6 Seminal #Sustainability Books
We get asked all the time: what are you reading? What do you consider the latest and greatest books of influence in the sustainability community? We keep our Amazon Reading List updated via LinkedIn, but here are six we consider seminal, and required reading for new and experienced sustainability leaders:
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The Ecology of Commerce [Paul Hawken]
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The Green Marketing Manifesto [John Grant]
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Two from Mr. Ray Anderson, referencing the incredible work he’s done at Interface:
- Business as Unusual: My Entrepreneurial Journey, Profits and Principles [Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop]
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Hot, Flat and Crowded [Thomas Friedman]
Clearly we’d encourage you to stay on topic of new works and white papers on innovations with sustainability work, but our belief is that you can’t move forward without understanding where we came from on these efforts.
What’s on your reading list? Eryn@Footprint
You Should Know…Curt Mann
This is the first in a series for You Should Know, where we’ll be highlighting heroes and key players in our space [whom you may or may not know just yet].
Curt Mann is a dear friend, someone you should know because he’s a credible expert on finding cost-savings via sustainable initiatives, and an all-around cool dude.
Enjoy! Eryn@Footprint
*Know someone that we should know? Taking nominations: stacey.evans@footprinttalent.com
Happy 2011: We’re celebrating with a new + improved website
Hello, Footprint friends. Just wanted to proudly announce the launch of our new website: www.footprinttalent.com
Designed by the wonderful Michael Palermo, we are excited to share with you a more wholistic 
and complete view of who we are and our flagship offerings. We welcome your feedback and comments, as the site will continue to evolve [as we all hope to].
Happy new year and we look forward to serving you during 2011.
Eryn@Footprint
Ask Footprint: 7 Steps to a Spot-On Video Interview
[This is our first post in a series to address questions we get asked on a weekly—if not daily—basis. Consider it open season on recruiting-related questions you’ve been too afraid or thought too silly to ask.]
A Footprint candidate called in a panic recently after he was invited to interview with a hiring manager on the West Coast—via SKYPE. He found this somewhat odd, as he’d never experienced this before, so we spoke by phone to prep a bit.
We see this style of interviewing happening increasingly as videoconferencing technology from Skype and PGi [www.pgi.com] improves, and recruiting efforts more frequently happen from disparate locales.
I shared with him a few considerations and pointers [some obvious, but you’d be surprised at what shows up under the category of “Videoconference-Interview-SNAFUs”]:
1. Wear a suit: this is not an excuse to be in PJs or casual gear. Wear what you’d wear to a “real” interview, as this well may be your best and only chance to make your impression.
2. Find a quiet, professional-looking place from which to conduct the interview. Your environment will project much about your level of professionalism, so be sure to position yourself with a blank wall or uncluttered library/bookshelf in your background.
3. Test run: set up your webcam and check it twice to make sure it’s working correctly and you don’t run into technical difficulties at a most critical juncture.
a. Make sure to level the webcam [especially if on a laptop] so that you’re looking straight on or even slightly up into the lens. Nothing worse than appearing as if you’re looking down into a well.
4. Speak up: it may feel strange, but over-annunciate to be heard clearly.
5. “Put on a little make-up, make-up:” we are not advocating this for everyone [ahem, men], but everyone looks better on camera with at least minimal face, eye and lip color.
6. Smile—you’re on camera! You’ll come across warmer in what can be a “flattening” medium.
7. Always, send a thank-you, both email + handwritten; the hiring manager will get the one-two punch of an expedited email thank-you [read: instant gratification] as well as the oh-so-polite handwritten version.
Happy video-interviewing! Eryn@Footprint
7 Considerations for Creating Your Sustainability Model
Here are seven ways that businesses can start transitioning toward a sustainable business model, according to Dr. Sally Uren, deputy chief executive, Forum for the Future, in a contributed articlefor The Guardian.
