The 'Living Principles' for Designing Our World

We've come to learn over the years that the most potent opportunities and solutions in the world of sustainable business involve design, in its broadest sense: design of products, processes, organizations, business models, systems of commerce, and more. That's a vast and noble goal, the execution of which is fraught with challenges. Not the least of those challenges is a common way to understand what sustainable design looks like.

Consider: Each of the above design opportunities are the domain of different individuals inside, and sometimes outside, of companies: industrial designers (product design), engineers (process design), human resource departments (organizational design), C-suite execs (business model design), and a company's entire value-chain (new systems of commerce). Suffice to say, these individuals and disciplines typically don't share much in the way of language, culture, operating principles, and time horizons, among other things. (That's one of the topics of our upcoming GreenBiz Innovation Forum.) Indeed, they may never even meet.

How can all of these disparate players find common cause under the banner of sustainability? What are the design principles that can accommodate all?

My friend Gaby Brink, along with a small group of collaborators, has just given us the means for doing so.

Brink, who brings a long history in communication and branding, is founder and executive creative director of the strategic creative agency Tomorrow Partners. Over the past six months or so, she collaborated with colleagues Nathalie Destandau and their team at Tomorrow to create the Living Principles community site, a Web-based portal for designers of all types that is being launched today. (Full disclosure: I am listed as one of the group's "ambassadors.")

The Living Principles were originally conceived through AIGA, the largest and oldest professional design association, on whose board Brink sits. It is intended primarily for the "creative community," but it is applicable and useful well beyond traditional designers.

At the heart of the the Living Principles is a framework that "aims to clarify the multiple, interrelated dimensions of sustainability and guide purposeful action in everyday design and business practice," according to a document Brink shared with me. It draws from "decades of collective wisdom, theory and results," weaving environmental, social, economic and cultural sustainability "into an actionable, integrated approach that can be consistently communicated to designers, business leaders, educators and the public."

As its mission states:

Drawing from decades of collective wisdom, theory and results, the Living Principles framework weaves environmental, social, economic, and cultural sustainability into an actionable, integrated approach that can be consistently communicated to designers, business leaders, educators and the public.

The framework draws from a broad spectrum of sustainability manifestos, visions, frameworks, and tools — more than 30, including The Natural Step, life-cycle analysis, Cradle to Cradle, the precautionary principle, the World Economic Forum, LEED, and biomimicry. The result is a four-legged stool of sustainability "streams." Yes, that's four legs, one appendage more than the three-legged, triple-bottom-line version common to sustainability frameworks, which typically consider economics, environment, and social impacts. The Living Principles adds a fourth: culture — "actions and issues that affect how communities manifest identity, preserve and cultivate traditions, and develop belief systems and commonly accepted values."

"Design professions are going through a paradigm shift towards more human-centered design and sustainable development," Brink told me recently. "When looking at the broad creative community, we recognized that designers need a roadmap for assuming these new roles. The Living Principles aim to clarify the multiple and interrelated dimensions of sustainability and make them actionable in everyday practice, considering both the intended and unintended consequences design decisions have on the environment, on society, the economy and on culture."

To help make that happen, the new website includes articles, blogs, and a vast assortment of tools: the context for sustainable design, a glossary, books, films, websites, and educational resources. Whether or not you are directly involved with design, I encourage you to explore its many offerings.

I asked Brink about that fourth stream — culture — and why it was included. "At its core, sustainability is about people," she said. "It's about human rights, human behavior, most importantly, about human aspirations. What will happen if the billion people coming into the middle class in emerging economies adopt our western lifestyle of excess? We need to redefine the very definition of prosperity for them so they can improve their livelihoods and enjoy themselves on this planet without putting more pressure on already stressed resources. And we need to look to cultures that don't define success by growth to realign our own aspirations."

She concluded: "Design is a powerful agent in shaping culture everywhere. It enables impact at the largest scale, which is what we need."

I'm pretty certain that the Living Principles can help.

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GreenBiz.com: 10 Years After

Ten years ago today, GreenBiz.com went from dream to reality, as we "flipped the switch" on the site, making it live for the first time. An image of the site on that day is shown here. (You can click it to view a larger version.)

We've come a long way since June 21, 2000, both the website and the world of green business, though for all of our success, we've only just begun to fulfill our promise.

GreenBiz.com emerged from "The Green Business Letter," a monthly newsletter that I published from 1991 to 2005. Subtitled "The Hands-On Journal for Environmentally Conscious Companies," it attempted in eight monthly pages to capture the world of business and the environment. Eight pages a month was all it took in those days.

