The basic platform

The basic platform was pretty straightforward: take – make – waste, and replicated in every part of the chain from raw materials to use and final disposal.  Much of what we know about ancient human habitations and ways of life we’ve learnt from their waste – where it is, what it’s made up of (e.g. bones, weapons, broken tools, pottery, etc.). As we manufactured we took the basic platform, and replicated it in each of multiple processes:  let’s take the example of a pretty simple sandal. Rubber sole, leather straps, and thread.  The rubber was tapped from trees, purified and dried, then formed or trimmed to make the soles.  Trim scrap was – well – scrapped.  Same with the leather.

The platform goes tippy…

But what worked well for a small population using basic materials, started to fail us as we developed more sophisticated materials more resistant to nature. And that brings risks to companies – risks that there are insufficient resources to “take”, that the processes for “making” are too costly or just threatened, and that “waste” is becoming unfeasibly expensive.  Read on to read the three steps that will ensure you are a winner in this new world.

So what happened to the waste?

The pretty neat thing was that the waste was more often than not immediately used as food by insects and molds, or dogs or pigs or… No matter what ended up consuming it, the scrap became part of another process, and so waste wasn’t effectively waste.  It was, as William McDonough is fond of saying, food.

We shall did overcome!

So the same things that made our products eco-groovy, waste = food, made them degrade fast.  After all, the same insects/molds/dogs that were getting rid of the waste, were just as interested in the product.  Our stuff was all food to them.

So we invented lye and vulcanisation and other processes that transformed humble ingredients into high tech, almost impervious-to-nature, materials.  And still our systems were based on take-make-waste.  But now, when we wasted, nature was having trouble digesting the by-products.  And instead of becoming food, they accumulated like litter, and we developed industries to “dispose” of them.  Which has largely meant sweeping them up and taking them “away”.

What’s wrong with dispose and away?

The Online Etymology Dictionary defines the origins of dispose as order:

mid-14c., from O.Fr. disposer (infl. by poser “to place”), from O.Fr. despondre, from L. disponere “put in order, arrange,” from dis- “apart” + ponere “to put, place”

And here’s a picture of a disposal site: 

In fairness, this is clearly a disposal site in a poorly regulated (or poorly enforced) area (in this case Haiti).  So let me insert a picture of a sanitary landfill in the United States (Pennsylvania) from this year:

In either case, while there may be some form of order established – there is indeed a concentration of rubbish, distinct from the non-rubbish areas – the materials and dirt are so mingled that materials are hardly salvageable.  As a consequence we have actually condemned them to being unuseful and therefore pure waste.

Is pollution just good stuff in the wrong place?

Physicists and chemists would say so.  Value comes from order.  So pure tends to have higher value than impure, and much more than contaminated.  Gold is an obvious example.  But purity can come from “designed-for-purpose” – for example metal alloys, or chemicals, or plastics.  What happens when the fine distinctions that enable a material to be used in a particularly efficient way are contaminated – is tat more of the material needs to be used, and the properties it had been chosen for are sullied.  Think of colour as a property, and consider the outcome when a black sock makes it’s way into a load of white laundry…

The shortages of “away”?

The fees for collecting and disposing of waste have been increasing at such a rate that in London, for example, they now account for 1/2 the city’s budget.  These trends are due to accelerate due to public unwillingness to support new disposal sites (including waste-to-energy plants); competition for scarce space; and increasing waste.  Population and demographics have a large role to play in this – in the past 50 years the population of the globe has more than doubled (from 3 to 6.8 billion); wealth and consumption have increased substantially, and the increase in smaller households and out-of-home consumption has further increased waste.

A different form of cost is imposed by extended producer responsibility requirements (EPR) – currently covering items as diverse as packaging materials, tires, white goods, hazardous and special wastes, and appliances in (among other countries) the EU, much of Canada, Turkey, Japan and parts of the US.  The cost of recovering and disposal is placed usually on the brand owner who in turn seeks to distribute it among suppliers until eventually it makes its way into the cost of a good.  Ultimately EPR regulation is seeking to ensure that products with least waste-impact (through highest and most economic levels of recovery and recycling) are rewarded by the market.

