Green Options

Enterprise Fleet Management, a division of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, was awarded the 2009 “Stevie” American Business Award for Environmental Responsibility Program.

Design Goes Green - The first of a series of articles by Green Printer on the cross-section between the environment, business and the creative communications industry.

A Deeper Shade of Green

Anyone can spec a project on recycled or FSC certified stock. Anyone can use Google to locate a printer who claims to be eco-friendly and uses vegetable-based inks. Anyone can stick a tiny disclaimer on their promotional materials stating “please recycle me“.

We recently applauded Apple for its new energy efficient 17″ MacBook, but news that the company wants to stifle shareholder requests to publish a Corporate Sustainability Report has overshadowed our praise.

The shareholder resolution was proposed by an environmental group called As You Sow, and asks for detailed information about toxins, recycling, greenhouse gases, and more. This past Wednesday, Apple’s board of directors asked shareholders to vote against the resolution.

KPMG’s International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting came out over a month ago, but at 118 pages, it has taken me a while to go through it. If you’d like to check it out, download the report from the KPMG site.

But if you’d like a quick summary, here are some highlights that stood out to me:

First, some good news: The report says, “Corporate responsibility reporting has gone mainstream - nearly 80 percent of the largest 250 companies worldwide… issued reports.” However, the continuation of that sentence says, “…and an additional four percent integrated corporate responsibility information into their annual reports.”

I’d love to hear from an annual report writer or investor relations executive, because four percent sounds very low. Maybe there is a good reason for a stand-alone report, but it seems to me that sustainability and social responsibility should be integral to corporate operations in the Twenty-first Century.

(I get ahead of myself. The punchline of the KPMG report is that companies are not integrating sustainability and social responsibility plans sufficiently. Many companies may report their plans, but very few declare their strategies and results.)

Last month was a busy time for the voluntary carbon standard (VCS). Admittedly, it’s not a phrase that rolls smoothly off the tongue.

Like corporate social responsibility (CSR), you find yourself semi-exhausted before the next sentence.

You sense inherent good in each of these phrases – sure – but just want them to make sense in a realer world.

And so to the VCS.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is big business. In 2006, there was a huge surge in this market resulting in a 200% growth.

Big brands were, and are, getting into carbon offsetting in a big way. Google, Nike, Coca Cola, Yahoo! – all are now part of this market.

I don’t think it at all beneficial at this stage to analyse their reasons for announcing green credentials. Whether it really is genuine CSR or in each case a PR exercise is redundant. Don’t muddy the waters. They’re doing it.

So, yes, multinationals are offsetting their carbon within the voluntary sector. Good.

But what’s drawing them to the market? Two reasons.

So damned often in politics we, the observers, the eternal optimists, believe that some evidence will come from environmental speeches. We want to believe that there will be substance to the rhetoric. And yet it seems eternal that our misguided hopes are dashed against the walls of greed and nonsensical corporate expansion.

This comes mere weeks after Gordon Brown, the UK’s new prime minister, gave his first speech on the environment. Whilst not being exactly radical, it did at least entertain some hope that we finally had a leader with green credentials.

Until London Heathrow that is.

Airport bosses must be dancing a jig at the moment because the government has decided to give the green light to a third runway. And yes, I use the word “green” witheringly.

Indra K. Nooyi: Image source: Sivacracy.netBusinessWeek next week has a few articles on PepsiCo’s Chairwoman and CEO Indra Nooyi’s vision of “performance with purpose”. It focuses on Nooyi’s earnest passion to fundamentally transform the company into a sustaining portfolio strategy:

The slogan may sound like the kind of marketing ploy that’s in vogue these days, especially coming from a company that’s best known for making soda and potato chips.

[...]

The Institute of Travel Management (ITM) recently introduced an Environmental Impact Reduction Toolkit to help businesses reduce their eco-footprint when travelling.

The UK-based organization provides support for travel management professionals and promotes best practices across the industry. The toolkit was announced at their 2007 conference entitled "Responsible Travel Management". The intent of the toolkit is to help create a framework for the travel management industry to help companies conduct business travel more

[...]

SustainAbility, a consulting firm and think-tank that explores solutions for sustainable development, has released a new study on the positive effects of social entrepreneurship.

According to the report Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems, a social entrepreneurs are:

…entrepreneurs whose new ventures (social enterprises) prioritize social returns on investment, i.e. improving quality of life for marginalized populations by addressing issues such as health, poverty, and education. One key reason why mainstream business needs to

[...]

Hershey's is extending its Corporate Social Responsibility efforts to include more than just chocolate.

The Pennsylvania based confection maker has been working with organizations such as the World Cocoa Foundation and the International Cocoa Initiative to help ensure that cocoa farmers are treated fairly and that the crop is grown responsibly. They also signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001 that called for the end of child labor on cocoa [...]