Shiny Green Button

Yvon Chouinard is my hero.

I had a chance to hear the founder and owner of clothing company Patagonia at last week’s Sustainability Awards Luncheon hosted by the Portland Business Journal. Chouinard tells it like no one else does. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a rumpled jacket, he explained his vision of sustainability: buy only what you need, make decisions with future generations in mind, work with your friends and kids around, and examine everything you do.

One especially pithy statement he made has echoed in my mind all week: “An uneducated person has no choices. When you educate yourself, you’re left with choices.”

True dat.

In the realm of sustainability, educating yourself can be an overwhelming task. You research one thing, and it leads to another. You sift through conflicting reports, confounding marketing messages, confusing statistics. For me, even making a simple decision about what to eat has become a challenge. Because I now know too much. For 12 years, I thought I was doing the right thing by eating vegetarian, but after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’m not so sure. What’s better? A Morningstar veggie burger made from corporate-farmed GMO soy and shipped across the country? Or a locally raised, grass-fed chicken? I’ve got both in my freezer, waiting for me to defrost and choose.

AHA! is going through its own education process right now, as we’re trying to measure everything from our energy consumption to our garbage output. We’ve all had a gut feeling that, as a services business, a big part of our carbon footprint comes from our commuting to and from the office by car. And then we actually measured it. Were all 35 of us to drive individually to work, we’d collectively log 692 miles each day! That’s a humbling number, but also a powerful motivator. Now that we know the worst-case scenario, we can measure the impact of our car commutes. And we can also factor in how our walks, bike rides and carpools to work lessen that impact.

When it comes to the increasingly complex task of making a sustainable choice, Patagonia has a winning formula for making it easy for their customers. Any business—or individual for that matter—should look to them as a model.

If you haven’t heard Chouinard speak, here’s a glimpse. This video is lengthy, but if you have the time, you’ll come away inspired.

You’ve no doubt sent and/or received an email or two that signs off with something like, Consider the environment before printing.

On its face, I can’t argue with that message. It’s well-intentioned and to the point. But how effective is it? By that, I mean does it actually influence behavior? Are people printing less (or perhaps printing more conscientiously) because of that gentle appeal to their green conscience?

My guess is no. At least not anymore. The “think before you print” signature line might have had some impact when it was novel and more apt to be noticed. But now, I’d venture those most of us tune it out. We’ve seen that message so many times that we effectively no longer see it.

This isn’t to say raising awareness is a bad thing. But it has its limits. At some point, the message—or the delivery of the message—needs to change to get through. It has to catch us in an unguarded moment, reverse conventional thinking or stand out by being bold. It has to say something new, raise the stakes and build on what has come before.

Another thing: We’re conditioned to receiving communications that are personalized and relevant. We’re unlikely to respond or even acknowledge a generic message that tags nearly every email we receive from virtually everyone we know.

All of which leads me to wonder—are green signature lines intended for the recipient or the sender? That is, do we include them because we genuinely think they’re going to change how others think about printing?

Or is the real purpose to make ourselves feel like we’re doing something “good for the environment,” that we’ve lived up to the promise we’ve made with ourselves to be more environmentally responsible?

My guess is on the latter, even if we don’t admit it to ourselves.

That’s not a venal sin by any means. But it is a missed opportunity that carries some risk. Rote communications just add to the clutter and make it harder for the important stuff to get through. By adding to the bombardment of green messages we receive each day, a generic signature line about printing may inure us to more meaningful messages, dulling or even suppressing our response.

Put another way, we’ve all developed sophisticated mental filters to keep the hordes of spam out, but sometimes those filters can prevent legitimate information from getting through. The green signature line seems harmless enough, but is it causing us to set our filters too high?

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When I was about seven or eight, my Dad hung a sign on the wall that faced my bed. It said: THINK. I didn’t know it then, but it’s a classic IBM slogan, coined by founder Thomas Watson. I’m sure my Dad meant well, but the message–actually, in all caps it felt like more a command–became oppressive, even stifling.

That sign was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw at night, and after a short while I grew to hate it. I resented being reminded to THINK all the time. It seemed to imply that I wasn’t thinking, at least not enough. Or perhaps not in the right way. I began to sense a certain smugness, perhaps even self-righteousness, about that sign, as if it knew something or had attained something I did not or could not. For years, it tormented me.

