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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advance sustainable business development.(Sometimes, despite the weather, the traffic, and the persistent but badly outdated attitude that Boston is the "Hub of the Universe," I love living here.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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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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Time flies when you're having fun, which I guess explains how two and a half weeks have elapsed since we last posted here: Christmas, New Year's Day, college bowl games, a wild and unpredictable presidential primary season, and an exhausting schedule of personal activities seem to have conspired to keep us away from our keyboard for an unconscionable period. Our apologies. One day we will share with you some of our adventures during the past few weeks, including sitting in on twelve focus groups in four different cities across the United States to learn about the social and political attitudes of the Millennial Generation (under-30 Americans). Biggest takeaway: For the Millennials, the culture wars are over. It doesn't matter whether they are atheists from California or
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No Peace For The Guy With A "GetSustainable" Address
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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 installed on his roof in 1993. For about five minutes, which I did not have, he went on and on.
Just now, I was trying to renew my subscription to MLB.com so I could listen to the Sox game up here on the third floor, when after a ten-minute wait to get an operator on the line, I got one who wanted to know all about why I had the email address, what I did, and where could she get a copy of the book? (Hey, fair is fair.) She was way into recycling and human rights and was all about sustainability and, and, and . . .
I put my foot down when she started to read from my website, and I realized that the Sox were scoring runs left and right (I could get the box score) and I was missing it. But she wouldn’t hook me up until she told me how important this was to her. Jeez . . .
Anyhow, there is something going on out there. But I’m going back to andysavitz@comcast.net
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