Why Doesn't Green = Better?

So many green products, so little progress. At least, that's how it seems most days. As we report in GreenBiz.com — and have for the past decade — the progress is undeniable: Companies are embracing green practices as never before, and doing so at a deeper, more holistic level. It's no longer just about "greening up." It's about doing better.

Better. It's a word I've been thinking about lately. And as I look at the landscape of sustainability, the green economy, and green marketing, I'm struck by how much of what's greener isn't necessarily better, at least not in the ways that matter to most people. And until "green" is synonymous with "better," it's destined to remain marginalized, incapable of fomenting change at the scale and speed necessary to address climate change and other pressing problems.

What does it mean to be "better"? Obviously, it means different things to different people, and the definition can shift depending on the topic, the day, and the circumstance. Here, in alphabetical order, is a decidedly incomplete list of attributes that could reasonably be deemed as "better":

• cheaper to buy
• cheaper to own
• enhanced features
• healthier
• higher performance
• improves my image
• innovative
• less wasteful
• more convenient
• more durable
• more stylish
• repairable
• reusable
• upgradeable
• uses less energy

. . . or just plain "cool."

I'm sure there are dozens more adjectives and attributes that could be added to this list. And most all of these focus on an individual's needs, and possibly that of his or her family or neighbors, but not much on one's community or beyond. Each of those is likely to have its own definition of "better."

Using whatever definitions you choose, I defy you to scan the green marketplace — the products, services, companies, communities, jobs, government policies, and other things that claim some environmental attribute — and see how they measure up to your list.

Think about green cleaners, clothing, computers, cosmetics — whatever. How many definitions of "better" can you find? Are their price, performance, and other attributes truly an improvement over the status quo? Or is what's "better" simply the way they make you feel? If so, is that enough to justify their purchase?

How about green energy? Green vehicles? Green furnishings? Green appliances? Green light bulbs? While each of these has positive attributes, not many are demonstrably "better" from the standpoint of providing benefits or value propositions that most shoppers care about and can afford, in addition to their environmental benefits.

Some green things are better. Green buildings can be cheaper to operate, cheaper to build, more pleasant and healthful environments, and may contribute to happier, healthier, and more productive employees, students, or residents. Greener health care, too: Medical professionals that hew to principles that reduce toxic materials in their practices and are generally more efficient can produce better results for their patients. I'm sure there are other examples of products and services where green equals better. But these tend to be the exceptions, not the rule.

And some better things are greener, even though they may not be marketed as such. The iPod and iTunes, for example, represent a dramatic dematerialization of music, movies, and more. So, too, with Amazon's Kindle and books. They're decidedly greener, but that's not how they're marketed, or why people buy them. They're better — cooler, more convenient, higher performance, cheaper, innovative, and provide more capabilities than the technologies they replace. (True, they're not without environmental impacts; nothing is.)

Given the marketing and promotional materials I seen on a regular basis, not to mention the surveys I read about how consumers are absolutely interested in making green choices when they shop — I don't think many marketers understand the need for "better." They believe that being green is good enough. And that can work: Most committed green consumers, I suspect, go with the faith-based notion that "green" equals "good" — or, at least, "good enough."

But many mainstream consumers believe that "green" equals "worse" — that making environmentally responsible shopping choices means making a sacrifice in quality, affordability, convenience, or some other attribute. A relative few are willing to make such sacrifices in the name of a healthier planet or a better world. But not many are. And they won't do so until green = better.

I'll admit this is a very selfish view of the world. It assumes that most people, when making purchase decisions, don't think much beyond their own immediate needs, or those of their family. And while there are exceptions to that (and I'm sure that you, dear reader, are among those who always consider the greater good), the vast majority of consumers focus primarily on their immediate needs and interests. Which is why most green products remain niche products, and likely always will.

What will it take to change this? What does "better" look like in your company and industry? What will it take so that your products and services become the no-brainer choice — that they are better in any number of ways that directly benefit consumers as well as the environment?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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Woodstock: The Oral History

Now for something completely different. (And apologies to my loyal readers on green business and clean technology for this brief diversion.)

This week, my 1989 book, Woodstock: The Oral History, is being re-issued to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic music festival. When it was originally published, Rolling Stone called the book "The definitive story of the mega-concert."

A book on Woodstock? Really? Who knew? Why you?

