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Recent Posts by Andy Savitz
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This week, I hosted a panel at the Ceres Conference at which Jeff Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, the boot company, and Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of Stonyfield Farms, the organic yogurt company, answered questions about the role of business in society. Prior to the panel, I spoke with them about sustainable consumption. I was very pleasantly surprised. Rather than the usual canned answers one often gets from CEOs at these events, both these Red Sox fans proved to be deeply committed, not to selling less shoes or yogurt, but to sustainable consumption and enlightened consumerism as a potential way out of the ecological and societal quicksand in which we find ourselves. Gary explained that only about half of what we eat is real food, in terms of its nutritional value. For him, sustainable
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I had the opportunity to speak last week about the relationship of sustainability to public policy in Washington's chandeliered, blue-carpeted Senate Caucus Room where, I was informed, John Fitzgerald Kennedy announced his candidacy for President of the United States 48 years ago.That was only one of the day’s many humbling moments. Another was that I was addressing an awesome group of CEOs from Massachusetts who have formed the Progressive Business Leaders Network, dedicated to creating sustainable companies and pushing for public policy that will advance sustainable business development.(Sometimes, despite the weather, the traffic, and the persistent but badly outdated attitude that Boston is the "Hub of the Universe," I love living here. This is one of those times.)I'm blogging
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This is starting to get annoying. Two years ago, when the book came out and I set up my mini-consulting firm, my genius computer guy Dan suggested I use the e-mail address andy@getsustainable.net. I thought that was kind of cute, so I said okay.For about a year and a half, no one except people in my circle remarked on this address.But about three months ago, something weird started happening. I was on the phone with Expedia trying to reserve a flight for the next day when the Expedia representative on the phone asked me for my email address. I said “andy@getsustainable.net” and expected to move on. Instead, a long pause ensued, then the guy said,”That’s cool, I’m into that” and proceeded to tell me about the solar panels he had
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I do a lot of public speaking on sustainability, but my very first speech after The Triple Bottom Line appeared in print over a year ago is still the most memorable--not for the speech itself, but because of what happened afterwards. I was running late for the airport and my cab was waiting in front of the hotel. Before I could sit back, the cabdriver asked: "How was your speech?" I looked up and saw, looking at me in his rear view mirror, an older cabbie with a scraggly goatee and a cloth cap. I asked him how he knew I had been giving a speech, and he told me that the hotel concierge had told him. "What was it about?" he asked. Hmmm, I thought, how to explain this? "Well, I am an expert on something called sustainability. It's about how companies are expected
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In this post, I want to deviate from my usual discussion about sustainability, corporations, and profits. I want to discuss something that rarely gets discussed in the sustainability world but which I think is going to be a subject of increasing attention. It's the fact that sustainability is really a two-sided coin. On the one side is sustainable production, which is what all of us in business like to talk about--how companies can get leaner and greener. But on the other side is sustainable consumption, which is something that we don't talk about much. I want to frame this issues by talking about globalization--not in economic terms, but in environmental and social terms. One of the most interesting and important aspects of climate change is that it is a global issue with global
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How To Respond To The Coming Turmoil In China? Going Green Is A Good Place To Start
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Perhaps you saw this week's story in The Wall Street Journal about how protesters are gearing up for the Olympic Games and what sponsoring companies are doing about it. Short version: Most companies are focusing on "going green":
Coke is playing up its water-conservation efforts on the Yangtze River and putting natural-refrigerant coolers and vending machines at all Olympic sites. Since March, Volkswagen has been planting thousands of trees in Inner Mongolia. GE is touting its role selling ecofriendly products such as solar-power and water-filtration systems for the Olympic venues.
By concentrating on the environment, companies can show they are acting responsibly and score points with the Chinese government while avoiding politically charged issues such as Taiwan or Darfur, PR executives say. Mr. [Richard] Edelman [of Edleman Public Relations] calls it a "win-win" situation.
A
close reading of the article indicates that the most vehement and
well-organized protests may actually be focused on human rights and
other non-environmental issues. Which does mean that companies need to
have that part of the sustainability agenda under control in terms of
having appropriate policies, procedures, and programs in place.
But companies are right to focus on the environment for several reasons.
But companies are right to focus on the environment for several reasons.
1.
Dirty air will have an impact on the games themselves and on the
athletes, whereas hman rights and other issues will be at one step
removed. The human rights activists will be trying to draw connections
to the games, but the athletes and spectators are most likely to be
talking about the environment and will have every good reason to do so.
They will not seem like agitators serving some other, unrelated
interest.
2. The media will thus be talking about the
environmental problems as part of the daily coverage of the overall
"Olympic Story." Bad air is likely to affect the performances (think
marathon), and it will be easy for the media to follow that angle and
go deeper. Unlike human rights and even contaminated toys (the regime
will make certain that there are no child laborers or contaminated toys
within 1,000 miles of the Games!) there are easy, accessible
visuals--smog, belching factories, traffic congestion--that will tell
the story. It's the easiest story by far with no investigation and
little explanation required. Also, bad air and possibly water (the
foreign athletes may not be drinking from the taps) may well make this
Olympics different from any other, and the media loves that.
3. Of course, all of this plays into the two biggest stories of the decade: China and climate change.
4.
Then there is the political side of the environmental issue. Never
having been to China, I have no real idea how big, strong and deep the
environmental movement is there. (Elizabeth Economy's book on the subject,
which my writing partner Karl Weber happened to work on, is probably a
good place to start in learning about that topic.) But my guess is that
the Olympics, and the presence of the international media, will give
that movement plenty of cover, not to mention the international
environmental activists who will be at the head of the parade. It will
be hard for the government to arrest them all, if they do join hands.
They would look really bad if they just arrested the locals, and even
worse if they put the foreigners in the clink.
And if there are protests and arrests that just gives the media an even bigger story to cover.
5.
Finally, I think the human rights activists may understand all of this,
and may rally behind the environment as a wedge issue. That's what
happened in Hungary--the democracy movement rallied and prevailed
around environmental concerns related to the planned construction of a
large hydroelectric dam. In so doing, they served their broader
political goals--undermining the power and authority of an autocratic
central government, and demonstrating to the public that they could
affect change if they chose to do so.
For all these reasons, a
green focus is a very reasonable strategy for sponsoring companies to
use in dealing with the challenges of China 08.
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