Photo credit: flying white, adapted from lavarrue, on Flickr

After too long without a real vacation, I spent a week in Mexico this month, and then a weekend on the Oregon coast. Both were fantastic opportunities to relax and recharge, but also to get some perspective. Working with sustainability and corporate responsibility communications day in and day out, it’s easy to forget that not everyone who cares about the planet and the people who share it keeps up with what’s happening in the CSR world.

One thing in particular that struck me: For the average person just going about their normal lives, most news about the environment is bad news. It’s global warming and oil spills. Coastal erosion and endangered species. Toxins. Pollution. Decline.

Those of us who communicate about corporate responsibility and sustainability should never forget that, in a daily barrage of discouraging information, we have something positive to say. The fact that people with power—at companies with global reach—are using their might to improve the situation is a bright green light in a dark and dreary media landscape. Not just to employees, shareholders and others directly connected to a company, but to any individual who sees big problems but feels limited in their capacity to be part of a solution.

That’s one more reason to find more ways to get your sustainability story out there. It’s good news, and who couldn’t use some of that?

Photo credit: 4PIZON on Flickr

Every other week, AHA! publishes a useful compendium of recent news from the financial world. It’s always an enlightening and interesting read, and it touches on a concept that’s relevant to everything we talk about here on Shiny Green Button: economic sustainability. So, we thought we’d share the wealth. Enjoy!

Executives are hired to maximize profits; that is their responsibility to their company’s shareholders. Even if executives wanted to forgo some profit to benefit society, they could expect to lose their jobs if they tried—and be replaced by managers who would restore profit as the top priority. The movement for corporate social responsibility is in direct opposition, in such cases, to the movement for better corporate governance, which demands that managers fulfill their fiduciary duty to act in the shareholders’ interest or be relieved of their responsibilities.

Provocative argument, but it seems a little short-sighted and simplistic to me. What about the positive impact of CSR on brand reputation? On employee productivity and innovation? What about its potential to reduce risk? I dare say, that’s just a short list of benefits that are all in line with shareholder interests, and therefore are a reason for corporate executives to make CSR a part of their agenda. Also, the author seems to be making the assumption that short-term profits are best for shareholders. What about long-term, sustainable success and the viability of the company?

What’s your response to the WSJ article?

Photo credit: jeroen_bennik on Flickr

I was just blown away by how honest and principled Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz seems to be, when reading the recent interview with him in Harvard Business Review. 

For example, here’s his response to a question about decisions he’s made that have been unpopular with Wall Street:

Within the past year I got a call from one of our institutional shareholders. He said, “You’ve never had more cover to cut [employee] heath care than you do now. No one will criticize you.” And I just said, “I could cut $300 million out of a lot of things, but do you want to kill the company, and kill the trust in what this company stands for? There is no way I will do it, and if that is what you want us to do, you should sell your stock.” What I stand for is not just to make money; it’s to preserve the integrity of what we have built for 39 years …

Especially in light of other recent CEO news, Schultz’s words were a welcome change of pace, and I must say, a brilliant piece of PR. Schultz seemed to be reaching out to all of his audiences—employees, customers, shareholders—and hitting just the right note. If I were a Starbucks employee, reading those words would make me proud to work at Starbucks. It’s motivating to know the company’s top guy cares as much about people as profits. As a socially conscious customer, I can feel great about buying my morning coffee, because my $2.50 happens to be funding the well-being of human beings, not corporate growth at all costs. For me, that’s a better purchase motivator than any sleek new packaging or combination of syrups.

And, shareholders? I’m sure he scared a few of them off. But maybe Schultz’s strategy is to not just have a more sustainable company—and by sustainability here, I mean long lived as well as green. Maybe he’s shaping a more sustainable investment environment, with shareholders who care as much about the complete health of the company as they do their returns.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRhyMQ2Yxpc

It’s not often we talk about social issues here at Shiny Green Button. Usually, it’s all green, green, green.

But the needs of people are a big piece of the sustainability puzzle. Even, ehem…their most basic needs.

On a run through the streets of downtown Portland last night, I couldn’t help but notice a big metal box—say, walk-in closet-sized—on the sidewalk. The box was a bathroom; one of the Portland Loos the City of Portland put in place a few years ago to help alleviate one very real problem associated with a large homeless population—the problem of people relieving themselves on the streets.

Portland City Commissioner, Randy Leonard, calls access to toilets a basic human right. The tagline that was painted on the side of the Portland Loo, “A unique solution to a universal problem,” expressed that same sentiment in an upbeat and positive way. The tagline seemed perfect. It instantly helped me understand the use for the box. But it did more than that: It gave me a reason to support its existence, whether I care about the struggles of the homeless or not. It reminded me of the immense power of language—that finding just the right phrase can ease social tensions and connect us all.