The Forum for the Future recently held its second Business Network event, which looked at sustainable business models in practice.
Here are Uren’s seven tips for starting on the path toward sustainability.
1. Try new financing mechanisms. Uren says these could include forward purchase agreements for suppliers to allow them to experiment with new production methods, match funding arrangements with government bodies and a sustainable innovation or investment fund, which could be used to kick-start sustainable innovations.
2. Aim for profitability. She tells organizations not to view the sustainability program as a cost, but rather as an investment that will yield financial benefits to the business. As an example, Mark & Spencer’s Plan A program generated £50 million (approximately $81 million) net profit from resource efficiencies and new product developments in year three of the five-year program.
3. Integrate sustainability thinking into the business. This can include incorporating sustainability performance into cash bonus schemes and embarking on comprehensive change management programs.
4. Change the value proposition. Uren says businesses need to use the power of their brand and marketers to help consumers equate quality with things other than volume. Sustainability needs to be an attractive value proposition for everyone, she says.
5. Start shifting to a more sustainable product portfolio. This can be achieved by either removing non-sustainable products off the shelves or promoting the more sustainable choices.
6. Create a roadmap. She recommends that businesses have a clear roadmap towards sustainability in order to meet transformational goals rather than taking small steps toward sustainability.
7. Innovate. Innovation is the key to a sustainable business model from product design to service delivery, and across all levels of an organization’s operations, she says.
In the U.S. alone the sustainable business market will double over the next four years, reaching $60 billion in 2014 up from $28 billion in 2010, according to a new report from analyst firm Verdantix. The biggest spenders will be power utilities and automotive firms, followed by high-tech engineering and industrial engineering.
From www.environmentalleader.com
Sustainable Products by Design
Ben Walker is our November guest blogger. Ben is currently pursuing his MBA at Georgia Tech. He received his undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from Georgia Tech in 2002, and just finished his Masters in Industrial Design from Georgia Tech this past May. Ben has over ten years of experience in the design industry, ranging from graphic design management to furniture design.
Sustainable Products by Design
By: Ben Walker, MID, MBA ‘11
ben.d.walker@gmail.com
Designers have great opportunities to communicate our sustainable values through our designs. Not all designers take advantage of this due to their lack of knowledge or expertise in the sustainable arena. If we are successful in our sustainable design, we then have a chance to educate the consumer world, and hopefully install our values into their purchasing habits.
Over the years, the nomenclature of something being “green” in the design world has been overly used. When one hears about something being “sustainable” or “green,” one often wonders to what extent that statement is true. Often the product or service takes this ecological approach on just one, or a few, aspects of its configuration. Keeping this in mind through all credentials of the product (design, materials, manufacturing, use, lifespan, disposal), designers can make something that is truly sustainable. That being said, there is a substantial amount of research needed to find the best materials and manufacturing methods for design. I chose to spotlight the furniture industry because furniture manufacturing often uses raw materials, but still harnesses great potential to be sustainable in process. However, the common manufacturing processes and material selections are seldom managed sustainably. This problem usually starts in the design phase.
Through my Master’s Thesis in Industrial Design (MID) from Georgia Tech, I constructed a database of the most common materials used in furniture design. In the first phase of this project, I created a database of sustainable materials in which design can take place. This deliverable serves as an invaluable resource for furniture designers in the Southeast Region of the US, and has become an exemplary example for sustainable thinking through all aspects of design.
There is so much that the business world can learn from the sustainable design process. “Green” isn’t just packaging your product in a package made from partially-recycled material. True “green” is re-designing your company to be more socially responsible and ecologically benign from the epicenter. From LEED building standards for your corporate offices to planning for your products’ end-of-life disposal, it can all start from the ground up… with design.
You can see my Thesis project here:
http://www.sustainablefurniturematerials.com
As SAP’s first-ever chief sustainability officer, Peter Graf was prepared to lay out the business case for sustainability to stakeholders and customers of every kind. But he had to make the case to SAP’s own board of directors first. An interview.
