How Many Patents Does It Take to Reinvent the Automobile?
General Motors received more clean-energy patents in the past year than any other company, according to data released a few weeks ago. The data comes from the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index, published quarterly by the law firm Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti (which also provides data for our annual State of Green Business report). In news reports on the findings, GM officials said its patents covered “hybrid electric vehicles, fuel cells and solar energy, with a focus on improvements to current and future technologies.”
That seemed both odd and interesting. Why was this venerable car company so focused on clean energy? True, GM had recently gone through a metamorphosis (not to mention a bankruptcy), around which it released a plug-in vehicle, the Volt, and made plans to produce other greener machines. But why was it racing ahead of other car companies like Honda, Toyota, and Ford, as well as other innovative companies, such as GE, Honeywell, Panasonic, Samsung, and Toshiba — all of which had fewer clean-energy patents than GM last year?
In search of answers, I dialed up Alan Taub, Vice President, Global Research & Development for GM. “We know the world is approaching one billion vehicles, and probably sooner than anybody thought,” he began. “The question is, can we do it sustainably?”
He answered his own question. “What we need to do is re-architect the vehicle and the personal mobility experience through the technology enablers that are converging in the next decade or two so that personal mobility can continue sustainably.” We spent the next 40 minutes or so parsing what that sentence meant.
Taub walked me through the problem statement. “Imagine the automobile was invented today and we were going to propose it to, let’s say, a venture capitalist. ‘Most of the time the vehicle is going to be carrying a single person, a weight load of about 200 pounds. I’m going to be putting that person in a 3,000- to 4,000-pound vehicle. I am going to power it by a single monogamist energy source — petroleum — and 80% of that energy is going to turn into heat, not into powering the vehicle.’ I mean, when you look at it that way, is that the personal mobility machine one would create?”
Of course not. But that’s what we’ve got. So, how do you go from today’s reality to tomorrow’s — the one where “personal mobility can continue sustainably”?
Taub recited the litany of changes underway. Lightweighting materials. Onboard energy systems, such as batteries and fuel cells. Sensors and controllers that ensure vehicles don't crash into things or people. More sensors and controllers that allow cars to drive themselves at times — “autonomous driving on demand,” in industry parlance.
“The way we see it playing out, you will always be able to [manually] drive,” Taub explained, waxing on about drivers’ “emotional attachment to a vehicle.” But, he added, “There are times where even a driving enthusiast would rather be doing email instead of driving. So cars will be autonomous when you want it, but you can take over the steering wheel when you’re in the mood.”
This isn’t just some cool way to get through your email in-box while driving. Smart, autonomous cars could help alleviate gridlock, congestion, and pollution in today’s and tomorrow’s mega cities, explained Taub, by keeping cars moving more quickly at closer range while not crashing into one another, or anything else.
Not (Just) Invented Here
All of this — “reinvention of the vehicle,” as Taub puts it — demands new and improved technologies — lots of them. Hence the push for patents. But there’s a bigger story here, too, about how GM is seeking and finding the innovations it needs to achieve its vision.
Ten years ago, General Motors had just one facility, in Warren, Mich., that housed researchers in science labs. Pretty much every innovation originated in Michigan. About 5 percent of its R&D budget was spent outside the company.
Ten years later, GM has eight labs located around the world, and nearly a third of its R&D budget is spent outside the company — collaborations and strategic alliances with universities, national labs, suppliers, and countless startups. “There’s no way all the technical challenges in a revolutionary period of technology development will be done just with the brilliant scientists inside GM,” says Taub. “Much has moved to an open innovation network. It’s become a team sport where everybody from academics to suppliers are working in collaboration.”
The Future Is … When?
I asked Taub when we could expect these innovations because — let’s face it — we’ve been hearing about “the car of the future” for decades. When will these lightweight, crash-proof, self-driving, clean-running, electric vehicles be hitting the showrooms?
“The end game is a revolution,” says Taub. “But the nature of the business is that each of these technologies will be implemented in various stages across initial vehicles and then cascade to fleets. I think this future is within the 10- to 20-year timeframe. We’re not talking about 2050. We’re talking about a lot of this coming to fruition in high volume in the marketplace between 2020 and 2030.”
