Shiny Green Button

Photo credit: shikeroku on Flickr

I’m intrigued by Yahoo!’s Make-It-Green site. The idea is this: submit your best eco-friendly idea for the chance to win $2,500 and an opportunity to see your idea turned into a product available at a retailer near you. Viewers can vote for their favorite ideas, but the final winner will be picked by Edison Nation, a company that helps independent inventors bring their products to market.

Neat idea. It’s brings social networking and DIY culture together, then gives it an entrepreneurial twist.

I can’t help thinking about Make-It-Green in terms of The Natural Step training I attended last week—I’m starting to think about it with everything I do. Natural Step sets forth four principles for a sustainable society:

1. Eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust
2. Eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society
3. Eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes
4. Eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs

I know. Pretty serious-sounding stuff. I am still trying to grok it myself.

Basically, what it means is that in doing what we do every day, are we taking too much stuff out of the earth? Are we putting natural substances together in toxic ways? Are we changing the natural formation of our planet in harmful ways? Are we making life harder for other people?

In my own life, I can look at small actions through the lens of these principles and see room for improvement. Let’s take making a cup of coffee.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like coffee has anything to do with extracting materials from the earth’s crust. Then again, an awful lot of fossil fuels get used in fertilizers and pesticides, not to mention transporting coffee beans across the planet to my neighborhood grocery store. That’s just principle number one! When you consider principles two through four—the impact of farming coffee on the habitat, the people who grow and harvest the beans, the plastics and other synthetic compounds used to package the coffee, the water I use to brew my java, to my choice of drinking vessel—I start to see a whole lot more than just a tasty cup of joe. It’s a tangled net of choices.

Here’s where I get back to Yahoo!, or any company that is trying to make it green. The challenge is to not just to be less bad by being more green, but move toward sustainability by working to untangle the net, and make good choices at every knot.

I see an opportunity for Yahoo! and their partner Edison Network. Can they ensure the winning product is brought to market by manufacturers, distributors and retailers who will do it in a sustainable way? Can they truly make it green?

“What is your bank trying to sneak by you?” asks the website for the newly launched Ally Bank. Unlike all those other bad, bad banks (you know, the ones who loaned all your money to people who couldn’t pay it back and then went out of business?), Ally is a bank you can trust.

In its mission statement, Ally claims:

We’re a bank that values integrity as much as deposits. A bank that will always be open, accountable, and honest. Yes, honest. We won’t deal in half-truths, kindatruths, or truths only buried in fine print. That’s because we don’t have anything to hide. We’re always going to give it to you straight.

This all sounds great, except that what Ally appears to be trying to sneak past us (they asked the question, after all) is the fact that in their former, and very recent, incarnation as GMAC (the finance arm of foundering General Motors) they were having some serious problems.

Remember those bank stress tests the government was putting banks through? It seems that after getting $6 billion in federal bailout funds, GMAC still had the “biggest [capital] shortfall by far” of any of the 19 banks tested. This is a fact that prospective customers of Ally Bank might be interested in, and it raises an important question about how to communicate with customers in this post-crisis era: At what point does straight talk become really, really risky talk?

Consumers already have a pretty low opinion of banks at the moment, so there’s clearly an opening for a no-nonsense approach to banking. But when you bill your new (actually, old) bank as the keeper of virtue and trustworthiness, the potential for customers to feel outraged, betrayed and disappointed at the slightest misstep seems even greater than it would be for today’s run-of-the-mill, TARP-fund guzzling banks.

The time is right for a company like Ally Bank. But we’ll have to wait and see what customers will do when the brand-new paint begins to rub off the Ally logo, revealing the old letters underneath: GMAC.

After a wondrous holiday weekend here in Portland (blue sky, sun, lots of planting, farmers market, live local music, mountains in view—is this heaven?), here’s something that helped me get back to the ol’ grind this morning. McDonald’s, who, IMHO, has done quite well the past few years in the area of CSR reporting, has done it again.