I've been getting that reaction lately, as I've clued friends and associates in on the book's impending publication.

And the inevitable question: Did you go?

My glib answer: I don't remember.

(The real answer: No, I didn't.)

Woodstock always fascinated me as it became a touchstone for my generation. And it's not disconnected from the work I do today. The festival took place at a time that parallels the birth of the modern environmental movement — just eight months before the first earth day, April 22, 1970. It helped to coalesce a political wave, born of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, that would become the first generation of environmental activism. I was part of that movement. And it was during the publication of my Woodstock book, in August 1989, that I began writing The Green Consumer, the book, published in early 1990, that sent me on my current career trajectory.

The more I learned of the story behind Woodstock, the more fascinating it became. The oral history format was something I was interested in, too. So, during 1988, I crisscrossed the U.S., conducting more than 70 face-to-face interviews with the people who made Woodstock happen: producers, performers, doctors, cops, neighbors, shopkeepers, carpenters, electricians, lawyers, journalists, filmmakers, and an assemblage of just plain folks who, by design or circumstance, became part of the event. In my book, their collective story is told as a sort of conversation, as if all of them had convened in one gigantic living room, each individual contributing his or her own piece of the story at appropriate moments.

You can download the book's intro here. On this same page, you can also listen to the first few minutes of a two-hour audio documentary I produced, directed by Grammy Award winner David Rapkin, which will soon be available for sale from Audible.com. It contains the actual voices of those I interviewed: Abbie Hoffman, Wavy Gravy, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, Miriam Yasgur (who, along with her husband, Max, owned the land on which the festival was held), stagehands, cops, kids in the audience, and many others.

And you can watch two video clips from my 1989 book tour: me on "Oprah," with Country Joe McDonald and Riche Havens; and on NBC's "Today" show, with Arlo Guthrie and Michael Lang, one of the festival's producers. It was a fun tour.

Here's the Woodstock story in brief: In 1969 four young men — two budding entrepreneurs who really wanted to write sitcoms, a former head shop proprietor turned rock band manager, and a record company executive who smoked hash in his office — had a dream: to build a recording studio in Woodstock, N.Y. To finance it, they would produce the greatest rock concert ever held. Little did they know how enormous a reality their dream would become — and what overwhelming hurdles they'd have to overcome, from crazed radicals to spoiled rockers to Governor Rockefeller.

By all measures, Woodstock should have been a disaster. Legally barred from its planned location just a month before its scheduled date, the promoters had to quickly regroup and relocate. In their haste, there was little time for planning certain facilities and amenities, some of which fell by the wayside. One key ingredient were the fences and gates, which never materialized satisfactorily, and the overflow crowds that showed up were admitted for free. The crowds caused traffic jams that paralyzed miles of highways, rendering them useless and requiring alternative measures to bring in food and medicine and supplies, and to evacuate the ill, among others. The National Guard and the U.S. Army got involved, as did a wide range of community, business, and religious organizations. It began as an exercise in hip capitalism; it turned into a multimillion-dollar financial nightmare for its producers.

And then it rained. And rained. The grounds, already muddy from weeks of summer showers, turned to muck as the skies opened repeatedly — often violently — during the festival weekend. Few who came were adequately prepared to camp out for three days even in comfortable climes, let alone in soggy, intensely overcrowded conditions. The fierce storms also threatened to bring down the structures, and to put the infrastructure — electricity, water, sewerage — in jeopardy. Needless to say, none of this aided the wellbeing of the countless individuals who had drunk, smoked, or ingested ungodly amounts of licit and illicit substances, many of whom had to be ministered to, one of whom died.

And yet Woodstock was not a disaster. Far from it. There was much joy and humanity, and heroics galore. Starting with a rag-tag crew of idealistic and energetic youth — Woodstock essentially was financed and produced by those in their mid twenties to early thirties — the festival's staff mushroomed into hundreds of hippies, hucksters, handymen, and hangers-on. As the plans became reality, these people met the troubles they encountered — the weather, drugs, radical politicos, and on and on — with high levels of ingenuity and integrity. It is ironic, albeit not surprising, that many of those involved liken being at Woodstock to having been through a war.