Peter Graf talked recently with Michael S. Hopkins, editor-in-chief of MIT Sloan Management Review, about how he made the sustainability case internally asSAP‘s chief sustainability officer, what the payoffs have been and how SAP customers have–and haven’t–responded.
Take us back a couple years to before SAP had created such a thing as a chief sustainability officer. What did you do to urge SAP in that direction?
Sustainability-related work wasn’t at all new at SAP, but it hadn’t yet been taken to the board of directors as a major strategic initiative. So we began to make a specific effort to educate the board on an ongoing basis. … And after half a year, they felt like they were somewhat attached to the topic. They understood what was going on.
When the board met as a group, it was arguably the best-prepared board meeting I’ve ever been at. It was a complete home run. One person said, “We’re having the conversation here that I have with my kids at every dinner.” And the actual board meeting was 20 minutes.
How did you frame a business case that earned you a go-ahead in a 20-minute meeting?
It was crystal clear. Let me outline it for you. There are five pieces.
The first piece is compliance. For customers of SAP who are in regulated industries, compliance is obviously a much bigger issue than it is for us, a software company, which is not really a regulated industry. But we have to comply with our customers’ codes of conduct.
One of our largest German customers told us, “We cannot buy any more software from you,” and we almost fell off our chairs. We asked why, and they said, “Well, you don’t have sustainability in your code of conduct. You don’t have a sustainability strategy. We have it in our code of conduct. And we can’t buy from you.”
The second thing is resource productivity. What we committed to in the business case was that not only can we make money and enhance our brand, but we can save a lot of money throughout SAP, too. … In our first year of existence … I had promised cuts of 10 million euros, and we delivered 90 million.
The third aspect to the business case was the competitive edge we could create in the marketplace. … We open the door into the boardroom, because that’s where we are strongest in selling and that’s where this discussion’s really happening. … It was never easier to get into a boardroom than with this topic. It’s what people have on their minds.
The fourth part of the business case is the way sustainability really re-energizes our workforce. We needed something where people say, “Yeah, I’m proud to work for SAP. We have a huge impact. This is a great opportunity.” People need to come to work for a purpose that’s bigger than selling software.
The last piece, which is the actual deal maker, is beyond the business case. The last piece is to sustain the business model. … Sustainability has the power to fundamentally change the way business processes work. And we must, as the leader in business process software, be a leader in sustainability if we don’t want to lose our leadership position.
How has this played out in the company? What have been the payoffs so far? Other than that 90 million euros in first-year savings, I mean.
We have a carbon target to reduce our carbon footprint by half by 2010 in comparison to 2007, which on a per-employee basis means a 64% reduction. That’s pretty steep. We are at about 20% reduction right now. We have increased our renewable energy purchase to 33% globally, so one-third of SAP’s electricity today is from renewable sources.
… The biggest challenge with the business case is you need a baseline. And to get a baseline, you have to do a lot of work. … In a way, you have to make the first step in order to make the first step.
You’ve got to take an initial leap in the dark?
Yes, yes. That is exactly the point. You need to make an investment–I’”m not even saying in IT, it could just be in time and people–to go and figure it out. And then you need to believe it.
The beauty about this is that we create the pressure for other companies to do some good. One of the motivations that I had, and I learned this lesson from 14 years of being in this company, is that SAP is of a size that whatever we do is important, and whatever we don’t do also is important. And if we engage in a topic as sincerely and with as much money as we are doing in sustainability, it gives license to everybody else to do the same.
This article is adapted from “How SAP Made the Business Case for Sustainability,”Peter Graf interviewed by Michael S. Hopkins, which will appear in the forthcoming Fall 2010 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. Copyright (c)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. All rights reserved.