The even greater shortages of “take”

At the same time, we are facing pressures and even shortages of materials: not just the usual suspects (oil, water, fish…) but also many rare ones on which the industries considered particularly forward facing, are pinning their hopes: neodymium, terbium and dysprosium (key components in generators for wind turbines or electric cars); lanthanum – key to electric car batteries.  Not only are these materials in short supply, but China which has a very long term view, has secured many of the supplies, thus making it the future monopolist for materials.

Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed. — Reuters, 31/8/09

A worsening ratio of people to arable land will bring about greater dependence on chemical fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals and on plant breeding for higher yields. In regard to dependence on chemical pesticides, the study looks for an increase in pesticide-resistant insects, based on California’s experience where, of 25 species each causing crop losses in excess of $1 million per year, 17 are now resistant to one or more types of pesticides. — Global 2000 report

And of course localised energy shortages and associated cost increases.

3 key steps to being able to continue “make”

So the competitive products – and companies – are going to be those who:

1. Produce most efficiently:  lowest energy, mostly renewable, and locally determined.  For example, Dean dairies invested in a methane digester thus avoiding the cost of waste disposal and energy purchases, while creating enough energy that they can feed it to the utility and make money.  Dean now has income where their competitors have costs – which means they can play with pricing, invest in greater modernisation/efficiencies, market themselves as green, …  They’ve bought freedom, choice and a halo.
2. Those that can reclaim and reuse their products at the disposal stage.  For example, a battery manufacturer (or mobile phone, or iPod or…) depends on materials that are in limited supply, hazardous in their manufacture and hazardous in disposal.  Risk, risk risk.  Were they to lease, rather than sell, their electronics, they could recycle more efficiently, reclaim their precious metals, and – get the halo.  In fact, as first mover, they could not only be reducing the toxicity of their products – they could be detoxing the operation – a powerful first mover advantage.
3. Use renewable and renewed materials:  either renewed by nature (e.g. trees), or by humans (recycled content).  Coke has invested over a hundred million dollars in recycling plants that guarantee it a supply of recycled PET – PET whose life cycle impacts are as good as those of nature-based materials such as paper cartons.  And, they are launching a plant-based polymer that can be recycled along with PET – so that their product is fundamentally green:  renewable, renewed, recycled and reused by them.

Securing a profitable platform

Interface, the largest floor covering company in the world, dedicated themselves to becoming fully sustainable 15 years ago.  Today they have changed their operations dramatically – zero waste facilities, high levels of renewable energy, much greater energy efficiency.  Most interestingly, they have taken different approaches to desing and manufacturing, based on their observations of how nature works, and launched three bestselling lines of products as a consequence – products that are better for the environment, easier to lay and replace, more readily recycled, and cheaper to produce.  “We were operating on the wrong platform” says their founder and Chairman Ray Anderson.  They’ve changed that – and grown dramatically in the process.

Related posts:

1. Does Climate Change affect your business?
2. Can goats help your green initiatives succeed like this?
3. Women’s International Input for COP15 Meeting in Copenhagen

You may have seen the Monty Python film “The Holy Grail” – in which plague victims are collected and piled high on a cart for removal. One is being carried over his relative’s shoulder and you can hear a cry “wait! I’m not dead yet!”.

So it is with many products that have been discarded – but are not so dead they won’t come back to haunt your business.