Over time, as the World Wide Web emerged and the greening of business moved from the margins to the mainstream, I recognized an opportunity to bring to one place the vast number of resources — news, research, reports, websites, tools, best practices, technical assistance programs, and more — that were crossing my desk on a daily basis. (I came to learn that in the Age of the Internet there was a new name for something I had been for many years: "content aggregator.")

GreenBiz.com was originally called "The Green Business Resource Center" and was incubated within the nonprofit National Environmental Education Foundation, based in Washington, D.C. The vision hasn't changed much since the original May 1999 funding proposal, which I recently dusted off. The mission I wrote then remains virtually unchanged from the one that's appeared for the past decade on GreenBiz.com's About page:

To provide clear, concise, accurate, and balanced information, resources, and learning opportunities to help companies of all sizes and sectors integrate environmental responsibility into their operations in a manner that combines ecological sustainability with profitable business practices.

Specifically, the 1999 document stated, GreenBiz.com would:

Serve as an information clearinghouse on sustainable business practices and resources from a wide variety of entities, including companies, nongovernmental organizations, trade associations, government agencies, and academic institutions.

Help companies and other organizations turn information into knowledge and action by providing hands-on tools, expert advice, and case studies.

Provide resources, tools, and information to organizations that offer technical assistance to companies on environmental issues.

Facilitate increased communication, information sharing, and learning among environmental professionals and other interested parties.

Facilitate increased understanding of sustainable business practices beyond the private sector to government entities, nongovernmental organizations, news media, investors, students and academics, and the public at large.

Ten years later, those activities continue to represent our lodestar.

Today, GreenBiz.com sits at the center of a constellation of products and services produced by Greener World Media, the company that I co-founded with publishing veteran Pete May in 2007 to build out the fledgling GreenBiz "empire." In addition to our websites and newsletters, Greener World Media now produces research, such as the annual State of Green Business reports and the monthly Green Confidence Index; a steady stream of webinars on leading-edge topics; events, such as the State of Green Business Forums and the upcoming GreenBiz Innovation Forum; and the GreenBiz Executive Network, a peer-to-peer learning forum for sustainability professionals that's the flagship offering of our GreenBiz Intelligence unit.

And, as we revealed recently, a forthcoming sustainability standard for companies in partnership with Underwriters Laboratories' UL Environment division.

There's much more to come.

So, why hasn't GreenBiz.com, et al., fulfilled its promise?

Because there's so much more to do, and in more creative ways, such as leveraging the terrific technologies that allow people not just to meet online but to share and collaborate.

Because as green strategies and practices continue to grow in both breadth and depth inside mainstream companies, it becomes increasingly harder to live up to our "information clearinghouse" vision.

Because there remain far too few good resources to help smaller firms improve their environmental performance.

Because environmental activities and concerns are merging with social ones inside companies, creating new opportunities but also new challenges for companies that want to remain on the leading edge of sustainability.

I could go on. And while this may seem a tad self-critical, I don't intend for a second to undermine the extraordinary work of my talented team, which keeps the information flowing and the wheels turning every business day — and of our growing audience, including the more than 300 professionals who write for us during a typical year. All of them — all of you — deserve recognition and heartfelt thanks for helping to turn GreenBiz.com into a center of thought leadership on the greening of mainstream business.

It's been a great ride, this past decade, but in many ways it feels like it's just beginning. I'm more excited than ever about the potential of business to be transformational change agents in our environmentally challenged and resource-constrained world. And I'm equally excited about the potential of my colleagues and company to continue to shine a light on all that's possible.

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Who's the Biggest Greenwasher of Them All?

"We're doing everything we can to help the environment. We are reexamining how we operate and are working hard every day to reduce our impacts. We are committed to making the world a better place for our children's grandchildren and beyond. We believe that everyone must do their part to address the serious environmental challenges we face."

If you read or heard a statement like this from a big company — in, say, an advertisement, conference presentation, or annual report — I'm guessing you'd be skeptical at best. You'd want to look beyond those broad, aspirational statements to see what, exactly, that company is doing and how much it was walking its talk. If you learned that the sum total of that company's actions were merely a few token gestures — recycling copy paper and cardboard boxes, for example, or swapping out inefficient light bulbs — you'd be anything from disappointed to angry. You might accuse the company of greenwash. As you should.

I'm going to step out on a limb and suggest that for all the sound and fury over deceptive, disingenuous corporations seeking to falsely create a green image, that the biggest offenders of greenwash aren't companies. And they're not politicians, the mainstream media, green marketing firms, or environmental groups.

The biggest greenwashers are consumers.

