Green Edge Workshops and Consulting Services

Sustainability: Hard Data Across Industry Lines

As Green Edge clients continue to make progress on their sustainability journeys, in addition to helping them integrate carbon footprint strategies into the DNA of their organizations, Green Edge is busy moving forward on two parallel paths that we will be sharing with you from time to time.

 

The first path is amassing hard data on the costs and benefits of adapting carbon footprint reduction strategies based on the work we are doing with our clients. The second path is establishing a searchable data base of secondary research on sustainability costs and benefits based on the work being done globally by other organizations.

As a result of this work, we came across a recent multi-industry survey entitled Sustainability in Business Today: A Cross-Industry View and have summarized it below.
Opportunity
Business Sustainability:
Areas of Opportunity
In industries ranging from consumer products and telecommunications to hard core industrial manufacturing, sustainability executives at 48 large companies discussed their experiences in leading the sustainability efforts of their companies. Focusing on both reducing their company's overall carbon footprint as well as the carbon footprint of the individual products their companies produce, these executives concurred that the areas of greatest opportunity were those related to manufacturing process and operations (46%), brand enhancement and perception (31%) and supply chain (21%).

As for the ways that their companies are enabling them to successfully implement sustainability initiatives, the respondents agreed on the following:

Sustainability Enabling

In keeping with our experience at Green Edge that the most effective sustainability initiatives are those that are incorporated into organizations holistically, respondents noted that the internal stakeholders affected by their company's sustainability initiatives ranged from the Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel to the Chief Operations Officer and Head of Corporate Strategy.

 

If you have questions about how to incorporate sustainability into your company's DNA, please contact us.

Tips on Effective Green Communication

Green CommunicationAs many companies have painfully learned, there can be a great discrepancy between real efforts to green an organization and how stakeholders perceive those efforts. The variances range from companies that we think are making great strides in greening their organizations, but which are really not doing a lot to reduce their carbon footprint, to those companies which have made a lot of progress on the sustainability front, but aren't being given credit for it in their marketplace. At both ends of this spectrum, we think the following tips on how to communicate "green" effectively, taken from a recent article by Amy Skoczlas Cole, director of eBay's Green Team, were spot-on and in fact summarize some of the basic strategies that we use in helping our clients leverage their Green Edge Advantage by getting their green message out.

Cool is more important than Green According to Amy, and we agree, in order to engage "...consumers in making more sustainable choices...lead with messages that consumers care about: style, price, function, and let sustainability attributes be the icing, rather than the cake."

Radical Transparency = Humility Amy suggests that being humble is a fundamental principle for engaging with consumers: being open about challenges is key to ensuring your accomplishments are credible.

Accept that the Best Ideas Probably Won't Come From You Web 2.0 technology "...gives us an unprecedented opportunity to peer into the hearts and minds of our customers and all we have to do is listen."

Trade Up, Not Off
Engage with customers around greener choices by showing them how it adds value to their life, rather than demanding sacrifice. Amy refers to eBay's considerable marketplace for "pre-owned" products which in essence are recycled/reused and can also be financially accessible and fashionable.

Materiality Matters The "green claim" needs to be consistent with the product, or it will fall on deaf ears. Amy cites the example of bottled water's attempt to go green as one where adding green messaging to a product that has a significant carbon footprint just won't work. The corollary to this: look at your product through a sustainability lens and perhaps there is a meaningful green claim that should be made. Take Brita water filters for example, as an alternative to bottled water: "Better for the environment & your wallet."

For the full article, Click here.
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We Look Forward to Hearing from You

If you have questions about anything you've read in this newsletter or if you are wondering how to meet your own green challenges, contact me and I will be happy to respond via email.

Warmly,
Ellen Sinreich Signature 
Ellen Sinreich
President
 Green Edge Workshops and Consulting Services

greenedgeworkshops.com
[email protected]
212 828 3840

Ellen SinreichEllen Sinreich is President of Green Edge, LLC, which helps organizations leverage the power of green through Green Edge Workshops and Green Edge Consulting.
Beware of Green Claims 
Every consumer product, it seems, has a green claim, proudly and prominently displayed. This week we couldn't make a purchase, whether it was a car or socks or school supplies (all of which we shopped for both in person and online) without bumping up against an unsubstantiated green claim. No wonder consumers are confused.

I was especially surprised by this a few weeks ago at the Litchfield, CT Jazz Festival this summer. Nestled among the "This Chicken Smells Good" food vendor, musical sculptures and wrought iron furniture, I came across a jeweler with numerous handwritten signs claiming that her products were organic and sustainable.

 Fresh Organic Produce

Never one to take things at face value, especially when it comes to sustainability, I questioned the basis for these claims and got a thoughtful, although not necessarily accurate, answer. The jeweler responded that the wine bottle corks which she incorporated into various pieces of jewelry were organic (indeed cork is considered a rapidly renewable material but I couldn't figure out how those wine bottle corks could be characterized as organic) and that all her silver pieces were "sustainable" because they were made of silver that had been previously used, melted down and recomposed. Let us know if there are any suspicious green claims that you have come across, or any great green claims that resonate for you and we'll be happy to share them!
Upcoming Events

2010 Retail Green Conference, Phoenix, AZ, October 12 - 14

The International Council of Shopping Centers has tapped Ellen Sinreich to Chair its first Retail Green Academy which will take place at the 2010 Retail Green Conference. There will be two course offerings: "Comparative Green Certifications: Making Sense of It All" and "Greening the Landlord-Tenant Relationship: A Practical Toolkit." Both courses have been designed to meet the educational needs of sustainability, management, operations, development and design professionals in the retail industry. Contact us for more information.

2011 Green Real Estate Summit, NYC and Webcast, March 3rd

Ellen Sinreich will be chairing the 2011 Green Real Estate Summit in New York City and live on the web, where the real estate community will come together to discuss ground breaking green building issues from a legal perspective. Green building experts will discuss the latest regulatory developments, as well as challenges to both federal and state schemes to mandate and incentivize green buildings. Practical and tactical issues including risk management and greening real estate relationships will be covered, and we'll also look over-the-horizon at the long term ramifications of climate change on the real estate industry.  Contact us for more details.
Green Edge Workshops and Consulting

Green Edge Workshops and Consulting Services help you develop and leverage your Green Edge to maximize enterprise value. Basics, Signature and Premium Workshops can be tailored to meet your needs, budget, schedule and location. If you have a green challenge you'd like to meet, contact us.
The Green Edge Newsletter
 
Our newsletter is another way we reach out to you (our clients, colleagues and friends) to encourage, motivate and facilitate the greening of organizations.

Future issues will highlight strategies for greening supply chains, transportation, distribution and general organizational activities that defy categorization. We will also continue to cover how companies are branding, communicating and marketing green initiatives.

 

If you'd like your company to be featured in one of the next issues of the Green Edge Newsletter, we'd love to hear from you. We are always looking for great green stories to share with our community of clients, colleagues and friends.

 

If you missed our previous issues, link to our archives home page or our blog.

Contact us for more information and to join our mailing list.

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The
Green Edge Newsletter is published monthly by Green Edge, LLC.

EDITOR: Ellen Sinreich
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Sara Mears

Copyright � 2010 Green Edge, LLC