Travelling the (under)world
Some time ago, Greenpeace took an old television, fully disabled it, and inserted a tracking mechanism. They then took it to Hampshire County Council for recycling, and it was passed on to the council’s ‘recycling’ company, BJ Electronics. Relabelled ‘second-hand goods’ it was shipped off to Nigeria to be sold again. In an operation worthy of a Bond film (James Bond), Greenpeace managed to locate the tv in the Allaba market in Lagos, and buy it back. They even got a receipt including the TV’s serial number. [It's well worth seeing the narrated slideshow at the end of this article]

This violated the Basel Converntion (global), EU directives, UK legislation, as well as standard ethical norms. And of course the television is branded, so finding a responsible party isn’t, in the end, so difficult.

A simple legal issue?
You might think that the passage from legal to illegal was for the courts alone. But this ignores how public issues play themselves out.

In India, Greenpeace dumped electronic waste in front of Philips’ Indian headquarters in Mumbia because Philips didn’t apply its own corporate e-waste policy in India (local law did not require them to). The media picked this up, and as they did so, highlighted the seamy side of the illegal trade in used electronics. Photographs of children dipping electronics in vats of acid, or burning off the plastic by hand, fumes clouding the air, were shown in papers and magazines and even in Western museums.

Philips pays
Philip’s has now agreed to voluntarily pay the cost of taking its used electronics back at the end of their useful life in 8 major cities in India.

Philips may well be arguing that they ‘won’ because they pass on the costs to consumers; they’ve limited collection to a few cities rather than having take back country-wide; and that they were able to delay the costs for years.

It’s hard to get rid of the mud
But in my mind this qualifies as an unequivocal loss for Philips: first they demonstrate that they believe that their corporate actions are not linked to their stated values and policies, but to lower local standards; then they put up with years of negative publicity about their policies while arguing publicy that they shouldn’t be forced to take responsibility; and finally they do take responsibility and bear the full costs of recycling.  Now they have to shore up their reputation.

The truth is, no manufacturer relinquishes responsibility for their products. Government policies and consumer expectations are building on eachother to increase responsibility on manufacturers for their choices from “cradle to grave”. Since Switzerland first passed waste electronics legislation in 1991, the EU, Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, 17 States in the US, and several provinces in Canada all require take-back of electronics; and far more globally require take-back/recycling of used packaging, paints, paper, hazardous waste, batteries and other products.

Four steps to banishing your product’s ghosts…

1. Find out if you are legally responsible. It’s a minimum responsibility, but its already useful to know if what you make – or what you pack it in – fall under legislation in countries where it is sold & used.
2. Find out what’s happening to them. Whether you’re repsonsible or not. The Marketing Director of a stone company called Marshall’s in the UK was trying to understand his company’s impacts, so he “walked the supply chain.” An experience that left no doubt in his mind about the changes he wanted to see – to protect his company, and to protect his conscience [from a briliant series of articles by Mallen Baker called Values Carved in Stone].
3. Know what your stakeholders expect. More often than not trade associations have sister organisations dedicated to take-back issues, and it’s helpful to know how this is being handled in each country, and the impact on you; Most importantly, you want to know what key stakeholders (environmental groups; social justice organisations; local communities; government; etc.) want from you and your industry. If your trade association isn’t managing such discussions, it’s well worth your doing so directly.
4. See how to differentiate yourself. Determine what you could do differently that would allow you to win hearts and minds, while blowing your competitors out of the water: HP said “send us back the electronics you want us to recycle” thus ensuring that those who cared had an outlet for action; IBM developed logistics systems for enabling efficient collection and recycling, and then set up a profitable consultancy to sell their learnings to others.

Out of the Graveyard
Ultimately Philips determined that certain metals they need are in such short supply that they are better off recovering them from their own products. So they are working in the EU to set up a recovery scheme independent of the industry schemes – presumably to control take-back of their products. Which would also give them a powerful incentive to make recycling of their own products easy and economical.

So it could be that when you invite your products back, not only do they not come back unexpectedly to haunt you, they bring you good will – and a supply of critical materials. What’s not sustainable about that?

Related posts:

1. Caroline Rennie
2. Are your customers facing needlessly unpleasant tradeoffs?
3. Does Climate Change affect your business?

How do you know that your avant garde initiatives are actually mainstream?