The festival is long gone, but the memories linger. Despite the passing of four decades, Woodstock continues to live on in the hearts and minds of many, including many of a younger generation scarcely born in 1969, some of whom have since made the pilgrimage to the festival site, perhaps drawn by the ghosts of Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. Others seek to recapture the can-do innocence of a time in which young Americans were fighting a system they felt was unjust, and demonstrating, often with startling success, that there was a better way.

Indeed, if Woodstock demonstrated anything, it was that people, coming together for whatever purpose, can collectively find a better way, under even the most unpleasant of circumstances.

Musically, Woodstock may be but a footnote to the rich history of rock 'n' roll, but culturally, it helped to define a generation.

I hope you'll take a look. It's a fun book, and an amazing story.

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Walmart’s Sustainability Index: The Hype and the Reality

Walmart has just unveiled its new Sustainability Index, a project that's been in the works for more than a year, but which is — finally, after much anticipation and more than a little handwringing by industry, activists, and others — part of the public discourse.

The advance stories over the past few days have been amped up to the point of breathlessness, involving adjectives like "huge" (perhaps) and "audacious" (probably), with one story suggesting the Index will "shake the world" (um, no comment). Such hyperbole is understandable: any green commitment that Walmart makes is potentially a big deal. But now that reality has hit, it's time to take a more sober assessment of what's really going on here.

I've been watching the Index unfold over the past year. I've seen early iterations, talked to some of the many suppliers, nonprofits, academics, and consultants that Walmart has engaged in this effort, and viewed the final product.

My assessment: Like so many things related to both Walmart and sustainability, there is both more and less going on here than meets the eye.

The story in brief: Walmart's Sustainability Index is geared toward creating a way to gather sustainability information about companies and, eventually, products sold in Walmart stores. The Index will result from a set of 15 questions Walmart is asking of its 60,000 or so suppliers. (You can download the questions here - PDF.) It has asked for responses by October for its U.S. suppliers, later on for those elsewhere.

The 15 questions are grouped into four buckets: energy and climate, material efficiency, natural resources, and "people and community." That last category is particularly clever, as it allows the company to demonstrate that its concern lies beyond environmental issues to the broader arena of sustainability, which includes social issues, though the five questions included in that bucket barely scratch the surface of this topic. For example, they don't address most worker issues, like wages, health care, and the right to air grievances, among many other topics generally included in this arena.

Despite the much-ballyhooed launch, the Index isn't exactly new. The company began using a similar set of questions with suppliers about a year ago for its own private-branded products — so-called house brands like Sam's Choice and Great Value; the company has around 30 such brands. It started with dairy products, followed by textiles, which includes both home furnishings and apparels. Toys and electronics follow. Many of the manufacturers of those house brands are also major consumer product brand manufacturers, so this won't be news to many of them.

Despite what the headlines have been saying the past few days, this isn't a product-rating scheme — at least not yet, and likely not for several years. For now, Walmart will be using the results of the 15-question survey to assess companies. The questions, as you'll see, don't get down to the product level. In a second phase, the company plans to develop more sector-specific questions — say, for agricultural products or jewelry or electronics. Eventually, the company hopes that the Index will address individual products. But that's not currently in the works.

Another key point: Walmart isn't rating, grading, or ranking companies, let alone products. It hasn't established a set of criteria or set a bar for performance. This isn't an eco-labeling scheme. Rather, it is a means for providing transparency about companies, allowing them and others to compare companies to one another, showing how each performs. The information will be one of many factors it will use to assess companies. It may be a tiebreaker, all other factors (price, quality, availability, etc.) being equal.

Walmart doesn't plan to say which companies are "good" and which aren't. Its plan is to put the information out there and hope that such "radical transparency" foments competition. But that won't ensure that any company will necessarily be "good." If, for example, all of the companies in a given sector are doing poorly, but one is doing a little less poorly, the least-bad one will rise to the top, though it may be far from a "good" company. Once again, this is clever on Walmart's part. While it can honestly say it is rewarding good behavior, it isn't really setting a benchmark for what that behavior should look like.

As for the 15 questions. Well, they're a start. Taken together, they set a fairly middling bar, the kinds of things that some leadership companies have been doing for a decade or more. And because they deal with the company, and not its products, they omit some fairly critical details. Among them: they don't mention toxic materials used in manufacturing or in the products themselves. They don't talk about the energy efficiency of products or their recyclability or other disposition at the end of their useful lives. One need only compare Walmart's Index to Nike's Considered Index, which goes deep into product details, to see how relatively primitive it is. There are equally good examples from several other companies.

