Green Options

I had the pleasure of being the guest on a (the?) twitter #SmallBizChat last night.  The brain child of up and coming small biz powerhouse Melinda Emerson (a.k.a. @smallbizlady), #SmallBizChat happens every Wednesday night from 8-9PM EST.  Melinda, along with her co-host Cathy Larkin (@CathyWebSavvyPR) run a great event that is worth checking into as a listener/participant but also as a guest.  The whole evening is topped off with a PDF transcript of the event made available within in minutes courtesy of Sonia Schenker (@yourjobmyoffice).

Last night’s topic was, obviously, greening your small business.  I had prepared a dozen questions and answers and was expecting to field additional questions. But what happened, and here’s the beauty of Twitter and why this kind of event is Twitter at its best, is that a real dialogue occurred.  I didn’t have much chance to interject, mostly because several people had perfectly good answers that came from their day to day operations. For example, when question #2 was posted:

I, as planned, posted my 140 character response:

Its a perfectly fine answer, but the chat took off and many other terrific “definitions” kept popping up.

All this talk about going green, do we really know what exactly it means?  Companies invest millions in trying to segment the green market. There’s the BBMG Conscious Consumer Report.  The Roper Green Gauge. The Landor ImagePower Green Brands Survey.  And on and on..(..so many segments, so little time!) Maybe more importantly: When we talk about green are we talking about the same thing?  Apparently not.

This week I spoke with Jamie Wimberly whose firm, EcoAlign, just came out with a report called “Green Gap Redux: Green Words Gone Wrong”. Wimberly is CEO of Distributed Energy Financial Group (DEFG), a company in the clean tech space that includes EcoAlign. Jamie has nearly 20 years of experience in the energy and environment space, previously having served as the Vice President of the Consumer Energy Council of America (CECA), the President of the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets (CAEM) and a Director on Boards of technology companies. He is a published author, frequent speaker and the Executive Producer of the award-winning Day In The Life Of (DILO) video.

Q: Hi Jamie.  Before we talk about the “Green Gap Redux” report, can you talk about how your focus on energy makes EcoAlign different from other green marketing agencies?
A. I was attracted to the energy sector because it impacts so many of the big issues of our day, including the environment, and is integral to modern society in all aspects.  The relationship between energy and environment is a symbiotic one, meaning that we won’t be able to clean up our environment and manage climate change without a transformation on how we produce, deliver and consume energy.  Our deep expertise in energy (the partners alone have over 50 years of collective experience in the sector) means that we can go beyond your usual agency engagement and truly discuss all aspects of strategy – operational, financial, marketing, etc.  As such, we are able to elevate the discussion of such things as messaging/ communications, product development, customer engagement, campaign design, channels and metrics, and other marketing-related activities to the C-level suite of our clients.  Finally, I would note that “sustainability” is evolving into a complete management model.  For that transition to be effective, you need to have a lot of skill sets and a strategic perspective that only comes from a deep understanding of all the moving pieces of a company. The end goal is for sustainability to become a business and economic driver to enhance profitably.

Corporations are huge and they dominate our business landscape.  Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries.

Corporate critics like Douglas Rushkoff would add that not only is our world dominated by corporations, but as individuals, we have all internalized the worst corporate values, becoming disconnected, profit-driven and absolutely “me” focused in everything we do.

That’s a pretty bleak picture.  After reading Rushkoff’s book (and even writing a long review about it) I thought about the legions of people (like me) working in companies.  Sure, there are a lot of narcissistic corporate drone types that fit the description above…but there are also a lot of other folks willing to shake things up.  Lets call them purpose driven corporatists.

American Express, in partnership with NBC Universal, is holding a competition to “Shine A Light” on an “inspiring” small business.

I find so many of you inspiring, I’m thinking: Could it be you?

They are looking for small businesses that are:

• Innovative
• Give back to the community
• Demonstrate a “customer first” mentality.

If so, they want to hear your story and you might win a $100K grant in cash and marketing support from American Express.

Mokugift is enabling attendees of the Blazed & Confused concert tour (headlined by Snoop Dogg and Slightly Stoopid) to voice their opinions and fight climate change through the power of online video.

Mokugift will be at two events on Aug 19th in the San Francisco Bay area. We would love to meet you and its a great opportunity to mingle with other environmental, tech and fashion folks.

The Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), a subsidiary of ECOtality, Inc. and Nissan North America win a $99.8M grant from the Department of Energy to support the largest deployment of electrical vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure in U.S. history.

The project will use Nissan’s LEAF, an early stage zero-emission EV to study and develop the logistics and necessary scale behind the implementation of a national charging infrastructure, that will in turn, support large-scale EV deployment.  Initial stages of the project include the deployment of 5,000 EVs and EV charging stations in Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.  Don Karner, President of eTec, sums up the industry e-coup:

By studying lessons learned from electric vehicle operations and the infrastructure supporting these first 5,000 vehicles, the Project enables the streamlined deployment of the next 5,000,000 electric vehicles…Nissan and over 40 government and industry partners, will enable this Project to successfully pave the way for electric transportation nationwide.

The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming recently heard from a panel of leading edge scientists and industry executives on the state of existing U.S. clean technology and the lack of funding for developing and scaling the technology into commercially viable products and services.

The primary technologies discussed were solar and carbon capture technologies. Dr. Brent Constantz, CEO of Calera Corporation, which focuses on a transformational technology that converts CO2 into green building materials such as cement and aggregate, argues that this process is better than traditional CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage or Sequestration), as it represents a permanent CO2 conversion from gas to solid material.

You drink coffee. Tea. When it’s at home, it’s organic, and when you’re out, you do your best. In so many ways, you live a green lifestyle. And yet, there’s one sticky point: the cup.

Evening Breeze sustainable bedIt’s summer in the Northern hemisphere, and for many, that means going on holiday to warm, tropical locales. And using air conditioning. Lots of it. In fact, in some tropical places, nearly 80% of energy use in a hotel room is for air conditioning. 1200 to 2000 watts on average.

Evening Breeze is an interesting solution: It’s a canopy bed that has adjustments for both temperature and humidity, and delivers it quietly, overhead, using only 400 watts. As [...]

Here’s an idea that comes from outside the green business world, but has much to offer us and I think should be repeated all over.

In London, KiosKiosk is a simple, powerful, powerfully fun idea: Create an attractive temporary space for upcoming (but ready to sell) businesses to be at, in a high traffic area. At no cost.

Backed by the London Sustainable Development Commission, businesses just need to submit a brief form describing what they’d like to use the kiosk for, [...]