5 Steps to Lead Your Organization Down the Path to Environmental
Sustainability
By Paul Raybin, Chief Sustainability and Marketing Officer, AirDye Solutions
Everywhere you look brands large and small are touting their environmental sustainability programs. Time after time, those organizations that strategically and holistically manage sustainability programs are reaping the benefits. But, it’s no accident that some companies succeed and others find themselves being branded as a “greenwasher.” In order to ensure that you’re leading your organization down the right path, let’s review five key elements of a successful sustainability program.
1. Leadership Starts at the Top
A change as significant as this requires a fully engaged and committed C suite. Every aspect of the organization will be effected and without the leadership, understanding, and dedication of the CEO, CFO, and others, senior management and the rest of the company will view the sustainability program as not core to the business and, thus, not worth much of their time.
A CEO, for example, who believes that sustainability is key to the long-term success of the organization, can help drive change and innovation that form the foundation for long-term growth. An oft-cited example is Ray Anderson at InterfaceFlor. A pioneer and visionary in corporate sustainability, Mr. Anderson has created a powerful brand position for his company while demonstrating quarter after quarter the profitable impact of setting and achieving sustainability goals.
2. Clear and Measurable Goals
Leaders must establish why the organization should strive for sustainability. Once the strategic reasons are identified, use them to set clear and measurable goals. And as the goals are achieved, new goals should be set to constantly drive the organization forward.
As with every other vital program, when communicating to the employees, supply chain, and stakeholders, program initiatives are more likely to stay on track if everyone understands where the company intends to go with the program, why it matters, and the consequences of success or failure.
There is no “right” way to be sustainable; opportunities exist across all aspects of business: business process, product development, distribution, manufacturing, etc. With so many aspects of the organization involved, it is vital to engage all employees and stakeholders. By encouraging participation at every level, more opportunities will be identified along with suggestions for improvements.
In order to adequately measure energy use, water consumption, green house gas emissions and other important impacts companies should conduct Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs). A well-executed LCA will quantify specific impacts and areas within a product’s life cycle where improvements can be made. For example, when Wal-Mart was working to reduce its transportation footprint, the company, having determined that most of the weight in laundry detergent was from water, told its suppliers that it would only stock concentrated formula detergent. The concomitant reduction in weight helped reduce shipping costs and environmental impact.
3. Tie Compensation to Success
Think about what would happen if a business unit failed to meet profitability, or growth metrics. Sustainability needs to be treated in the same manner as profitability–in fact, the two are often linked. Consider implementing incentives for meeting sustainability goals within compensation packages alongside those for growth and profit. If achieving the organization’s sustainability initiative is important, it should be reflected in compensation.
Recognizing employee sustainability contributions via compensation is a clear way to reward and drive success and improve results for the company. Organizations that have successfully executed sustainability goals often gain additional benefits. Besides increased profitability, many companies have found that a focus on sustainability attracts new young talent and increases employee loyalty, productivity and job satisfaction. This is not to say that if you spend a little money on a sustainability program, all employees will be loyal, but rather that organizations that value and build sustainability over time attract employees that also value those commitments
4. Embrace Sustainability for the Long Term
One of the most important facets that a corporate leader should understand about sustainability is that it is not a fad nor one-time program. Sustainability is a path, not a quick fix or gimmick. Sustainability requires a shift in perspective and action.
Organizations that use marketing and PR departments to paint unauthentic programs as green will ultimately fail to craft a lasting sustainable brand and could find themselves pilloried by the media and consumers. At the core of a successful program are transparency, honesty, and trust; all of which companies must build in an ongoing effort, not a marketing campaign. Greenwashing will only lead to brand equity erosion.
5. Communicate Success and Failures
The hallmark of a successful sustainability program is communication. Communicating where the organization is meeting its goals, where it’s falling short, and how it plans to bridge the gap with a program of consistent and transparent disclosures will go a long way towards building trust and confidence with employees, consumers, and investors.
