Shiny Green Button

Photo credit: Lel4nd on Flickr

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal contained an article about the chocolate giant Nestle’s recent troubles with activists. The issue: Nestle’s use of palm oil from a supplier accused of razing rainforests to get it.

Activists took advantage of social media outlets like Facebook and YouTube to raise awareness. Nestle responded by asking Google to remove the protesters’ videos, citing copyright violation, and threatened to delete comments from the company Facebook page. Bad idea. Nestle’s defensive actions only riled up the activists even more.

I couldn’t help but think of the situation in terms of personality types. If Nestle were a person, they would be a curmudgeonly introvert, demanding to be left alone, waving a fist and yelling at the crazy kids to stay off its property—or else.

What social media requires is an extrovert, someone who likes people, who wants to listen and engage. Someone who is interested in the conversation and the buzz that comes from pinging ideas back and forth.

Some marketing experts are advising Nestle to shut down its Facebook page altogether, according to the Wall Street Journal. But it seems like the worst possible time to shy away. Here’s an idea for you, Nestle: Hire the most outgoing, sociable person (or team) to manage your social media strategy. Give them the power to be transparent—let them blab about all the details of your progress so your customers can follow along as you take steps to address your palm oil problem. Let them get to know your critics, and treat them like friends with a bit of constructive criticism, rather than adversaries. The more open and honest Nestle can be, the better chance they have of turning their critics into champions.

I was under the impression that the Energy Star ecolabel was backed by independent testing. But it’s apparently based on companies self-reporting their compliance with Energy Star guidelines, with the federal government conducting random tests to verify those claims.

According to this story in GreenBusiness, the U.S. Department of Energy and the EPA are now cracking down on those who may be misrepresenting product performance to earn the Energy Star label. (Disclosure: One of AHA!’s clients is EPEAT, an ecolabel system that covers an array of environmental attributes for technology products.)

What most interests me here isn’t how the Energy Star program is administered, but the basis of my perception. While I can’t pinpoint when I became aware of the Energy Star label, I know I’ve paid increasing attention to it over the past few years as we’ve replaced our refrigerator, dishwasher, computer and TV.

In researching those products, I treated ecolabels such as Energy Star as objective data, in the same category as product features and specs.

I think there are a few reasons for my thinking. First, Energy Star is a government-run program, so I assumed it involved comprehensive testing and enforcement. I perceived it to be a public service, something developed to protect the best interests of consumers.

Second, it focuses on a specific aspect of performance, i.e., energy efficiency, across an array of product categories. That horizontal focus suggests a consistency and methodology independent of a specific manufacturer or industry.

Third, the Energy Star logo. It signals the oversight of a third party. It’s a reassuring reminder you can look for and immediately recognize regardless of the type of product or the brand.

I’m not suggesting the Energy Star program lacks rigor or credibility. This story is just a reminder that we need to examine and test our assumptions about all environmental claims, even those that seem objective.

Ecolabels can be helpful, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. Consumers need to do their due diligence and understand the parameters and potential biases of these programs rather than accepting them at face value.

And brands should consider going beyond displaying the Energy Star label on packaging and calling it good. In fact, the Energy Star logo could be an opportunity for more substantive communications. After using it to gain consumers’ attention, brands could offer more information that helps deepen understanding of what the Energy Star logo signifies or how energy efficiency pays off in lower power bills and reduced carbon emissions.

UPDATE: It sounds like the Energy Star program may lack rigor and credibility after all. This story (Phony products impress federal energy program) underscores my point about the need to examine our perception of apparently objective environmental claims.

Photo credit: Celebdu on Flickr

There’s only one problem with social responsibility reports. They’re so … report-y. 

They’re great at communicating facts and results. The greenhouse gasses reduced. The materials recycled. The dollars raised for charitable causes.

But there’s something that gets lost: how you got there. Making your life or your business more sustainable, like any major transformation, is a daily endeavor for change. It’s as full of false starts and setbacks as it is gold star moments.

At AHA!, we’re closing in on the end of our first year with an official green team. We’ve helped Fortune 500 companies with their corporate social responsibility communications, and now it’s our turn. We’re gathering up the data and revisiting our accomplishments as we prepare our very first sustainability report. It’s an exciting moment.

And as a green teamer, I’m feeling like it’s important to recount some of the details of our trek, for a couple of reasons.

First, the lessons we learned this year can be valuable for others who are embarking on their own path to sustainability. I learned a lot from looking at detailed case studies from other companies—I wanted to know HOW they did things, not just what they did. Plus, I was encouraged every time I read a blog or heard a speaker who acknowledged the challenges involved with integrating the principles of sustainability into their business. Those honest reports helped me understand that roadblocks aren’t permanent, and failures are just an opportunity to get better and try again.

And second, I think sharing some of the small, concrete steps along the way can help engage more people to join in. For example, saying you reduced CO2 emissions is one thing, but showing the creative ways individuals have found to track emissions, measure them and then cut them can show others the real, practical ways they can contribute.

So check back in the upcoming weeks for more details about our first year with a green team at AHA! I’ll be sharing some of our goofs, lessons learned as well as some of our successes.

Next up: The green team attempts to save the world in a month. And then we get real …

Photo credit: Señor Codo on Flickr

As the international community continues to work toward a global climate change treaty everyone can agree on, there has been much discussion about the rapid rise (with no end in sight) of emissions from countries like China and India. But, who is responsible for those emissions—the ones who emit, or the ones who benefit?

Here’s an interesting compare/contrast via the Good Blog.

This interactive carbon atlas, created by the Guardian in 2008, offers a graphic representation of the globe, illustrating where emissions come from.

This map, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses big, bold arrows to indicate where the products that caused the emissions end up.

National media coverage of the Carnegie map has put the focus on who is really to blame for emissions, and the implications for trade and carbon policies.

It’s an important reminder of the shape-shifting role context can play when it comes to presenting data. Maps and information graphics offer the illusion of objectivity, but they always have a point of view.

A few months ago, I wrote about Walmart’s sustainability program and wondered: how will the world’s largest retailer make sustainability meaningful to its customers’ everyday lives?

Since then, Walmart has pressed full-green ahead toward its wildly ambitious sustainability goals, which include using 100 percent renewable energy and generating zero waste.

Last week, Walmart announced a goal of cutting 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain over the next five years. As part of the announcement, the company released a video on YouTube about how it intends to make a difference.

The video explains “the more energy we conserve, the more money we save, the less pollution we create, the better we live.” It then gives the example of washing laundry in cold water instead of warm water. According to the video, if everyone in the U.S. switched to cold water, we could save $15 billion a year and 42 million metric tons of greenhouse gas.

The video had received just over 500 views last time I checked, and responses to it on YouTube and Walmart’s Facebook page are largely negative—a mix of global warming skepticism and complaints about Walmart stores themselves. But, one tiny image in the video strikes me as an incredibly powerful way to get the word out to consumers who might care more about saving money than saving the planet: a washing instruction label that reads “Machine wash cold.”

The New York Times reports that Walmart is working with suppliers to change clothing labels to indicate that items can be washed in cold water. This doesn’t educate or inform or inspire the way a video on cutting greenhouse gas emissions might, but it’s a more direct path to results.

If Walmart is truly going to democratize sustainability, as former CEO H. Lee Scott has said, this kind of simple, practical message right on the product might be the most effective way to do it.