Is GM on the VERGE?
I then shifted gears, as it were, to address the emerging convergence of vehicle, information, building, and energy technologies that my colleagues and I have dubbed VERGE. Is GM a VERGE company — that is, is it doing business in all four technologies? Clearly, the smart cars Taub and GM envision represent a mash-up of vehicles, information, and energy technologies. So I wondered about the buildings piece. I expected Taub would explain how homes would eventually house devices for recharging electric vehicles.
That wasn’t where he went.
“I don’t’ know if you know this,” he said, “but the BTU level of the air conditioning system on your vehicle is on the order of that which you need for a 2,000-square-foot home. The reason is that cars require very fast cool-down.” Moreover, he said, most people end up spending more on the entertainment system in their car than on the one in their home, and their car seat probably costs more than their living room couch. “So is there a future where everything we put in a vehicle integrates into the living experience when you go into your home? Today, we consider them two distinct spaces.” Someday, he says, we could go that next step, where “the vehicle becomes not something you park and leave alone next to your home, but can it be integrated into the home. By the way, this has been an idea that we’ve been floating around lately.”
Which brings us back to the patents. GM’s labs have had a sixfold increase in patent filings over the past decade, says Taub. They include not just those related to advanced technology, two-thirds of which focus on energy, environmental, and safety. Some extend to the technologies that have enabled fully half of the company’s 140-odd assembly plants around the world to achieve zero-landfill status, and to other energy and environmental achievements that don’t necessarily show up in its cars.
Out-zipping Zipcar?
Finally, I asked Taub whether all of these whiz-bang technologies could actually reduce vehicle ownership and lead us to a shared-use system, the business model pioneered by Zipcar and its ilk. This, it turns out, is part of GM’s vision, too.
“We see a world where there’s ubiquitous connectivity and therefore things like sharing a vehicle where the system, which I’ll call the cloud back office, knows my calendar, knows where I want to go, and the world will be able to rent by the hour,” explained Taub. “Will the world go to shared ownership? Probably. To what extent is what we’re going to have to learn.”
But then he reverted to that waxing thing I’d already heard from him and from so many other car guys. “There is something about people’s emotional attachment to the vehicle they buy. In some sense, it’s a highly irrational purchase. Its use is maybe 15 percent of the day. Its lifetime is 12 to 15 years, though most first buyers don’t keep it that long. And yet people buy it and actually care what color it is and how it looks. So I think you’ll see a proliferation of vehicle models that will accommodate shared ownership. But personally, I suspect personal ownership will dominate for a long time.”
Maybe. But if the engineers — and the marketers — at GM and the other car makers really do their jobs, they’ll innovate their way to a world where there’ll be an emotional attachment to getting from Point A to Point B in a chic, green machine that we didn’t have to purchase, insure, maintain, park, or own.
May 2, 2011 in Business Practices, Clean Tech, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (4)
The Emergence of VERGE
This week, GreenBiz Group is unveiling a new initiative called VERGE, focusing on the convergence of four technology sectors: vehicles, information, buildings, and energy. It represents an exciting new dimension for us, and I’m pleased to share the vision and the plan.
Over the past few years, I’ve been watching — and speaking about — this convergence, and its potential for business, society, and the environment. VERGE is about an interconnected world, in which this technological mash-up yields a diverse array of products and services that aren’t just greener — with potentially dramatic reductions in energy, water, and materials use as well as in waste and emissions — but also better.
We’ve witnessed other such technological mash-ups in recent years. In fact, most of us now carry around the fruits of the convergence of computers, telephony, media and commerce. It’s called a smartphone. And its emergence not only has transformed the technologies that underlie these products, and the companies that make them, but also all of us who use them.
