APICS

“A recent study by TerraChoice….reviewed 1,018 products making environmental claims. Only one product met all six of TerraChoice’s criteria for truthfulness.”

This overstated environmental record should caution companies to avoid overstating it’s own products and services:

“Green marketing likely will be held to a higher standard-similar to marketing of health-related products.”

The current media darling is climate change, but Becker warns of other environmental issues that can have as large, or larger, impact:

Water: “…70 percent of the earth’s freshwater resources are committed…20% of the world’s population…do not have access to safe drinking water.”

Solid Waste: “electronic waste…is fastest growing segment…and some of the most dangerous waste because of its heavy metals. Over the next 5 years, Americans will discard 250 million computers.”

Not surprisingly there are great rewards for society in considering how green initiatives can affect the supply chain. Wal-Mart’s 5 percent packaging reduction initiative being one. One eye opener is thinking about how the waste comes back- heavy metals in solid waste sold to foreign countries may come back in other less obvious and more dangerous forms.

Have you overstated your environmental claims? What is the effect of overstating? Does your company consider where it’s waste goes? Is it ultimately coming back to you in the form of other products?

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Post from: EveryJoe

Green Hype Can Distract

APICS

The article encourages doing project business cases, i.e., running the numbers, but also cautions consideration of some unique factors, for example:

“[Only] a small number of customers will pay a significant premium for green products; the vast majority will not. A recent study of wood products found that most customers switched to green certified products only when the price premium dropped to 2 percent. Likewise, most customers will not accept an inferior product simply because it is green.”

The importance of alignment with corporate strategies and values is illustrated by the case of corn-based ethanol. There are ethical issues involved with using a food crop for fuel:

“Experts estimate the amount of corn needed to produce the fuel to fill the tank of a sport-utility vehicle is the same amount needed to feed a person for an entire year.”

These types of ethical conflicts are inherent in most environmentalism. Companies that forge ahead, blind to the impacts, can sabotage their own strategies.

Overstated and overstating ecological claims and looking beyond today’s focus on climate change will be addressed in my next post.

Do you have “green anxiety”? Has it caused your company to forget to apply business basics to green projects?

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Post from: EveryJoe

Green Anxiety? Apply Business Basics First

Green. The word evokes conversations about global warming, the environment, and plastic bag bans.

“Eventually, the green tide will ebb as environmental stories are pushed off the front page by some other pressing crisis. However, it is clear that environmentalism has reached a level that requires a coherent and long-term corporate strategy.”

This idea of being on the “front page” makes it difficult for businesses to know what action to take. Environmentalism is certainly a “trend” that should be considered and responded to (reference my trends posts). But like many “trends” it can be very complex and actually spawn ancillary schemes like carbon trading that must be dealt with (refer to my post on carbon trading).

As the article says, “green anxiety” can result. More on that in my next post.

Do you have a “green” strategy? Care to share?

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Post from: EveryJoe

Green Business Can Result in Green Anxiety