Feb 02 2011
At the State of Green Businesss Forum today, I was inspired by the enthusiasm and accomplishments of Alexis Ringwald, currently of Serious Materials, but also a real business citizen of the world. There were two excellent riffs on the themes of recycling and reuse, by Lisa Gansky and Rupesh Shah, and more from Rupesh on [...]
Nov 02 2010
On October 28, 2010, we collaborated with the Whitman Strategy Group to present a webinar about the benefits of proactively engaging with environmental regulators. The speaker was Governor Christine Todd Whitman, president of the Whitman Strategy Group. Gov. Whitman served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001-2003 and was a two-term governor of [...]
Sep 27 2010
This morning, P&G announced its broad-sweeping long-term vision for sustainability. It’s refreshing to see a large, public company follow the lead of industry pioneers like privately held Interface and attempt to take a very long-term view. CEO, Bob McDonald, outlined the company’s vision to ultimately get to 100% renewable energy, zero waste, 100% recycled materials [...]
Sep 24 2010
There’s been quite a brouhaha about Halliburton’s inclusion in the DJSI, including RP Siegel’s story in Triple Pundit. This is a great example of why companies and their stakeholders should understand what these ratings systems really mean before taking them at face value. Sustainability doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. SAM rates companies for [...]
Jul 15 2010
Failure to Quantify Performance If you want your sustainability communications to be credible, quantify as much as possible. This means you should try to quantify your targets as well as your performance. How much was emitted, consumed or sent to landfill? How much was recycled or restored? How do you expect this to change in [...]
Jun 03 2010
Sustainability gets communicated to the marketplace and your company’s stakeholders through many avenues. We can think of these along a spectrum. Just as with typical marketing communications, on the left end of this spectrum, company executives have less control or influence and there’s a progression from that to the other end of the spectrum where [...]
May 29 2010
I spend a lot of time considering the ways in which companies communicate their sustainability efforts. But before communication comes data. It can be challenging for an organization to decide what environmental data to collect, and then how to analyze and convey it. Also daunting is the choice of a mechansm to collect and store the information: A spreadsheet? Collaboration tools? [...]