VERGE has this potential, in spades. Relative to smartphone technologies, VERGE technologies are far more capital intensive — energy plants, vehicles, and buildings. The product cycles — the amount of time it takes to go from concept to market — is years longer than most IT products and services. And their life-cycle — their time in productive use — can range from a decade (for a car) to a century (for a building). Because they are infrastructural, expensive, and long-lasting, their convergence, while slower in coming, will potentially transform how we live, work, shop, travel, and play.
To help define and accelerate the VERGE opportunity, we’ll be convening three high-level roundtables on three continents. On June 21 and 22, we’ll follow the sun, with consecutive events held in Shanghai (hosted by Rob Watson), London (hosted by Marc Gunther), and San Francisco (hosted by me). Our lead sponsors for the events include Autodesk, IBM, PwC, and SAP.
The events will be livecast in local times, starting with Shanghai and London on the 21st, culminating in a full-day virtual event on the 22nd, hosted in San Francisco. (More in the coming weeks on participating in the virtual event.)
At these invitation-only events, we’ll be assembling executives, policy makers, and thought leaders to bring to light the vision of VERGE in their respective organizations, the products and initiatives already underway, and the pathways to success. We will address the barriers participants face — for example, a lack of policy, industry standards, or customer demand — and how they might be overcome. By the time the sun sets in San Francisco on June 22, we hope to have a roadmap, or at least the milestones for one.
What’s struck us over the past year that we’ve been envisioning and designing these events are the companies that, implicitly or explicitly, already hold the VERGE vision. Indeed, it seems there are dozens of large companies, and hundreds more smaller ones, that are in the middle of a revolution not all of them yet clearly see. We hope to change that.
As we’ve begun to assess the VERGE market space, we’re also struck by how many companies already are playing in all four of these technologies — companies as diverse as 3M, Autodesk, Best Buy, Cisco, Eaton, GE, Google, Honda, IBM, Johnson Controls, and Schneider Electric. And many, many more are in three of the four technologies. Of course, this doesn’t consider the hundreds — thousands? — of startups. And many more VERGE companies yet to be born.
Many of these companies are, or soon will be, finding themselves in new business sectors, sometimes far afield from their original areas of core competence. We’ve already seen this in the IT revolution (Apple as music seller; Amazon as book publisher; Google as travel agent). So, too, in VERGE world: Microsoft as energy-management company; Boeing as solar company; Best Buy as EV renter). As the landscape shifts, the technologies mature, and the end-user applications grow, this blurring of traditional boundaries will accelerate.
All of this represents the first steps in what we anticipate will be a long and exciting journey to elevate the world of VERGE. I’ll look forward to bringing you more information in the coming weeks on what we’re doing and how to participate.
April 18, 2011 in Clean Tech, Climate Change, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (2)
Introducing ULE 880 - Sustainability for Manufacturing Organizations
Today, a new sustainability standard for companies is being released for public comment: ULE 880 - Sustainability for Manufacturing Organizations, a partnership between UL Environment, a division of Underwriters Laboratories, and my colleagues at GreenBiz.com.
It is a day that I've been awaiting for the better part of a decade.
A 45-day comment period opens today, during which we're hoping you will review the draft standard and provide detailed feedback. (More about that in a minute, but if you're in a rush to get there, click here.)
ULE 880 is the first in a series of company-level standards and certifications that are being produced by this ULE-GreenBiz partnership. It results from about eight years of work — initially by a small team of us in Alameda County, California, and starting last year, between ULE and GreenBiz. (I previously provided the back story to this project here.)
The first draft of the standard is now complete, the product of a Herculean effort spearheaded by my friend and colleague Rory Bakke, director of sustainability at GreenBiz. Rory was lead author of the ULE 880, with assistance from me, a terrific team from UL Environment, and a small group of advisors.