Develop a reporting method that works for your company. WalMart holds global sustainability milestone meetings that are broadcast worldwide. Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles work very well too. Patagonia built an interactive website to detail successes and failures and encourage consumer feedback. These programs have helped these companies build brand equity and respect among consumers not for achieving perfection but for their efforts to improve manufacturing, distribution, and other activities that have environmental and social impacts.
Once you’ve changed the paradigm of your organization and sustainability is integrated into every level, process, and function, the rewards will be well worth the effort. A committed leader will find sustainability has improved the organization’s financial performance, engendered more loyal employees and customers, and is helping the company outperform its peers. Building a more sustainable organization is good for the planet and the bottom line.
Lifting the Veil: a look at Life Cycle Assessments
Today’s Footprint guest blog post is presented by our friend Juliette Apicella, who has written an erudite and fascinating look at life-cycle assessments.
For years I’ve had a fantasy of using a crystal ball to view a movie short of how a product comes into existence. The opening scene would pan the harvesting of raw materials, then shape an identity through production, next the formation of a relationship where it’s delivered to me, and then finally to the conclusion where it is ultimately disposed. Like a segment from the movie “Food, Inc.,” the realities of how any product comes into existence can have great impact on the desire to own it.
My fantasy portal exists in reality the form of an LCA, or Life Cycle Assessment. LCAs were first developed in the 1960s, initiated by growing concerns regarding the depletion of raw materials and energy resources. Precipitated by an interest in projecting and accounting for energy usage and the impact on the climate, the LCA framework was created. Companies like Coca-Cola and the like began using this process internally to research impact of beverage container types, compare lowest environmental releases, most efficient use of raw materials and fuels from the manufacturing processes. Over the last 50 years, the assessment process has developed into a complex, comprehensive and standardized approach based on ISO 14000 series, involvement of expert forums and global access to high quality data.
Per the EPA, Life cycle assessment is a cradle-to-grave approach for assessing industrial systems. Cradle-to-grave begins with the gathering of raw materials from the earth to create the product and ends at the point when all materials are returned to the earth. LCA evaluates all stages of a product’s life from the perspective that they are interdependent—meaning that one operation leads to the next. It enables the estimation of cumulative environmental impacts, resulting from all stages in the product life cycle and often including impacts not considered in more traditional analyses (e.g., raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product disposal, etc.). By including these impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product or process and a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product and process selection.
Specifically, LCA is a technique to assess the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or service, by:
- Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases
- Evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with identified inputs and releases
- Interpreting the results to help decision-makers make a more informed decision.
The LCA process is a systematic, phased approach and consists of four components:
- Goal Definition and Scoping: define and describe the product, process or activity. Establish the context in which the assessment is to be made and identify the boundaries and environmental effects to be reviewed for the assessment.
- Inventory Analysis: identify and quantify energy, water and materials usage and environmental releases (e.g., air emissions, solid waste disposal, waste water discharges).
- Impact Assessment: assess the potential human and ecological effects of energy, water, and material usage and the environmental releases identified in the inventory analysis.
- Interpretation: evaluate the results of the inventory analysis and impact assessment to select the preferred product, process or service with a clear understanding of the uncertainty and the assumptions used to generate the results.
LCAs are, of late, often commissioned not only by companies, but also by industry organizations. The America society of civil engineers completed a study to enable environmentally-conscious design and management life-cycle assessments of newly-constructed European and U.S. office buildings from materials production through construction, use, and maintenance to end-of-life treatment.
I was formally introduced to LCAs earlier this year at the Greenprints Conference in Atlanta [www.greenprints.org]. Dr. Stan Rhodes, President and CEO of Scientific Certification Systems, gave a compelling presentation on LCAs and how this vital analysis supports process improvement and product development directed towards lower impact solutions, and encouraging innovation/efficiency. This information also provides another metric for companies to measure themselves in the marketplace.