The granddaddy of all fast-food chains has just released a report that includes 80-plus green practices from their locations and operations worldwide.

The report features successful practices in energy, packaging, anti-littering, recycling, logistics, communications, restaurants, sustainable food, supplier leadership and other areas

Here are two nuggets that I’m particularly McLovin’ from this showing:

• You can read the report in a nifty virtual flip-book format (not just the standard PDF)
• You can cast a vote for one of five different environmental initiatives for the corporation. Way to get people to interact with the brand!

So … hats off to Micky D’s for its CSR communications efforts. Great, now I’m hungry for fries.

photo by Kevin Dooley

Here at AHA!, many of us are writers who live, breathe and even dream about messaging. So when the New York Times ran a front-page article, “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus,” on a soon-to-be-released report that gives climate change messaging a makeover, it got my attention. The report, “Climate Truths: Making the Necessary Connections,” written by EcoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing firm in Washington, D.C., is due out at the end of May.

The writer for the Times, John Broder, who read a leaked summary of the report, generally pans the report’s assertions as misguided advertising techniques. Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Carbon dioxide discussions should be reframed as “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” And, “cap and trade” may gain more traction rebranded as a “pollution reduction refund.”

My first reaction to the writer’s skepticism is why should concepts like “global warming,” “climate change” or whatever you want to call it NOT get the same attention to the nuance of language and research around its perceived meaning among key target audiences that goes into successfully marketing a product, service, campaign or program? I mean, this is the greatest messaging project of the twenty-first century. And clearly, science doesn’t sell itself.

My second reaction is that—if examples cited in the article are any indication—the writers could use our help. I do like “pollution reduction refund” versus “cap and trade.” However, “our deteriorating atmosphere” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I share many of the same thoughts as George Lakoff, who responded to the Times article very eloquently on the Huffington Post.

I don’t want to detract from the report with even less information than the Times writer. I eagerly await the published report. I promise I will hang on every word. And, I invite EcoAmerica to contact us immediately to begin work on “Climate Truths 2.0.”

I’m serious. Call us. 360-750-1680.

A whosit?whatsit? The term social intrapreneur, coined in 1978 by Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot, describes innovators who work to create social and environmental change from within their own corporations. Last month, Net Impact released a really great guide (complete with case studies) for internal changemaker types (and wannabes). “Making Your Impact at Work: A Practical Guide to Changing the World from Inside Any Company” is meant to inspire and empower those individuals who want to make change while they’re working for the man, so to speak. Need some encouragement? Greenbiz.com is kind enough to let you download a PDF of the guide, no login required.

Photo credit: genisrp on Flickr

I woke up this morning with this blog post from egglog on my mind. It’s about the one step forward, two steps back path that people take to get to a more sustainable way of living.

Here’s a little bit of my own meandering path:

One step forward
Committed (and so far have succeeded!) to riding my bike to work at least once a week.

Two steps back
Twice last week, I made two car trips a day, back and forth between Portland and Vancouver, to run errands.

It’s the same with businesses on the road to sustainability. I see it here at AHA!, and with our clients too. We push forward, we’re pulled back by costs, lack of time or attention, and then we find a way to push forward again.

In a way, this thought gives me a more hopeful perspective on the FritoLay campaign that my co-worker, Laura, blogged about yesterday. I agree that their attempt to position their chips as a local food is pretty lame. Even so, it’s clear that someone over there has heard the message: people care about what they are eating and where their food comes from. And you have to hope that this is their version of one step forward, two steps back.

Perhaps the public outcry will force the brand to get its act together and back up their marketing campaign with some credible action. Because, as we now know, an effective sustainability initiative needs to involve every part of the business—from marketing to product development and manufacturing. All functions need to be working toward the same (good) end.

