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Recent Posts by Joel Makower
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There's a classic, geeky science joke that "Chemists have all the solutions." That's starting to appear true from an environmental perspective, though it remains to be seen whether those solutions will actually come to market. Green chemistry, a common-sense discipline that's less than twenty years old, has been emerging in recent years from the lab and into the marketplace, making inroads in conventional chemical companies and creating opportunities for upstarts. As I've noted in the past, this has been taking place at a slow, almost imperceptible pace, with relatively little fanfare, considering the implications. And there's a long way to go before green chemistry fulfills its catalytic potential to transform the way we make things, doing so in a way that reduces risks to
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In recent weeks, former vice president Al Gore challenged Americans to commit to producing 100 percent of electricity from "renewable energy and clean carbon-free sources" within 10 years. And former senator John Edwards launched a Half in Ten campaign "to reduce poverty in the United States by 50 percent within 10 years." Two bold, audacious goals. Same starting dates. Same decade-long trajectory. So, is there any chance that Messrs. Gore and Edwards might possibly join forces? Not likely, based on what I've seen and heard to date. That their respective laudable and ambitious goals could possibly be synergistic seems beyond the grasp of these two leaders and their acolytes. I've covered this topic — the job-creation potential of clean technology and renewable
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This week's announcement by General Motors that it has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to work on issues related to electric vehicles got a great deal of media play. But the coverage only began to scratch the surface of the complexity of bringing plug-in electric vehicles to market in mass quantities. In reality, the GM-utility conversation isn't entirely new. It began in January, at a Vehicle Electrification Workshop held at GM's research center in Warren, Michigan. I had the privilege of attending the meeting, which was facilitated by my colleagues at the sustainability strategy firm GreenOrder. The meeting included more than two dozen utility executives, including a team from the Electric Power Research Institute, the industry-funded consortium that served
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Jeffrey Hollender, the founder, CEO at Seventh Generation, published a counterpoint to my recent post, How Bad Is Greenwashing, Really? I encourage you to read it here. I just responded on his site, and thought I'd share the conversation here. To wit: Jeffrey, Thanks for your comment. I've long admired your outspokenness on the topic of the green marketplace, and your willingness to be, as you describe yourself, an inspired protagonist. I don't disagree with some of your points, but I think you missed mine. It wasn't about companies that can't handle criticism. And it wasn't about condoning companies that are being misleading or dishonest. As you well know, I have been an outspoken critic of greenwashing myself over the past twenty years. But there is a tremendous amount of
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Is greenwashing really as bad a problem as some are making it out to be? I've been thinking about this question a lot recently, as the G-word crops up more and more frequently in articles, blogs, reports, and conversations. Of course, the answer depends a lot on one's view of the potential for big companies to improve their environmental performance — and talk truthfully about it — and whether the pace of corporate change is sufficient to address the magnitude of the problems we face. Like "beauty" (and "green"), "greenwash" is in the eye of the beholder. The definition of greenwashing has changed in recent years. In the early 1990s, the term was used to describe deliberate and cynical attempts by companies to mislead the public about their
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The Greening of Design, from A to D
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The greening of design is gaining interest, and I'm not simply talking about our fast-approaching conference on the topic, Greener by Design. Last week, Business for Social Responsibility and the design firm IDEO released a new free report (download - PDF) showing how companies are infusing sustainability into their design processes in ways that have led to innovative products that offer value to consumers.
The report offers an "A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products," as the subtitle promises. And while the real-life process may not be quite that alphabetic, or simple, the report offers a useful framework for how to think about product design and development through the lens of environmental sustainability, including some key questions that never seem to get asked.
The report begins with the observation that product design challenges are becoming increasingly more acute, due to companies' need to extend their product relationships up and down the value chain, including upstream sourcing and downstream recovery; increased regulations and demands for product transparency; the growth of global product recalls; and the wider range of factors companies must consider in product design and management, such as toxicity, recyclability, and renewability.
As the report's authors note, many of these factors "lie outside the expertise of traditional designers and product managers." Moreover, companies developing sustainable design practices are recognizing that success in green product design involves going beyond integrating new tools into traditional design practices. It involves a whole new way of thinking about products.
The report outlines the "sustainable design intelligence" needed for an organization to design better products and create lasting business and customer value, including the aforementioned "A-B-C-D" approach that breaks sustainability into four behaviors:
- Assessing material impacts of projects and design capacity in an organization
- Bridging functions and people to make valuable, tractable product redesigns
- Creating generative internal and external learning projects
- Diffusing lessons and accountability mechanisms that build literacy and affect better decision making around the organization
They write:
Leading companies are transitioning away from a "pipeline" model of product development, in which groups throw and receive designs "over a wall" without understanding the upstream and downstream implications. The alternative, more "integrative product design" process featured in this report draws together disconnected groups and helps them strategize development of the competencies needed to improve products. It empowers eyes and ears around the organization to identify and manage sustainability issues emerging on the horizon.
What's the upside of all this? The report outlines a range of business benefits: better product performance, strengthened market position, improved compliance, reduced risks, increased organizational agility, improved morale and productivity, and "serendipitous innovation," such as when green thinking uncovers unnecessary complexity that adds costs, or when suppliers identify better-performing, cost-improving options.
The report offers examples of how the A-B-C-D framework has worked in companies like Clorox, Herman Miller, and Nike. Some of these stories have been well-covered elsewhere, but in the context of the BSR-IDEO framework, they take on a new dimension.
Part of what these companies' stories have in common is that they managed to break out of the siloed product design process, building cross-functional teams that go beyond technical and customer specifications to engage a broader swath of the company. That's a big barrier for many companies, where design specifications is left to engineers, designers, and a handful of others, often without regard to sustainability commitments and goals. (We'll be having a session at Greener by Design on how big companies have managed to cross that chasm.)
In the end, the biggest need for companies in aligning their product design process with their sustainability goals may be to redesign the company itself: its ability to share knowledge and insights across brands, divisions, business units, and job functions in a way that brings the best and brightest ideas to the table.
And maybe even to redesign the table itself.
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