The Mafia is muscling in as a supplier…

According to the Financial Times, renewable energy, particularly wind-farms, is increasingly owned and run by the Mafia – for the value of the subsidies, for the value of the renewable energy credits, and for the sale of the energy.

Some more legitimate firms got there too. But most companies have been content with the notion that ‘green’ means ‘philanthropy’. And they treat it as such. Its ironic then, to find the mafia being the hardest-headed business people of all, exploring green energy as a particularly lucrative field for doing business.

How did they do it? The same way that you could (minus, I would suggest, some of the more hard-core tactics they use, that might be seen as violating the social-responsibility spirit of the enterprise):

1. create wind-farm companies at a relatively small scale. This enables them to receive subsidies, particularly in Italy, and stay under the radar;
2. build windfarms and capture the energy;
3. receive the subsidies for generating renewable energy, sell the ‘renewable energy’ credits that come from emissions-free production, and use or sell the energy itself.

The Mafia has so far avoided actually producing and selling energy, but this is where your opportunity lies: less in intimidating government officials, and more in producing energy. After all, it would be useful to your business, and the credits – if not useful to you – would be useful to a someone else – quite possibly a customer. They might even be useful to the government that could usefully use proof that its subsidies were actually subsidising energy production, not crime.

Finally, you can sell your capacity to a foreign energy firm: today International Power of the UK, Italy’s Enel, Germany’s Eon and France’s EDF are the key players in the sector.

And that would provide all the proof you need in Italy (Europe now) that your energy is truly clean.

Thanks to Mallen Baker and Tony Webb for highlighting the article from the Financial Times. Bravo! or more accurately, Bravi!

Related posts:

1. Hot Sh*t! Cow Power
2. Your customer goes sustainable – and demands you do the same. Are you ready?
3. Lobbying: a proven way to lose money?

McDonald’s could be doing smart, community-building work that builds brand value. But they’re not. Here’s what they’re doing – and what Wal-Mart’s doing better.

The story:
Nigel Haskel, a minimum wage, 21 year old employee, sees a man start beating a woman in the McDonald’s he works in. He intercedes on the woman’s behalf, gets the attacker to leave, and then blocks him from re-entering the restaurant. For his pains, the attacker shoots him multiple times, and Nigel has to have several abdominal operations to repair the damage and extract the bullets. He still has a bullet inside.

Six months and $300’000 later he is denied workers compensation benefits: McDonald’s refuses his claim as they say he should just have called the police.

What’s wrong with this position?
From a business point of view it is wrong because it tells customers that they may not be safe in a McDonald’s because McDonald’s will not protect them. That seems wrong-headed at a time when trust in business is at a low.

Secondly, it ignores fundamental human notions of protection, ‘doing the right thing’, standing up for decency and justice. This threatens their community standing.

Compromising your welcome in the community
When corporations forget the spirit of laws, and live for short term benefits based on the rule of law, they compromise their welcome in communities. That compromised welcome is what has driven Wal-Mart to embrace the environment and sustainability so powerfully and visibly: they needed to re-establish credibility with communities so that they could continue to expand. And in doing so, they have expanded among consumer classes who did not readily or happily shop at Wal-Mart before.

Wal-Mart seems to be learning that doing the right thing by community can build business [see next week's column on transparency]. McDonald’s, who made themselves the butt of 15 years of jokes and bad press when they pursued two activists through the UK and European courts in a case dubbed McLibel, seems to be struggling with learning.

Better to Do the Right Thing
Two thirds of McDonald’s revenue growth comes from upscale, healthy food*. This is exactly the kind of market that is most likely to be put off by insensitive behaviour and everything it implies. The public in general hasn’t taken kindly to the arrogance of bankers and car companies. Perhaps this is a time for McDonald’s to cede their “right” to do the wrong thing, and instead do the right thing- so that they continue to build brand value and affection.