For consumers it offers another criterion when selecting products and services. Your point of purchase “eco” filters don’t always lead you in the direction of lowest-impact. In his book “Ecological Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman gives the example of a dark blue organic t-shirt he bought: organic cotton is good, but the cotton yarn gets died, bleached and finished with toxic industrial chemicals. The cotton resists absorbing dye and the dye solution rinses off in the factory wastewater, which can run off to groundwater and local rivers. Some dyes have carcinogens; eEpidemiologists have long known workers in dye plants have unusually high rates of leukemia. Surprising information? LCAs reveal these details.,
Marketing/branding leader and author Susan Gunelius lists the top 10 Marketing trends for 2010 in an article for Entreprenuer.com, Number one on her list:
Transparency and trust are paramount. Brands that embrace the loss of naïveté and make a concentrated effort to be honest and open in their marketing communications will generate positive consumer responses, which can lead to brand loyalty and brand advocacy. Building trust is the most important thing in 2010, and once you’ve earned it, you need to make sure you keep it. In other words, transparency and trust are not a one-time thing. They’re an ongoing effort.
Cases in point:
- InterfaceFLOR, a leader in the carpet industry and in environmental practice communicates and promotes their commitment to full product transparency by producing an LCA for every product they make, and by developing strategies to focus on the areas of most significant impact. They publish their long-range goals for zero environmental footprint by 2020; it’s clear, you know where they are and where they are going.
- InterfaceFLOR is the first carpet manufacturer in Europe to receive an Environmental Product Declaration, which is inherently an LCA and is verified by a third party. Its key points are objective, credible, neutral, comparable, open to all interested parties, environmental impact-oriented and instructional. LCAs are most practical for the consumer or client side when placed within a system where the environmental performance is standardized, made credible and understandable.
- There are system-based reporting resources available, and one is the International EPD system the second is Good Guide. Good Guide is based in Berkley, CA, and was started by Dara O’Rourke one of the world’s leading experts in global supply chains. This organization has become the largest and most reliable source for consumer products. Their LCAs evaluate the health, environmental and social impacts of over 65,000 food, beauty, baby and household cleaning products. They’ve created a rating system that is easy to understand and available via mobile devices allowing you to have the information at any time. The free mobile application scans the product bar code, instantly providing the rating and additional information.
This and other tools are helping to take a huge leap in making LCA data readily available to consumers, and will ultimately increase the awareness of life cycle analysis and drive the demand for environmental performance and transparency at all levels in all markets.
Juliette Apicella, LEED AP is Marketing Manager for CLEAResult, an Austin based energy efficiency consulting firm with expertise in Program Design, Development and Implementation and evaluation. Prior to joining CLEAResult Juliette consulted with Southface Energy Institute raising funding and awareness for their two key annual events, Greenprints conference and the Visionary Dinner. She has a background in Commercial Interior Design and earned a Bachelor of Interior Architecture and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She loves living in Decatur with her husband and two daughters.
CLEAResult was recently listed #144 in Inc. 500, America’s fastest growing companies
Project Boomerang Shoot: The Ray Anderson Effect
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- Thank you for hosting us, Interface team!
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- What a fantastic group of professionals
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- From left: Jessica Rose, Eryn@Footprint, Holley Henderson
We had a lovely [if brief!] time this morning shooting an interview with the Project Boomerang crew, led by the wonderful Holley Henderson [www.h2ecodesign.com/] and her capable captain, Jessica Rose.
Project Boomerang is a volunteer initiative created by a group of people who have been inspired by Ray Anderson’s work and positive impact he makes in business & the world. It was inspired by Ray’s recent cancer diagnosis and our belief that people have found his message to be a catalyst for change in their lives. This project is our opportunity to boomerang back to Ray his amazing effect in the world.
Please do ”Like” their important work and follow happenings at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Project-Boomerang-The-Ray-Anderson-Effect/135428966473084.
We are honored and consider it a privilege to be a part of this incredible project. EE