Do such shortcomings render the Walmart Sustainability Index as greenwash? No. This is a solid first effort. It's important to note that over the past year, Walmart engaged some 20 universities, a handful of environmental activist groups, associations like Business for Social Responsibility, many of its key suppliers, and a small army of consultants. Patagonia's iconoclastic founder, Yvon Chounaird, has played a role. It's gone through a great deal of thinking and more than a few iterations. (You can download a backgrounder on a slightly earlier iteration of the Index here - PDF, that contained 16 questions.) This was not some slap-dash effort.

Walmart acknowledges the iterative process. Some of its staff have told me privately, and quite proudly, that this is a "ready-fire-aim" exercise — that the company wanted to get something out there, however imperfect, and improve it as it got real-world use. That's admirable, albeit risky, but that strategy underscores how the company has been addressing most sustainability issues over the past three years: set a big goal, rally the best minds (and persuade them to do a tremendous amount of work at their own expense), make some choices, put it out there, and refine. Hey, that's pretty much how Google made it big.

Much like Google, this effort will likely head down many innovative pathways. For example, Walmart already is talking with Microsoft about creating an open-source database and tools to make information about companies and products accessible; no doubt, for consumers there will eventually be an app for that.

And Walmart has made it clear that they don't want to own this. They want it to live within some credible entity that will continue to develop and deploy the Index. (The company isn't beyond starting its own nonprofit if it isn't able to find one that suits its needs.) And the company is working to bring in other companies — Best Buy, Costco, Kroger, and Target have been part of the conversation — to adopt the Index, too, creating even more purchasing power in the marketplace.

It's definitely a bold move, one that stands to raise the bar on sustainability and transparency, empowering both retailers and consumers to leverage their buying power to affect change. It stands to spur innovation in products and processes. And it appears to be around for the long haul. Walmart has gone well beyond talking the talk here. It's changing the game. How quickly and dramatically the game really changes will be something we'll all be watching, very closely.

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GreenXchange: Sustainable Innovation Meets the Creative Commons

We live in an era in which green innovation reigns — and, at times, rains, even pours, from companies, universities, and research labs. A wide range of disciplines, from biotech and nanotech to cleantech and infotech, are enabling the design and manufacture of things that are lighter, simpler, cheaper, smarter, less wasteful, less toxic, and less resource-intense. Not much of it yet truly qualifies as "sustainable," in the purest sense of being endlessly cycled from raw materials to finished product and back again. But the trend is unmistakable, even during a recession — or, perhaps, because of it.

Genuine progress, however, remains elusive, as scientists, innovators, and companies often travel down parallel paths, each reinventing the same metaphoric "wheel." A handful of companies have seen fit to share their innovations openly with other firms, including competitors. But it is often hit or miss, with no way of tracking the uptake of those innovations, let alone measure the salutary impact they may have on reducing industry's overall environmental footprint.

A small group of companies spearheaded by Nike have partnered with the nonprofit Creative Commons to try to change that. Their novel initiative, called GreenXchange, aims to allow companies to share intellectual property for green product design, packaging, manufacturing, and other uses. If it succeeds, this budding coalition could accelerate innovation across companies and sectors. At minimum, it stands to rewrite the rules about how companies share.

The project was incubated at Nike, which for years has been developing materials and processes to reduce the environmental impacts of its own products — things like water-based adhesives, solvent-reduced synthetic leather, and "green rubber," which cuts the use of harmful chemicals used in traditional formulas by 97%, according to the company. Some of these innovations were posted on Nike's website, though there was no way to determine who was using this information, or how.

Meanwhile, Nike found a lot of similar R&D being done by different companies, as well as gaps in research, says Kelly Lauber, Global Director, Sustainable Ventures at Nike. "In order to get to a green economy — in order to really head off some of the things that we're going to be facing such as water scarcity, climate change, and energy shortages — we're going to have to start collaborating in a much more open innovation way," she told me recently. "Because the issues in front of us, they're all too big for any one company."

Lauber says she and her colleagues "stumbled upon" Creative Commons, a nonprofit that has designed licenses that allow creators of intellectual property (IP) to share their creations so as to control which rights they reserve and which they share. Creative Commons originally focused on artwork and written documents, from Wikipedia to the White House website. A few years ago it expanded its work to include scientific research.