*Dean Ornish, TED conference 2006

Related posts:

1. Why is Wal-Mart Offering Environmental Audits to Government?
2. Is Wal-Mart saving the planet?
3. Retailers & Fortune’s Accountable 100

A few years ago the UN assessed the value of the stuff nature gives us for free (clean air, humidity, water, resources, fertile soil, etc.), and it dwarfed all the economic activity at the time (and that was before the economy lost tens of trillions of dollars of value…). In the assessment was the notion that as we deplete resources, and degrade air, water and land, we will have to develop systems that clean up the environment, or that replicate its services. So the value of what nature gives us is described in terms of the cost of generating it (either by restoring nature or by replacing the function).

Nature does it cheaper
It was quickly clear that nature does it more cheaply. Much more cheaply. So much so that enlightened planners in companies and cities have figured out who to pay how much in order to get the service from nature rather than industry.

A case:
New York City’s water had historically come from the Catskill mountains to the North. Due to suburbanisation, changes in forestry and farming practices, and other generalised environmental impacts, the water quality was degrading. The City looked into the cost of building a filtration plant: roughly $6 billion to build the plant plus another $250 million per year for maintenance. (in 2003 dollars). Instead, the City worked out an arrangement with farmers whereby the farmers were paid to farm in such a way that their land served as a filter for water, and the water that arrived in New York was clean (dubbed the “champagne” of water). This cost the city $167 million/year – a fraction of the maintenance and depreciation costs of a filtration plant.

Now governments are wondering how to ensure you pay for your impact on the ecosystem and its servises.
The example above is of a stakeholder (the City of New York) seeking to conserve the quality of a particular ‘product’ (clean water). Similar programmes have been established by bottled water companies to guarantee the quality of the water they bottle. However now, governments are seeking to find ways to get a range of services/depletions to be paid for, including the following:

• Taxes and user fees for externalities – such as overfertilising leading to nutrients leaching into lakes and rivers, and fostering so much growth that effectively there is no oxygen and most animals and many plants die off.

• Creating markets like the EU cap & trade system For example, limit the amount of nutrients that can be “released” through fertilization to encourage more judicious use of fertilisers and cleverer means of application that did not result in run-off.

• Payment for ecosystem services A government could set a price for each service – and you pay according to the degree of your impact.

• Certification schemes: Today current certification schemes for sustainable fisheries (e.g. Marine Stewardship Council) and forest practices (e.g. Forest Stewardship Council) provide people, retailers amd branded goods companies, with the opportunity to promote sustainability through their consumption choices.

A working system is already in place in Costa Rica and, for cap & trade and offsets, in the EU.
In 1996 Costa Rica established a nationwide system of conservation payments as inducement to landowners to provide ecosystem services. Costa Rica brokers contracts between buyers and sellers of sequestered carbon, biodiversity, watershed services, and scenic beauty. There is also talk of “biodiversity offsets,” whereby developers would pay for conservation activities as compensation for the harm that their projects cause to biodiversity.

With a new President, a new attitude and even greater pressures, the likelihood that some of these elements will be put into practice is increased. The question for you is, how can you estimate today the extent of your impacts, and how to reduce them so that those kinds of fees just wouldn’t apply to you? After all, it will be cheaper for you to drive your agenda on your own scale today, then wait for the rules to fall and herd with your competitors to the payment lines.

ren-new can help you determine the scale of your impacts, and work through scenarios on the implications to your business. We can also take a look at how you could use those resources to your advantage instead – meeting future requirements in a way that brings benefits today.

Resources of interest:

• http://ecosystemmarketplace.com
• http://speciesbanking.com/

Related posts:

1. Lobbying: a proven way to lose money?
2. Is your company about to lose the platform it’s built on?
3. Women’s International Input for COP15 Meeting in Copenhagen

Nestle Waters has told Plastics & Rubber Weekly that it expects its suppliers to be making demonstrable progress towards sustainability:

“We are going to be pushing more on our suppliers to figure some of this stuff out” said Kim Jeffery, President Nestle Waters.