While this anecdote probably reveals more about me than any grander truth, I do think there’s a kernel of insight here. This sign represents the old model of marketing communications. It’s a throw-back to that era of one-way transmission, when the inviolate word came down from on high. Companies were in the position of pushing out messages, over and over, confident that with enough volume and repetition, they would be heard and eventually acted upon. In a way, that sign became a stand-in for my father’s word, summing up the fundamental lesson he wanted me to learn above all others.

Today that approach seems prehistoric and misguided. The new principles of marcom are all about listening and entering into dialogue, about giving up control of the message, of tapping into dozens if not hundreds of dynamic channels to connect with people. Hammering home the same message over and over again in the same way is not only ineffective, but potentially counterproductive.

This is all patently obvious, of course. But back then, in a world bound by five TV channels, the daily paper and heavy, corded phones that hung on the kitchen wall, message discipline and repetition was the Rule, a function of the culture and technology and limits of our imagination and experience.

Which leads me to my point. Today, the rules of communication seem self-evident. We’ve all internalized them, and they are the dominant frame for our lives and work. But, like the THINK sign, they are a construct of our time, reflecting what is accepted and expected and available to us.

As technologies continue to morph and our cultures, economies and even nation-states  shift to meet the challenges of creating a more sustainable world, how will our communications change? Will they continue to fracture and accelerate? Will they be so communal and malleable? Will the constant stream of instant, always-on information be tolerated as new rules of moderation and the long view take hold?

In other words, how will our communications evolve to reflect and shape the new world that is emerging around us?

Can we talk about Walmart for a sec? Whether you love it or hate it, one thing is beyond dispute: it’s enormous. It’s the planet’s largest retailer, America’s largest private employer, and its supply chain rattles around the world.

So, what if Walmart used its supercenter-sized powers for good?

Last month, the company launched its Sustainability Index, an effort to assess and reveal the environmental impact of its products, from the raw materials that go into them to their means of disposal.

Green business guru types are cautious about lavishing praise on Walmart, but they agree that it’s changing the game. If the world’s biggest purchaser wants to trek into the land of sustainability, suppliers have little choice but to follow.

For example, Walmart has set a goal to reduce packaging in its stores by 5 percent by 2013. Among other steps so far, it got all major liquid laundry detergent producers to develop concentrated products that come in smaller bottles. It also persuaded General Mills to replace the curly noodles in Hamburger Helper with straight ones, which take up less space and require smaller boxes.

These may seem like small victories, and 5 percent may not sound like much, but remember who we’re talking about here. Nothing Walmart does is small. For example, in 2005, Walmart made the packages in one of its private label toy lines about an inch smaller. Because of that single change, the company says it used 497 fewer shipping containers that year and saved more than $2.4 million in freight costs.

In this and other areas of its larger sustainability program (solar-powered stores, a more efficient trucking fleet), the progress Walmart has already made is impressive. What remains to be seen is how, or if, Walmart will use this opportunity to not only bully suppliers into greening their act, but also educate consumers.

Eventually (no official timeline yet), Walmart shoppers will see sustainability ratings on the products they buy. But how will Walmart make this information relevant to their lives? Will a better rating move a budget-conscious consumer to choose a more sustainable product over a cheaper one? Stay tuned.

I’ve been paying more attention to packaging lately. Not necessarily what’s on packaging, but rather what it’s made of and how much of it is used. The claims competing products make about green design, energy efficiency and recyclability can often be difficult to compare, especially when the terminology and language begins to blur and perhaps cross over into greenwashing. How a product is packaged, though, sends a distinct message about its environmental bona fides.

Not to say that packaging can tell you everything, but if I’m choosing between two items that claim to be environmentally friendly and one uses less packaging that’s easily recyclable, I know which one I’m much more inclined to buy. Those visual cues can help cut through the clutter of breathless copy and give me tangible, hands-on information that I can apply without putting through a filter.

I think this is an important point for communicators to keep in mind, i.e., that the message you’re trying to communicate isn’t expressed only in finely tuned words or artful images. Other factors–many of which might be beyond the control of the communications department–can speak volumes about intent, authenticity and credibility.

It’s Friday, so here’s a treat to send you off into your weekend, a wonderfully obsessive business man who has built an empire on specialty soda. I just love this guy--his ethics (he told Pepsi to buzz off, but not for the reason you might think), his committment to his customers, and his passion for the product. He also has a few choice words about the politics of recycling.

I bet most of his marketing is done word of mouth … or slurp of mouth.