Thank goodness there are vocal citizens, activists and organizations out there to keep us moving in the right direction. Take the folks at Terrachoice, who publish The Seven Sins of Greenwashing. In the work we do at AHA!, we take that report pretty seriously. We do everything we can to avoid committing those sins. We work really hard to write accurately, write with honesty about our clients’ products and services. Our clients expect this of us, and appreciate when we ask them tough questions. “Can we say that?” “Is this accurate?”

Some might see environmental activists and marketers on opposite sides. But I don’t see it that way. If we’re doing business with integrity, if we’re writing and marketing with honesty, we’re all on the same path.

The food industry has already wrung every drip of meaning out of the word “organic”—is “local” the next victim?

On Tuesday, Frito-Lay launched a new marketing campaign that positions their potato chips as local food, focusing on the 80 “local” farmers in 27 states that grow its taters. The Lay’s website even features a “Chip Tracker” that tells you which factory your bag of chips was processed in. “Chances are,” the site says, “it may be closer than you think.”

Maybe it is—but that’s SO not the point. The local food movement is based on the idea of knowing more about where your food comes from. It’s about having a stronger relationship with the people who grow or raise it. It’s about eating food that’s in season, grown on a diversified farm without massive use of pesticides.

It most certainly does NOT mean food processed in factories (even if they are only two hours away), sourced from farms in more than half the states in this union, grown in massive monocultures, and stuffed with all sorts of preservatives and additives that extend shelf life far beyond any natural expiration period.

The director of public relations for Frito-Lay North America had this to say to the New York Times:

“Local for us has two appeals. We are interested in quality and quickness because we want consumers to get the freshest product possible, but we have a fairly significant sustainability program, and local is part of that. We want to do business more efficiently, but do it in a more environmentally conscious way.”

She forgot to mention the third, most obvious appeal: there’s a growing market for local food that Frito-Lay would like to tap into.

As a foodie who loves potato chips, I can’t help but see this campaign as anything but an epic masquerade. Frito-Lay’s target is obviously not the real locavores, who have already spoken out on the absurdity of it. No—their marketing team is smarter than that. They are aiming for people who are becoming more conscious about their eating habits but haven’t yet learned how to find food outside of the aisles of the supermarket. This campaign is a thinly veiled and poorly thought-out attempt at duping shoppers into thinking they’re making a healthier, more sustainable choice.

Will it work? Let’s hope not. So far, the campaign hasn’t jumped off to a great start: at this very moment, a Twitter search for the word “Frito” returns tweets about greenwashing, co-opting and spin. But if history is any test, Big Food is well on its way to repurposing a once meaningful, grassroots term.

Michael Pollan said it best today on Democracy Now!, referring to, among other similar attempts by the food industry, Frito-Lay’s new campaign:

“The language of sustainability and the critique of industrial food is being picked up by some of the major players within industrial food, either as an effort to co-opt the rhetoric or simply confuse the consumer and the citizen … I think what we see here is another example of the food industry’s ingenuity in taking any critique of industrial food and turning it into the next marketing strategy.”

Memo to Frito-Lay: if you really want to do it right, start by examining your product and the way you source its inputs, and look for ways to encourage safer, more environmentally sound agriculture. (And no, your compostable bag made from what I can only imagine is subsidized commodity-crop corn does not count.)

And, really, come on. Don’t pretend to be local. That’s like telling us your chips are “home-cooked” simply because there is a house down the road from your factory.

Some things just can’t be adapted to corporate, industrial food. Local is one of them.