Are you ready the day your customer tells you he “expects you to figure this stuff out”?

Customers flag their intentions to the stakeholders they worry about: retailers, environmental NGOs, government regulators, and interested consumers. What they don’t necessarily remember to do, is flag their intentions to you – until you receive a demand in the mail. In their annual report, Nestle Waters North America stated that they want to have PET bottles with 25% recycled content on the market by 2013, while developing a “next-generation bottle” manufactured entirely from recycled materials or renewable materials by 2020.

If you are not ready for these kinds of demands, the costs to you can be huge. Coca-Cola was behind the successful development by its suppliers of the plastic can in the 1980s (the PETainer – PET body with aluminium ends). The aluminium industry convinced municipalities and community groups (who earned money collecting aluminium cans) that if a tiny number of these containers came to their smelter, the smelter would explode and aluminium recycling would be finished. An exaggeration perhaps, but effective enough to convince several states to ban the can and scupper its chances of making it in the market. The result: Coca-Cola didn’t buy, and the development, testing, marketing and manufacturing costs were born entirely by the suppliers, with no return.

Today Nestle Waters is under pressure as cities and counties (from San Francisco to Toronto to New York to Bern) call for a ban on plastic bottles for water on environmental grounds (there is even an award winning documentary in theatres called “Flow” that takes issue with Nestle’s use of water. Nestle felt compelled to respond to it, also by video, though on their website rather than theatres). To save their business Nestle Waters want to ensure their environmental story is good and improving – and they are turning to suppliers to make this so.

Which brings us to the question – how do you ensure that your product is “future proof” when your customers, under pressure, put the performance burden on you?

• Check their websites and reports and find out what their public commitments are with respect to the environment;
• Check out the broader context – in this case “bottled water bans” – and see where the pressure is coming from;
• Determine how you impact your customer’s environmental impact – and what you can do to reduce not only your own impact, but the impact you have on them.
• Start developing the products that will let you grow as the pressure increases: In this case, if you were providing the raw materials to Nestle you would want to have had a programme working on recycled content and renewables for some time if you are to meet their market demand by 2013. (“By 2013, we plan to reduce carbon intensity by 20% across our full value chain — from the production of plastic resin to delivery of products to our customers.”)
• ..and you may want to know what your competitors and Nestle’s competitors are doing already. Coca-Cola has had a more ambitious plan on their website for years. And Wal-Mart is increasing the pressure on the entire supply chain to provide products that are zero waste or fully renewable.

Related posts:

1. Bags and bottles – tapped out.
2. Is government really setting your environmental agenda?
3. How to design for "PreCycling"

As UK retailers outdo eachother in their efforts to build consumer and political good will, they have had to develop immediate and compelling ways to help consumers do the right thing. Among other techniques they have demonstrated that labelling can not only sway consumers, but change the company as well – in a way that makes them better citizens. A case in point: Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s had determined that its key focus would be health. They worked with nutritionists to translate nutritional information into readily understood symbols – and came up with the “traffic light” (pictured above): red denotes “eat rarely”, orange “in moderation” and green “abundantly”. They moved the information from the back of the pack, to the front. Then they tested the symbol on their ready-to-eat meals.

In a tub-style refrigerator they put two meals: a vegetable curry with rice whose stoplight was all green, and Salmon in pastry, whose stoplight was largely red. And they rolled the cameras.

Shoppers would look in, reach for one product and look at the label; then reach for the other and look at the label; back and forth, and… by and large leave with the green label product. Over time, sales of the green-labelled products became important.

Interestingly, back in the development kitchens, developers didn’t want to be associated with the red-labels, and started to tweak their recipes to make them healthier. So that the label started to change everybody’s behaviour – for the better.

Not surprisingly Marks&Spencers has developed a similar label for its foods – and also puts the information on the front of the pack.