Photo credit: ansik on Flickr

The equivalency is a common device used in sustainability communications. You’ve seen it. It usually goes something like: “The emissions we reduce by [insert environmentally responsible action here] are equal to taking 500,000 cars off the road for a year. Or like this: By [insert recycling activity here] we save the equivalent of 20,000 trees.

Many of the equivalencies you see in sustainability communications come from calculations provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s handy greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator, which helps express carbon emissions in terms of passenger vehicles on the road, barrels of oil consumed, railcars of coal or even propane cylinders used for home barbecues.

The EPA’s website says the calculator can help you translate “abstract measurements into concrete terms you can understand.” But does it? Without context, I have no way of understanding what removing 500,000 cars from the road really means. The comparison gives me a concrete image, but the idea is still abstract. Expressing it as a percentage of all the cars on the road might be more meaningful, but we all know that number wouldn’t sound as impressive as 500,000.

So, what’s a writer to do? I want to suggest we find more relatable ways to express these ideas, but maintaining accuracy can be tricky. So, here’s a thought: We could use equivalencies to make a larger point.

For example, as we gathered data for our own sustainability report, we learned that by setting two-sided printing as our default, we saved the equivalent of two trees in one quarter alone. That fact doesn’t mean a lot on its own. But, it helped support a larger idea we wanted to communicate. If every small business our size in the U.S. did the same thing, together we could saved 385,264 trees in a year. The imagery is still abstract, but it gives us a compelling way to encourage other businesses like ours to make small changes that add up to a bigger difference.

What about you? How do you use equivalencies in your sustainability communications?

Photo credit: Yogma on Flickr

In his discussion of the verbal challenges in communicating sustainability and describing people who practice it (are they sustainers? sustainabilitists?) Joel Makower addresses something we’ve discussed before here on Shiny Green Button: You can only use the word sustainability so many times before it starts to feel hollow.

Anyone who writes about corporate sustainability can feel the pain here. There just aren’t a lot of solid synonyms for the word. Sure, you can sprinkle in a few references to corporate responsibility, but that gets tired pretty quickly too, especially when you have to broaden it to corporate social responsibility. If only there were another single word that communicates the broader-than-the-environment spirit of sustainability.

Makower suggests we take another look at green. We’ve all heard warnings to steer clear of the term, for fear it will be met with green fatigue or, even worse, carry the stink of greenwashing.

But, isn’t that the term everyone is using anyway? Makower argues that green is commonplace in the business world and that it’s not much of a stretch to broaden its meaning to include more than environmentalism. That’s already happening in the political arena—the most obvious example being the U.S. Green Party, whose platform includes democracy, social justice and economic sustainability along with ecological sustainability.

So, what say you? Can we embrace green and broaden its scope? Or, are there still valid reasons to resist a meme that seems so firmly established?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gouSXt2zE4

About six minutes into his TED talk, Carl Safina takes confusing complexities about the use of dispersants to clean up the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico (Is it toxic? Does it work?)—and makes the whole thing crystal clear.

How? By comparing it to something we can all relate to: a sink full of greasy dishes. We all know that oil and water don’t mix, he says. Until you add a dispersant—a common form of which just happens to be soap. Add the soap, and what happens? The oil breaks up into little drops and mixes with the water, turning it into a cloudy soup.

He uses the simple comparison to wage a pretty serious accusation: that BP is using dispersant to cover up—not clean up—the oil spill. After all, there’s no drain in the bottom of the ocean ready to whisk that mix of oily water away.

It’s so hard for me to know what to believe. BP’s site dedicates an entire page to arguing the use of dispersants is effective in controlling oil spills, and it offers even more detailed FAQ. But—especially after seeing Safina’s example—I can’t help but notice that just a click away, BP also claims skimming is highly effective—a process by which oil floating on the surface of the water is collected. You can’t skim if oil is dispersed, right? So which is it, BP? (Plus, check out the BP’s odd use of a snake analogy to describe how dispersant works. How many times do you have to read the description to understand it?)

In the battle for hearts and minds, it seems simpler is better.  Safina’s example is not only relatable, it’s memorable, and more important—it’s something I can see with my own eyes.

Photo credit: Eva Blue on Flickr

This week, something I thought would never happen did. My email was hacked! Everyone in my contacts list received a stilted, poorly written message raving about the new iPad and pointing them to a website where they could get one on the cheap. The email appeared to come directly from me and even included my name at the end.

Almost everyone who received this message knew right away that it wasn’t really me. For most people, the spammy nature of the message itself was a dead giveaway. Others, mostly people I haven’t written or spoken to in months or even years, wrote back to say it didn’t “sound” like me, but they weren’t positive. Incredibly, a few people—all of them contacts I very rarely email—actually believed I sent it.

There’s a lesson here, well, a couple of them. For me: come up with a better password. For communicators: voice matters.

Even though you may have different individuals crafting communications for your business, they should be able to speak with one clear, consistent voice. If the voice is off, readers you’ve worked hard to build a relationship with will know. At best, they’ll be distracted by the dissonance. At worst, you’ll lose credibility.