Shiny Green Button

That’s how Gil Friend kicked off the first full day of the Sustainable Brands conference yesterday.

It was a powerful and surprising statement. It showed how far sustainability has come from the days when environmentalists were labeled “tree huggers.” Today, it’s become another part of the business landscape. Companies aren’t demonstrating social and environmental responsibility because it’s nice. They’re doing it because it gives them a competitive advantage.

Friend’s statement also emphasized the urgency and complexity of our challenge. You just can’t afford to be nice when climate change threatens to turn our home into a blistering, sooty rock. You can’t afford to be nice when you are reinventing the industrial engine of the economy.

Still, change is hard. Bruce McGregor from IDEO told us yesterday that only 10 percent of people are successful in making a change when faced with a life-or-death situation. There are an awful lot of smokers out there who can’t kick the habit after a diagnosis of cancer, and plenty of people fail to exercise and eat better even after developing type I diabetes. Just telling someone to change because it’s good for them doesn’t mean they will do it.

Now, here we all are—facing a life-or-death situation—and still drinking water out of plastic bottles, flushing bleach down the drain, driving our cars.

As marketers and communicators, the lesson is to stop talking to consumers about how they can feel good about their more eco-friendly purchase or their microloan. Only a handful of consumers buy because they want to do good for the planet, and recent research by Fruitful Strategy shows that 24 percent of people are “rejecters” of green products, purposefully avoiding products with green messages on the label. Most people are not buying or behaving green out of altruism, but because it also makes them feel more secure, comfortable or attractive—or it saves them money.

So it’s time for sustainability to stop being so nice. We have to be sustainable and beautiful. Sustainable and healthy. Sustainable and simple. Sustainable and affordable. Our future depends on it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Brands, Communications, Global warming, Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.