Nike, along with Best Buy, partnered with Creative Commons to create GreenXchange. The project was announced earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Under GreenXchange, member companies can make patents and know-how available to the public in three ways. First, at the most basic level, every contributor commits to a "non-assertion pledge" allowing its patent portfolio to be used in basic academic research in order to promote open collaboration, innovation, and discovery among those involved in primary stage research.

Second, a member may voluntarily designate selected patents to be made available under a standard license for sustainability uses, including commercial applications. Those seeking to use the patented inventions are asked to register their commercial use, and if applicable, pay a standard fee. This allows data to be collected and tracked, and the environmental impacts to be measured.

Third, unpatented discoveries or information may be contributed to the network through a "know-how registry." This allows both unpatented and patented knowledge to be contributed, shared, and cited, as well as providing a public repository for prior art in the field.

Creating GreenXchange was no small matter, when one considers the cost and complexity of companies sharing information through traditional means. As John Wilbanks, VP of science at Creative Commons, explained to me, "Making sharing simple is very complicated."

Wilbanks offered two examples to show how GreenXchange could help companies cut through the legal thicket. "Let's start with a company like Nike. Let's say you have two patents that are paradigmatic. One is for a water-based adhesive. It's a patent on a process that lets you move from an oil-based adhesive to a water-based adhesive, which essentially lowers your pollution footprint. This is a technology that is not core to your business. It doesn't affect your ability to price your shoes or to exclude your competitors.

"Now, let's take a different patent," he continued. "It's an airbag patent inside the shoe. This is a core competitive advantage and you designed it as part of your shoe system, even though it might have some sustainability uses in the right hands." For example, "The airbag patent might become the core of a new truck tire that lasts twice as long as existing truck tires, which is definitely a sustainability use because it lowers rubber into the landfill."

Wilbanks' goal was to design was a system that made both of these patents available to the largest number of users without endangering the shoe company's competitiveness. In some cases, the solution might simply be about attribution — giving credit where credit is due. Wilbanks says Creative Commons is working on technologies to track attribution. Another level is attribution with fees attached, if the IP holder chooses to monetize the innovation.

At another level — the airbag example — the IP holder might say, "This license is made available to anyone who's not a shoe company." Says Wilbanks: "From the perspective of the patent owner, this is a way to make patents available for sustainability use outside their core space."

GreenXchange isn't the first attempt to share green IP. In early 2008, IBM, Nokia, Pitney-Bowes, and Sony created the Eco-Patent Commons, which brought together a collection of patents covering new technologies, processes, and ideas that address environmental problems. "The premise here is that, in the environmental arena, sharing knowledge and technology has the great potential to address the world's problems," Wayne Balta, IBM's Vice President of Environmental Affairs, told GreenBiz.com at the time, "And there exists no organized way today to do this on a global basis." IBM was the originator of 27 or the original 31 patents released to the commons.

Eco-Patent Commons shares similar goals with GreenXchange, though it's a simpler device, claims Wilbanks. "The Eco-Patent Commons is what's called a waiver. It's basically saying, 'I'm not going to sue anybody who uses this.' There's no license, so you can't track the transactions, which means you can't get a count of how many people are using your patent. You don't know who they are. You can't get attribution because all rights are waived. And you can't capture any revenue. What we're doing is taking the IBM methodology and combining it with the Creative Commons methodology to create these public licenses."

Lauber says GreenXchange is in a start-up mode, not yet officially launched. The group is seeking founding companies willing to contribute start-up capital and develop the framework. In addition to Nike and Best Buy, the group includes Mountain Equipment Coop, with strong interest from several others — Lauber mentioned Herman Miller, Marks & Spencer, SC Johnson, and Yahoo! as prime candidates. A founding partner meeting will take place this summer.

If it works, GreenXchange stands to stimulate and accelerate green innovation, as companies dip into the pool of IP to leverage other companies' creativity and successes. And it offers up a new model of sharing, one that recognizes that what works in one sector can be applied, perhaps in an entirely different way, in another sector. And that each of those applications contribute to the innovations commons, providing value to all participants, bringing to life that old proverb: "None of us is as smart as all of us."

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