By Joel Makower, Executive Editor of GreenBiz.com
The drumbeat of headlines has become steady and strong. Each week, it seems, the rhythm of news stories about the greening of business picks up tempo.
Just since new year’s, for example, we’ve reported in GreenBiz.com that: Swiss Re will give rebates to employees for purchases that helped reduce their carbon footprint; GE and AES will jointly develop greenhouse gas reduction projects; Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, will label the products it sells according to their carbon footprint; HP will surpass recycling a billion pounds of used electronics; Morgan Stanley’s vice chair will head a new group focusing on market-based economic solutions to global environmental and climate issues; Wal-mart’s new 360 Sustainability plan will make environmental concerns central to its business decisions. And ten big companies joined forces with a activist groups to demand that Congress enact comprehensive global warming legislation.
And 2007 is barely a month old.
Meanwhile, over the past several months, Business Week, The Economist, Forbes, Fortune, and Business 2.0 have all run cover stories on the greening of business.
What, in Al Gore’s name, is going on here? Could the mainstreaming of green business finally be upon us?
Maybe. But we’ve only just begun — and we’ve got a long, long way to go.
There’s no question that green has, as columnist Tom Friedman has noted, become the color du jour. More companies are doing more things, and doing them better, than ever before. The actions they are taking cover a wide spectrum, from carbon neutral products and processes, to products designed to be fully recycled into their constituent ingredients, to biobased alternatives for toxic chemicals. Green advertising is coming back after years of languishing, as companies feel more confident telling their stories. CEOs are becoming more forthright and outspoken on the issue — to their customers, shareholders, and political leaders.
Is it a tipping point? Probably not: corporate environmentalism is still far from a universal, self-sustaining movement. But increasingly, companies are tipping toward action, and the list of laggard and recalcitrant companies is getting shorter by the day.
But let’s not break out the organic champagne quite yet. For green to be truly mainstream will require breaking down a host of political, economic, and cultural barriers. We’ll have to rethink some of our assumptions about the role of government. Politicians will need to decide whether to lead, follow, or get out of the way. Environmentalists will need to develop some new tools and rules of engagement. Wall Street will need to pay attention, and to better track companies’ environmental risks and opportunities. And the public will need to change its attitude, big time.
The public perception paradox is particularly problematic. As it stands, most Americans seem to be of two minds on business and the environment. They want companies to step up to the plate, recognizing that they are, at once, the biggest contributors to environmental problems and the best chance of solving them. Yet, when a big company does get proactive, there tends to be widespread suspicion and cynicism among the citizenry about whether it’s genuine, or a cover-up, or outright greenwash. Environmentalists have been known to punish many a good corporate deed.
There’s good reason for skepticism, given some company’s past failures to walk their talk, but such skepticism is becoming increasingly counterproductive. As companies move past their early timid and often misleading stances on the environment, and start to take real, substantive action, we’ll need to suspend critical judgment, at least a little. We’ll need to give companies room to innovate, experiment, and fail. We’ll need to accept incremental improvements. And we’ll need to acknowledge and reward good company behavior, even if it’s far from perfect.
Most of all, we’ll need to foment a much more dynamic conversation than ever before among all the players in the marketplace, examining how best companies can move the needle on our biggest environmental challenges, do it quickly, and make it equitable and rewarding for all involved.
So, let the conversation begin.
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Joel Makower is Executive Editor of GreenBiz.com, and writes the blog Two Steps Forward.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:17 am We should not overlook the fact that executives watch what one another is doing and don’t want to be viewed as laggards. This is good type of competition. In addition, the media is doing a great job of “marketing” a number of environmental issues at the present time, most notably climate change. Virtually every edition has an article on the subject and companies would have to be operating out of a cave to ignore that kind of attention. The “green wave” then represents a terrific amount of momentum that will generate a lot of activity for some time to come. The challenge is for companies to make those activities sustainable and significant.
February 14th, 2007 at 8:54 am Interesting discussion. How do we make the green wave sustainable? There seems to be a consensus that sustainability must be driven by responsible corporate behavior. 1% for the planet seems a reasonable goal. But corporations have only two sources of money- sales to customers and capital funds from investors. Will we pay 1% more or will investors setlle for 1% less. Funny thing is I am a corporate employee, investor, and consumer. Guess I need to take another look at my retirement portfolio!