ULE 880 covers five domains of sustainability:
- Sustainability Governance: how an organization leads and manages itself in relation to its stakeholders, including its employees, investors, regulatory authorities, customers, and the communities in which it operates
- Environment: an organization's environmental footprint across its policies, operations, products and services, including its resource use and emissions
- Workplace: issues related to employee working conditions, organization culture, and effectiveness
- Customers and Suppliers: issues related to an organization's policies and practices on product safety, quality, pricing, and marketing as well as its supply chain policies and practices
- Social and Community Engagement: an organization's impacts on its community in the areas of social equity, ethical conduct, and human rights
All told, there are 102 questions (or "indicators") in ULE 880, including 18 in Governance, 45 in Environment, 15 in Workforce, 15 in Customers and Suppliers, and 9 in Social and Community Engagement. The number of indicators doesn't reflect the weight each of these categories holds in the overall standard, however. Environment covers 80 points, Governance and Customers/Suppliers 40 each, and Workplace and Social/Community 20 each. There are also 18 "Innovation Points" — 3 points each for 6 different indicators — that reward companies for going above and beyond the standard.
But that doesn't mean the core standard is a low bar. It was designed to be comprehensive — that is, to the extent that indicators are measurable and verifiable. Among the core principles of ULE 880 is that it be both reasonably attainable (at the lowest level of certification) and a high bar of excellence (and the highest level of certification). This and other core principles behind the standard are spelled out in the document's introduction.
Why does Environment carry a disproportionate weight — 40 percent of the total? Therein lies one of many challenges the GreenBiz-ULE team faced. We set out to create a standard that is comprehensible, consistently applied, credible, measurable, relevant, and for which data is obtainable. As a rule, company environmental data is more widely tracked, analyzed, quantified, and defined consistently than social and governance data. For that reason, this version of ULE 880 is more heavily weighted toward environmental indicators. Over time, as companies seek certification under ULE 880 and the sustainability field continues to mature, we expect to refine the standard and potentially adjust its weighting of specific indicators and across issue areas.
Of course, all of this is subject to feedback, and that's where you come in. The stakeholder feedback period launching today — ending September 14 — is free and open to all. To participate, you must register, after which you'll receive a link to ULE's Collaborative Standards Development System, or CSDS, an online tool Underwrites Laboratories uses to develop its standards. Already, more than 100 companies and thought leaders have registered to review and comment.
In the CSDS, you'll be able to download ULE 880 or read an online version, the latter of which enables you to enter comments. You'll be able to read others' comments, and others will be able to read yours — an open and transparent process. Comments can be as broad or as specific as you wish.
"There's really no comment of a constructive nature that isn't potentially valuable," Daniel P. Ryan, Standards Technical Panel Chair at UL Environment, told me recently. Ryan — who's been with UL for 27 years, most of it in the standard-development process — continued:
"We want the standard to be clear and concise in language so that manufacturers can read a clause and understand what it means, clearly and without ambiguity. Similarly, we want auditors who might be assessing manufacturers to that standard to have the same understanding. So, even if we get comments from someone who is confused, that's really valuable input because it points us to something we thought was clear but obviously needs work."
This is just the beginning of the review process. "After the comment period closes, we'll sort through all of the input, break it down by topic and try to see the different facets of an issue various stakeholders are arguing," explains Ryan. "And then engage a smaller team of sustainability experts of diverse interests that will help guide the standard forward — how we should address the input we received."
The plan is to announce the first pilot companies for ULE 880 later this fall.
During the next 45 days, we're hoping to hear from a broad cross-section of those affected by or interested in ULE 880: manufacturers, assessment and standards groups, regulators, policy makers, procurement officers, sustainability professionals, the socially responsible investing community, and nonprofit sustainability interest groups.
I sincerely hope you will weigh in — and encourage your colleagues and stakeholders to do so, too.
August 2, 2010 in Business Practices, Green Marketing, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (5)
What Color is the Triple Bottom Line?
I recently posted a query on Twitter and Facebook asking a simple but vexing question: "Someone committed to the environment is called an environmentalist. What do you call someone committed to sustainability?"
The answers I got were largely snarky, smug, and, ultimately, unsatisfactory. (I probably should have added a single-worded addendum: "Seriously.") Suggestions included "A good ancestor," "Idealist," "Human," "Thinker," "Educated," "Brilliant," and the like. A few folks gamely stepped up to the challenge: "Regenerative designer," "Sustainer," and "Triple bottom liner" were among their suggestions.