Which suggests that a similar scheme for environmental labelling could be developed. One idea would be to address the big LCA categories:

• Global Warming – gases released that contribute to global warming
• Toxicity – a measure of the toxic emissions to air, water and land
• Acid Rain – the potential to damage water and soil systems by increasing their acidity
• Resource Depletion – the extraction of non-renewable resources from the lithosphere which is not a sustainable practice

Alternatively, it could be based on current key categories – though these are less accurate and comprehensive: Waste (packaging recyclability); CO2 (climate change); transport (food miles). In any case, they would need to incorporate the impacts associated with the food, preparation, packaging and transportation, on average, for that product.

As WalMart (and Asda, its UK subsidiary), Tesco, and M&S have ambitious public goals (e.g. zero waste, carbon neutral, and the like) we could expect them to start testing such labels – as soon as they can develop some consensus behind them!

And when they do, what will this mean to you – and your products?

For assistance in thinking through the impacts of retailer’s environmental assessment and labelling programmes, contact ren-new!

Related posts:

1. Would this label affect sales? Tell us what you think…
2. Women’s International Input for COP15 Meeting in Copenhagen
3. Is Wal-Mart saving the planet?

Most companies are wasting their environmental investment – at least as far as reputation goes: while they may be doing, and saying, a lot – the public doesn’t buy their story. Except, that is, Toyota’s.

click on picture to enlarge

source: MapChange 2008

What’s going on?
Let’s look at GM and Toyota. GM is seen as a laggard, almost as bad as Esso. Toyota, on the other hand, has the highest perceived environmental value, with quite a good relationship between perception and actions.

How can this be? Well, for one thing, Toyota has gone public for years with a clear vision understandable to all: “Our goal: zero emissions” which they then backed up with a car that was clearly a step change towards that goal. So, a clear goal, and clear movement toward that goal. In fact, they quickly came out with a hybrid Lexus, and have a commitment to having a hybrid option for each car model they have on the market today.

And GM? Well, leaving aside that there was a terrific film called “Who killed the electric car” blaming GM for withdrawing electric cars from California, GM has had no such clear and consistent positioning in the environment. As a consequence the actions they take, and by all accounts they are undertaking quite a few, have little resonance.

And this is where most companies lose value through their environmental activities: rather than give a clear, understandable (and preferably inspiring) vision against which they measure performance, they speak to how they are reducing negative impacts. The frame is already negative (“we may be doing a bit less bad than our competitors”) and it requires a great deal of work on the consumer side to understand whether the information is relevant and significant.

Should companies care? A 5% change in a company’s reputation is equivalent to 1-5% change in their market value according to the Research Institute at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

So, do it right, and you build good will and increase sales. Do it wrong, and you strip value from your brand. So far, there’s only one company doing it right.

ren-new works with you to increase the value you get from the environment – better for your profits, better for the planet. Contact us to find out how!

Related posts:

1. Why is Wal-Mart Offering Environmental Audits to Government?
2. Who’s policing your environmental claims?
3. This company made their customers raving (green) fans

So, they get a triple win: consumers switch to HP, enhance their good feelings towards HP, and HP gets a ready source of high cost materials such as gold in the process.

What they have cleverly done is take the learnings from their required participation in recycling systems (the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment programme – the ‘Weee!’ of the title) and turned them into competitive advantage in the US.

Cleverly, they do not stop at the promise of “take back” – but are working on programmes to ensure they know where the products are going and how they are treated – while linking that to social benefits. And rather than do this alone, they are working with competitors and NGOs to ensure that the results are credible and the standards shared.

So we’re seeing alchemy in action: turning dross into gold…

video source: Business Week

To see how to use the environment to steal a march on your competitors, contact ren-new.

* Stealing a March definition: to spoil someone’s plans and get an advantage over them by doing something sooner or better than them. Source: the Free Dictionary

Related posts:

1. Hot Sh*t! Cow Power
2. Leveraging the Environment to save everyone money
3. How to change behaviours