Consider the statements at the top of this page, a compilation of common company proclamations. What if these statements were uttered not by a company, but by your neighbor, a friend or relative — or you? Would they be believable? How much substance would there be to back them up? Could you honestly say you are reexamining how you operate every day and are working to make changes, and that you are doing better this year than last?

I'm guessing not. And for all the eco-aware people I know — friends, colleagues, and many others — I don't know many who can.

Of course, most of us don't overtly make such boastful statements. But we do so covertly via anonymous polls and surveys in which high percentages of consumers make boastful claims — saying they regularly seek out green products, recycle and compost at home, are more energy conscious in their purchasing decisions, switch brands in favor of greener ones, take public transportation whenever possible, invest their money with so-called responsible funds and companies, and otherwise take action on behalf of the planet.

As I've often pointed out — and as even casual students of green marketing know — reality looks nothing like this. Shoppers overwhelmingly buy what they want, most likely the same things they've always bought, perhaps with an exception or two. Except during brief periods of high fuel prices, they drive what they've always driven with little regard for alternatives. Despite 20 years of green consumer surveys suggesting otherwise, people haven't changed their shopping habits much.

So, are consumers greenwashers?

In pondering this question for the past several months, I looked at what various people mean when they use the word "greenwash." After all, there's no legal definition; "greenwash," like "green" itself, is largely a matter of perception. Here are two reasonable definitions I found:

"A false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness used to conceal or obscure damaging activities." (Source: Wikitonary)

"The practice of giving a false green or a false sustainable image." (Source: SustainabilityWorks)

Greenwashing was described by others as "dissemination of misleading or false information" and "the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue."

By these definitions, most consumers are greenwashers extraordinaire. For more than two decades, they've said one thing and done another, making outsized claims about their environmental commitments — and the actions they take where they live, work, and play — with little evidence to back up those claims. They seem to find no qualms in painting "a false and misleading picture of environmental friendliness."

If consumers were a corporation, we'd be boycotting them.

I'm not letting companies off the hook here. There are many, many instances of firms large and small that have been less than forthcoming with their environmental achievements and green marketing claims. Some of their transgressions are merely annoying — vague or unverifiable product claims such as being "eco-friendly" or "all-natural." Some green claims are decidedly overblown, such as those by purveyors of rayon clothing masquerading as bamboo; they got their hands slapped by the Federal Trade Commission.

Other transgressions are far more serious — I'm thinking about a certain oil company who, for the better part of a decade, made audacious representations about moving "Beyond Petroleum," despite the fact that the percentage of its revenue from things beyond petroleum (and natural gas) never exceeded 1 percent. That's not just greenwash. That's outright fraud.

But as I've argued in the past, many activist cries of corporate marketing malfeasance (and of alleged green marketing "sins") tend to be overblown, headline-grabbing sensationalism. To the contrary, nearly every large corporation, and many smaller ones, have instituted a range of programs to reduce or eliminate wasteful, polluting, and toxic practices. Many of their goals are bold — to achieve zero waste, closed-loop manufacturing, Cradle-to-Cradle products, or carbon-neutral operations. None of these companies is perfect, of course — far from it — but their imperfections are a far cry from nearly 20 years ago, when the term "greenwash" first came into use, referring to companies that "embraced the environment as their cause and co-opted the terminology ... while little changed in practice," according to the 1992 Greenpeace Book of Greenwash. These days, companies are changing for the better, and continuing their progress year over year.

Can the same be said for consumers? How many can say that they are making substantive changes in their daily lives? How many are doing more this year than last? How many have set bold goals about their environmental progress — two, five, or ten years from now? Oh, right: Many of us have forsworn paper and plastic shopping bags for cloth ones; household recycling has become mainstream; people are buying more energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs and insulating their homes. A tiny handful even have solar panels or hybrid cars. But these are simple, relatively symbolic actions.

Compare this to the latest consumer research findings. "Eight in 10 consumers are interested in some type of green product," according to the latest LOHAS Consumer Trends Database from the Natural Marketing Institute. (What, exactly, does this mean? "Interested in some type of green product" is a tad vague.) Or Eco Pulse's finding that "68 percent of men said they were searching for greener products — a 14 percent jump up from last year"? (What has led men to suddenly ramp up their green shopping during a recession?) Or Mintel's recent finding that more than one-third of consumers "say they would pay more for 'environmentally friendly' products." (Recession? What recession?)

So, who's fooling who? Are companies nefariously saying one thing and doing another, or is it consumers who are masquerading as eco-heroes while making only symbolic changes?

It's probably a little of each, but if I had to put money on which of the two was more likely to build a green economy, I sure know where I'd place my bet.

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