Someone pointed to a blog called The Sustainabilitist, which seemed to be trying to coin a meme along those lines.
As I said, all of this left a lot to be desired.
This is no mere idle noodling. Names matter. They create definitions, frameworks, images, and reference points, and are essential to the birth of movements, eras, and culture change. Can you name a significant movement, era, or cultural shift that didn't have a good name or descriptor? The media and blogosphere are famous for branding just about everything — witness the "gate" suffix appended to nearly every scandal, no matter how clumsily, since Watergate in the 1970s. Without a name, ideas rarely catch on.
Since the 1970s, we've referred to "the environmental movement" and "environmentalists." These days, the attention is shifting toward the broader arena of sustainability, which includes environmental concerns as well as social and economic ones. And while for some sustainability is used synonymously with environment, that misperception is slowly fading as activists, business leaders, thought leaders, and others help to shape the conversation away from conflating the "S"-word with the "E"-word.
"Sustainability" is, most people agree, a challenging term. Most people find it hard to define, frequently reverting to the clumsy definition of "sustainable development" set forth by the Brundtland Commission, convened by the United Nations in 1983. The commission's 1987 report, Our Common Future, made this now well-known declaration:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:
- the concept of "needs," in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
- the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.
That definition isn't bad, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And it is only mildly helpful today, when references to sustainability (as opposed to "sustainable development") extend well beyond the "needs of the world's poor" to include (among other things) the actions and outcomes of companies, products, processes, and social systems in both developing and developed economies.
Some have boldly try to update Brundtland's definition of the sustainability (some can be found here), but none of these definitions has become widely used. (For what it's worth, I often describe sustainability as "An intergenerational Golden Rule.")
And no one has yet come up with a better word to describe attention paid to environmental, social, and economic matters. So, assuming we're stuck with the word, how do we talk about people committed to sustainability? I'd still like to know.
What about green? I regularly hear pronouncements to the effect that "Green is passé," or that "Consumers have green fatigue."
Perhaps, but that's not the whole story.
Green may be losing its mojo in the consumer marketplace, what with consumer distrust of corporate green marketing and most companies' timid, tepid marketing efforts that have turned consumers off (or never turned them on). But in the business world, green seems alive and well. There's green building of course, as mainstream an industry as any. And the field of green business seems anything but tired or passé. Indeed, it is growing rapidly, far more so than most people realize. And while some companies refer to their efforts as "citizenship," "responsibility," or, yes, "sustainability," I've yet to see any executives shudder when someone refers to their company or activities using green as an adjective to modify their activities or products. Many use it themselves.
The conversation about green versus sustainability is one that takes place regularly within the walls of my own company — which, after all, produces GreenBiz.com, the State of Green Business report, the Green Confidence Index, and many other things using the "G"-word. We debate whether that word is too limiting for our ever-growing constellation of products and services (including a forthcoming sustainability standard for business, the majority of whose attributes are non-environmental). Should we be branding ourselves more around sustainable business?
Or maybe, as I've suggested, the definition of "green" should be broadened to include nonenvironmental matters. That's been the case in politics, in both the U.S. and Europe, where "green" includes labor issues, social justice, health care, immigration, financial reform, and a host of other issues, including environmental ones. Could the same happen in business and the consumer marketplace? Could green come to mean a broader set of issues?
Creating and defining memes is hard stuff. A couple years ago, my friend and colleague Adam Werbach, now head of sustainability at Saatchi & Saatchi, made a run at shifting the color palette, with a speech and subsequent writing about "The Birth of Blue" — the emergence of a "post-green, consumer-led movement that aggregates the power of both marketers and consumers as catalysts for social change."
It was a noble attempt to broaden the conversation beyond the environment to include the social aspects of social change — that is, what many people refer to as "sustainability." But I haven't heard many people talking lately about blue.
That leaves me where I started: What should we call those who believe in the importance of addressing the full spectrum of environmental and social issues in transforming companies, consumers, and markets? Are we "sustainabilists," "sustainers," or something else?