Over at the Financial Brand, there’s an interesting compilation of statistics about the financial services industry. At first glance, it shows an industry in a world of hurt:

• Financial services is tied with the tobacco industry, with a positive rating of 11 percent
• 31 percent of bankers haven’t received a raise lately
• 42 percent of banks have seen a decrease in lending

And not only is business down, many potential bank customers just aren’t making it into the bank. 32 percent of adults and 48 percent of Gen Yers have no savings. What’s more, 41 percent of adults give themselves a C, D or F on personal finance knowledge. So banks aren’t popular, and their customers aren’t motivated to give them business.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a big, big opportunity for someone to make banking appealing? Or even cool? For several years, ING Direct has been chipping away at making savings attractive for normal folks, and before the Chase takeover, WaMu had a thriving retail banking business that made banks seem approachable and friendly. But the opportunity suggested by the above numbers seems bigger than that; it’s a chance to engage a huge and disaffected public as true partner and guide through the financial wilderness we’ve all been cast into. Most of us use banks because we need to. What could banks say or do to make us want to?

Call me a nerd but it’s Friday afternoon and I’m excited because I just found a great new report on sustainability efforts of major American cities. According to the writers, it’s “one of the first-ever assessments of exactly how cities are addressing climate change—and what they need in order to take these efforts to the next level.”

The report, “Green Cities: How Urban Sustainability Efforts Can and Must Drive America’s Climate Change Policies,” by a group called Living Cities, examines 40 of the largest U.S. cities’ progress on reducing emissions and provides recommendations in three areas identified as having the greatest potential for immediate impacts.

While I must admit I’ve only scanned this extensive report, I’ve already learned a lot and can tell it’s a valuable tool for city planners, nonprofits and companies looking to serve the needs of the green economy. 

For a quick hit, go to the back of the report and take a look at some of the survey stats:

• While four in five big cities regard sustainability as a top priority, only three to 10 staff members are focused on climate change in sustainability. Several big cities have just one full-time person.
• Most cities report budgets of $150,000 and $500,000 allotted to reducing greenhouse gases.
• More than 75% of big cities have, or will soon have, detailed plans on how they will reduce greenhouse gases. Nearly all of their targets call for emissions cuts of between 10 to 20 percent in the next five to 10 years.
• More than two-thirds of cities report that state and federal government have had little impact on their work.

Doing some quick math with these staff and budget figures leaves me wondering how big cities will reach their emissions targets with their current resources. However, the report’s recommendations are encouraging, outlining a bottom-up approach that includes retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency thereby creating middle-class jobs (a la Obama’s stimulus bill), reengineering workforce and economic development systems, and focusing on sustainable transportation and compact development. 

It’s heartening to read how cities have taken the lead on tackling climate change and may soon get much-needed support from the federal government. But of course it’s going to take a lot more help and resources to accomplish the goals identified. For starters, I’m going to make a point to look at the sustainability plans of Portland, where I live, and Vancouver, Wash., where I work, and see how I could possibly help.

So, imagine you’re a bank, and you manage to pick up a whole lot of extra branches and customer accounts on the cheap. Of course, you’ll be changing the name of these new branches, which could make already skittish customers nervous. How do you announce the change that makes everything seem okay to depositors looking to pull their funds and transfer them to the seemingly superior security of their mattresses?

Here’s what Chase did, facing this very situation, to roll out the Chase name to former customers of the once-beloved WaMu in California:

There’s a clear break here from the Starbucks-casual image that WaMu cultivated (to considerable success, we should remember). It’s a montage of California cliches, from surfing to Easy Rider, accompanied by a remake of John Lennon’s “Instant Karma.” While the chorus “we all shine on” obliquely promises continuity, the future into which we’re headed is presented in a strangely disconcerting black and white. The lack of color strips the life and joy out of the images of freedom and happiness we see.

“Chase. New to California, but not to banking,” concludes the narrator at the end. This was probably intended to be reassuring to WaMu customers being brought into the Chase fold, but I also detect an undercurrent that says, “Now we’re Chase. Deal with it.” It’s a more austere approach to bank branding than WaMu customers are used to, and it perhaps signals a change in customer expectations: If the warm, fuzzy WaMu I trusted so much turned out to be just like all the other subprime-mortgage peddling grifters, maybe I don’t want a friendly casual bank. Maybe I just want one that will stay in business and not lose my money.