well-meaning as they may be.

What I find most exciting personally, because it seems to offer much potential along with a little danger: NEC's bioplastics research, aiming to develop environmentally and technically sound materials from plants. I'm ready for a biodegradable car, although it may not stand the sort of rain we've had in Seattle over the last week. NEC already has pioneered a bioplastics television; check out their video about it.