And I repeat my original question: "What do you call someone committed to sustainability?" I'd really like your thoughts. Seriously.
July 26, 2010 in Green Marketing, State of the Art, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (11)
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.
June 21, 2010 in State of the Art, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (3)
What's Happened to Earth Day?
I’m old enough to remember the very first Earth Day, in 1970. It was my senior year at Skyline High in Oakland, California. Many of us walked to school that day (as opposed to taking public transit, my normal means of getting to class). There was a student fair with a few rickety card tables displaying information about how to recycle, use less water, pick up litter, stuff like that.
And then there was the car.
This, in fact, is my main memory of Earth Day 1970: Someone, somehow, procured an unwanted sedan — a Ford Fairlane, as I recall — and parked it outside the cafeteria. Students took turns pounding the crap out of it with a sledge hammer. (Clearly, this was before schools were taken over by lawyers and safety geeks.) Members of the football team and other would-be he-men went at it with a vengeance. I have a distinct image of one kid standing on the roof of the car and bashing in the rear window just below his feet.
It seems a bit odd looking back that the principal activity of highschoolers on Earth Day 1970 was to bash a car to smithereens. It was mostly about protest and symbolism then.
Earth Day 1990 was another matter altogether. The run-up to that event became media extravaganza. Nearly every media outlet — TV, radio, magazines, newspapers — produced an Earth Day special of some sort. The organization behind the event had conscripted some of Madison Avenue’s finest to ensure that Earth Day 1990 would miss no one’s attention. As I wrote in my 2008 book, Strategies for the Green Economy:
The event’s advertising work was done by Pacy Markman, the agency veteran who crafted Miller Lite’s indelible slogan, “Everything you always wanted in a beer, and less.” Earth Day’s organizers sought major corporate sponsors and hired a Los Angeles company that handled merchandise licensing for such movies as Platoon and Robocop to generate revenue from Earth Day–branded clothing, gear, and souvenirs. Perhaps ironically, given that the original Earth Day in 1970 was a protest against corporate environmental misdeeds, Earth Day 1990 may have been the world’s first major green marketing campaign.
What about today? What has Earth Day become?
It’s a question I’ve been asking as I’ve watched the run-up to this year’s 40th anniversary celebration unfold. Earth Day is 1,001 events — possibly more — of every conceivable description, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
From where I sit, watching the corporate world, Earth Day has taken on a variety of hues. As my colleagues at GreenBiz.com report, companies are engaged in a wide range of activities. Some have shunned the event, viewing Earth Day as a sort of red herring — something that distracts us from having to think about environmental issues the other 364 days of the year. Every day should be Earth Day, they believe.
My colleague John Davies recently surveyed more than 2,300 members of the GreenBiz Intelligence Panel, a group of corporate executives we poll from time to time, about their Earth Day attitudes and activities. Fully 72 percent said they celebrate Earth Day at their company, with about half staging some kind of on-site employee event, and nearly as many engaging in employee volunteer activities. Fifty-two percent said their company’s involvement in Earth Day activities has increased compared with five years ago; only 2 percent said it had decreased. More than 81% agreed with the statement “Earth Day is valuable because it shines a light on an important topic.” That’s an overwhelmingly positive response.
It’s the marketing side of Earth Day that starts to get worrisome. My GreenBiz.com team reports being deluged with PR come-ons this year — far more so than any year in memory.
Is that because more companies are engaged? I’m not so sure. I think it has more to do with the fact that Earth Day has become like many other annual holidays — an excuse to sell stuff. Or, at least, sell your ideas, no matter how thin the thread to the notion of environmental sustainability. I could fill pages with examples, but my colleague, Matthew Wheeland, has already done a splendid job of that.
During the precise moment I was writing these words, an e-mail popped up in my in-box with a press release headlined: “Innovative Ecofeminist Smart Phone App Aims to End Dry Cleaning Pollution for Earth Day.” I rest my case.
I don’t mean to diss Earth Day (or ecofeminists, for that matter). I’m generally pleased that for at least one day a year — and maybe a week or so leading up to it — there is increased attention paid to environmental problems and solutions.
