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Taking Care of Business
By Joel Makower
"Sunlight," as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously put it, "is the best disinfectant. "When it comes to fomenting a green marketplace, how much sunlight is enough? How much is too much?
I recently began an online conversation with Daniel Goleman, author of the bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, and, more recently, of Ecological Intelligence. Goleman posits that "radical transparency" -- that is, the unleashing of detailed data about the ingredients and environmental impacts of products and the companies behind them -- will spur consumers to make good, green choices. I like this idea in concept -- after all, a theme of my 1990 book, The Green Consumer, was that "Every time you open your wallet, you cast a vote 'for' or 'against' the environment" -- but I question whether massive information is the right fix for this problem.
I aired my critique of Goleman and "radical transparency" in a recent blog post, to which I invited Goleman to respond.
I'm hoping you'll respond, too. I'd be grateful if you would weigh in on the discussion. Is "radical transparency" a key missing ingredient in spurring a green consumer revolution? If so, should companies be compelled to provide detailed information about their products, processes, and practices? Who should do the compelling? Do enough consumers care or does all that data further confuse them? We've already seen companies like Clorox, SC Johnson, and Seventh Generation voluntarily disclose the full ingredient list of their products. It's unclear whether and how that has affected consumer choices.
I'd welcome your comments to either or both posts: add them here and here.
These are hardly idle questions. Large retailers like Wal-Mart are encouraging, if not requiring, companies to disclose a great deal of information about their products, and are expected to make buying decisions based on part on those data. Nonprofits like Climate Counts (on whose board I sit) are similarly pressing companies to provide information about their environmental commitments and performance, using that information to rate companies and brands. The U.S. federal government is considering what role, if any, it should play in policing green claims.
And it's not just the environment. Sarah Terry-Cobo reports this week about a "flurry of technologies, reporting systems and databases for tracing food origins," with an eye toward ensuring products healthfulness and the labor practices that brought it to market, among other things. Radical transparency: There's an app for that.
Like it or not, a new era of transparency is upon us. How will your company fare in a world in which unfettered information is available to anyone with an iPhone or computer? Will it be ready, willing, and able to participate in an open-source world?
Welcome, RMI: We're pleased this week to unveil a new partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute, which will be providing insight and analysis to GreenBiz.com readers on energy efficiency, green buildings, renewable energy, and other topics. As you likely know, RMI is the pioneering "think and do tank" co-founded by Amory Lovins that has been at the forefront of green-economy thinking for more than 25 years. We're honored to add them to our growing stable of contributing partners and look forward to sharing with you their font of knowledge and wisdom.
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