But when I step back and look at what Earth Day has become, it sometimes feels little has changed: Earth Day seems largely an exercise in symbolism, much like that car-bashing of 40 years ago: a series random acts that allow people to feel environmentally engaged, even powerful, at least for a day.
April 21, 2010 in Green Marketing, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (2)
Earth Day and the Polling of America, 2010: Me First, Planet Later
It's April. The flowers are bursting with color, trees are coming back to life, people are smiling, walking a bit more jauntily; hope abounds. It can mean only one thing: Baseball season has begun.
That, and the latest crop of pre-Earth Day surveys has invaded my in-box.
The news this year is not encouraging. The Great Recession has taken its toll, as has the "controversy" created by climate deniers — those advocating that climate change either isn't real, or that it isn't caused by human activity, or if it is, that the "fix" is too costly, especially during tough times. Interest in and commitment to environmental problems and solutions has dropped among Americans. With the exception of committed environmentalists — a relative sliver of the populace — the mood has switched from "What can I do to be helpful?" to "What's in it for me?"
Suffice to say, that self-centeredness makes it a tad tough to save the commons.
Herewith is the 2010 edition of what has become a (mostly annual) tradition: My assessment of what market researchers, academics, and others are finding out about Americans' desire to shop — and live and vote — with the environment in mind. (See previous installments here, here, and here.)
Spoiler alert: It's not a pretty picture.
"Americans are today no more environmentally friendly in their actions than they were at the turn of the century," begin the findings of a new poll from Gallup. And even the things Americans are claiming to do seem suspect. Example: A whopping 90% of Americans in 2010 say they are more likely to recycle household waste than any of the other environmentally friendly actions Gallup tests, the same percentage as in 2000. Frankly, I'm more than a little skeptical that nine out of ten Americans "voluntarily recycled newspapers, glass, aluminum, motor oil, or other items" in the past year, but that's what they're telling Gallup. However, if putting the plastic bottle in the right slot in a recycling bin from time to time qualifies someone to answer "yes," perhaps Gallup's finding is technically true. But talk about greenwash!
Similarly, Americans also say they're no more likely now than in the past "to engage in activist behavior to promote environmentally friendly actions by organizations, politicians, or companies," says Gallup. "Far less than half report engaging in any such actions, and again, those numbers have hardly changed over the past decade."
So, too, with those who say they have "voted for/worked for candidates because of their position on environmental issues" (28% in 2010); "been active in a group or organization that works to protect the environment (17%); or "contacted a public official about an environmental issue" (17%). The only appreciable change came in the number of Americans who "contacted a business to complain about its products because they harm the environment" — they declined 39% since 2000.
Gallup also found that, over the past two years, Americans have "become less worried about the threat of global warming, less convinced that its effects are already happening, and more likely to believe that scientists themselves are uncertain about its occurrence." Said Gallup:
The percentage of Americans who now say reports of global warming are generally exaggerated is by a significant margin the highest such reading in the 13-year history of asking the question. In 1997, 31% said global warming's effects had been exaggerated; last year, 41% said the same, and this year the number is 48%.
All of which syncs with yet another Gallup finding: that Americans grew more content over the past year with the overall quality of the environment in the country. Their "excellent" or "good" ratings now total 46%, up from 39% a year earlier. Reports Gallup:
There has been a 25-point drop since 1989 in the percentage worried a great deal about air pollution, and an equal drop in worry about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste. The decline in worry over time has been rather dramatic for some of these threats. For example, in 1989, 72% of Americans said they worried a great deal about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Worry about this environmental issue averaged 62% in the 1990s, 54% in the 2000s, and is 46% today.
Those findings concur with the latest findings by the Green Confidence Index, the monthly tracking service published by GreenBiz.com. In March, it found American consumers pulling back from their earlier optimism on environmental issues, reversing a four-month trend. "The leveling off of unemployment has not translated into increased green confidence,” according to Chief Research Officer Amy Hebard of Earthsense, whose company creates the Index.
What about today's youth — specifically, the Millennials, a.k.a. Generation Y, the 80 million or so Americans born during the last two decades of the 20th century? They've been dubbed the green generation, having come of age in an era of recycling, energy conservation, Al Gore, and Kermit the Frog. But according to the latest Eco Pulse survey, produced by the Shelton Group, "Millennials are only just starting to put their money where their mouths are," writes Shelton's Karen Barnes. She adds:
Across the board, Millennials are more likely to be talking about energy and water conservation, preservatives and chemicals in food, global warming and VOCs, but those conversations aren't producing change — yet. Millennials are 23 percent less likely to have changed behaviors or made green purchases than the overall population.
So much for the power of youth.
Of course, one might cite the Great Recession as a key reason why Americans have slowed down (or in the case of Millennials, never sped up) on environmental habits and purchases. Indeed, a recent poll by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of Procter & Gamble found that "More adults cite saving money than any other reason why they would take measures to reduce waste, save energy and save water in their home." When asked to select the two most important reasons for taking environmentally-friendly measures, 64% of 1,000 adults surveyed selected saving money.
Close to three quarters (74%) also report they would switch to a different brand if it did not cost more and helped them reduce waste, save water or save energy in their homes.
Some surveys continue to defy economic realities — and common sense. According to Mintel's latest report on green living, the environment remains a concern for the majority of Americans. "More than one-third (35%) of survey respondents say they would pay more for 'environmentally friendly' products."
That finding is hard to swallow. But it makes at least a lick of sense when one learns that "Food and beverage and personal care are the two most mature categories and account for the majority of green products in the marketplace," according to Mintel senior analyst Chris Haack. Of course: Food and beverage purchases are one place where consumers often "indulge" during tough times. Moreover, there's a reasonable chance their "environmental" concerns in this case are concern over toxic residues they may be feeding their families, not necessarily over the groundwater runoff, topsoil depletion, or greenhouse gas emissions associated with getting the food on their plates.
Clearly, green consumerism these days is more about self and family than community and planet. At a time of economic uncertainty, "What's in it for me?" seems to have become the tacit rallying cry of the environmentally concerned shopper. Their appetite for environmental activism has diminished inversely with concern over their incomes, home values, and pensions.
That's okay to a point. To the extent that "me first" prods manufacturers to eliminate price premiums or other trade-offs in designing and marketing products with environmental attributes, that's helpful. Even before the recession, Americans were clear about their lack of desire for trade-offs in buying green. That hasn't changed. For example, a recent survey by Accenture found that six out of 10 consumers in five countries, including the U.S., are more likely to buy a hybrid or electric vehicle "only when it is superior to gasoline-only models in every way." Accenture counsels:
So while automakers are increasingly focused on addressing the demand for greater fuel efficiency and economy they should also address those areas that continue to influence the consumer. "Green" is not enough by itself.
I concur, and have long advocated that to succeed, "green" must equal "better."
But I'm not convinced that even better products will always win in today's shaky economy. I fear that "me first" has become a handy excuse for Americans to push green shopping out of their consciousness.
I can't say my skepticism was buoyed by the findings of a recent study cited by Britain's Guardian newspaper that green shoppers are "less likely to be kind and more likely to steal."
According to the study, published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science by Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.
As the Guardian reported:
The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it — in other words, steal — they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.
For the record, the Guardian notes that the findings have been challenged by others.
Whether or not green consumers actually are lying, conniving thieves is, at best, subject to debate. It may be that Mazar and Zhong simply amplified green shoppers' desire to look out for their own interests first, an attribute that likely doesn't separate them much from the masses.
Whatever the reality, the findings of this year's crop of surveys and polls are implicit if not explicit: Today's consumers — young and old, idealistic and not — aren't feeling particularly magnanimous toward Mother Nature. They have their own wants and needs, including the need to be fulfilled in an age of personal and economic sacrifices. Until they feel those needs are met, it's "Me first, planet later."
April 12, 2010 in Green Marketing, Trendwatching | Permalink | Save This Page | Comments (1)
