Note: This was the August cover story for the North Bay Business Times written by Patricia Dines. You can download the entire PDF of the edition at the author’s site: or read it online at the North Bay Business Journal.

by Patricia Dines
August 2010
NorthBay Biz Magazine
Moving beyond greenwashing to create authentic eco-success.

EcoGirl Patricia Dines helps NorthBay biz readers see beyond enticing green façades to uncover the products and approaches that support true environmental change.

Everywhere we turn, it seems we’re bombarded with ads for green products, services, political candidates, ballot measures and more. How on earth can we identify the ones we want to support while dodging the greenwashers—those coated only with a superficial green veneer to coax us out of our hard-earned money and votes? More important, how do we accurately describe our own company’s level of green without overstating it and risking the wrath of the green-savvy marketplace?

These concerns quickly lead to one vital but daunting question: What does “green” actually mean? Sure, we all have a sense that it implies walking lightly on the earth. But when we look for specifics, we hear a baffling variety of passionately stated opinions and definitions, ranging from simple actions that seem too small to make a difference to impossible standards that surely few could meet.

So, to help clear up the confusion, we decided to distill what you need to know to steer around the greenwashing hazards and take actions that meaningfully contribute to the eco-changes our culture so urgently needs to make.
Recognizing greenwashing’s various forms

It’s not just our imagination that green claims have increased. A study by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing found that eco-ads almost tripled between 2006 and 2008, and the average number of green-labeled products per store nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008.

This increased attention reflects the good news of people’s growing desire to “do the right thing.” According to a 2007 survey by the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), 58 percent of Americans are more likely to buy products and services from a company that’s mindful of its impact on the environment and society than from one that isn’t. This is a compelling reason for companies to mention green among their products’ benefits.

However, while this trend gives the environmental good guys long-deserved attention for their positive offerings, it also attracts the wannabes who hop on the bandwagon solely for its marketing advantages.

Janet Pomeroy, founder and president of San Francisco’s green marketing firm The goodMix, says, “Some companies assume they can just throw a green sticker on anything and say, ‘I’m green’—with no proof, no certification, no one to check them on it.”

For instance, Pomeroy remembers a Chevy Tahoe TV ad that she felt “was complete greenwashing. I mean, just because the SUV can drive around in the mountains doesn’t mean it’s green,” she observes with a laugh.

Some of greenwashing’s various faces are described in TerraChoice’s 2009 report “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” Transgressions identified include: being vague, making irrelevant claims, emphasizing one eco-aspect of a product while ignoring much more harmful ones, presenting false or misleading certification, and overtly lying about the facts.

Other ways that companies can greenwash, notes the nonprofit Greenpeace (www.stopgreenwash.org), are by portraying baby steps as giant strides, exaggerating an environmental achievement to deflect attention from its environmental problems, bragging about court-ordered actions as if they were voluntary expressions of corporate values, and touting a green image while company lobbyists work tirelessly in Washington, D.C., “to gut environmental protections.”

For more specific greenwashing examples, Pomeroy suggests perusing www.greenwashingindex.com.

The costs of greenwashing
The result of this frequent dissonance between green image and reality, according to NMI’s 2007 report, is that 70 percent of American consumers think companies aren’t always genuine when claiming to help the environment and society. This increased skepticism can dilute the value of the word “green,” undermining its usefulness for identifying effective eco-actions, and decreasing public participation in earth-healing activities.

False claims can also inaccurately persuade customers that they’ve made a contribution when their action actually had little effect. Plus, it makes it harder to identify the authentic offerings, penalizing rather than rewarding those who are doing it right.

Even worse, all this green noise and misinformation can undermine the environmental movement’s momentum at a time when it’s essential that we all participate in constructive and meaningful ways. Thus, Pomeroy observes, “our culture becomes less receptive, more cynical, more likely to think this is all environmental hooey and not believe things like climate change—which is not what we need right now.”

Greenwashing also often harms the company making the claims. Pomeroy cautions that the threat of being labeled a greenwasher “is a really big deal,” especially in this era of social media. “You’re going to lose credibility and, consequently, market share.” Other risks include diminished employee satisfaction and retention rates, and even legal trouble.

On the flip side of the equation, Pomeroy notices the marketplace confusion can make some companies reluctant to mention their green features, “because they don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, you didn’t raise the bar high enough.’”

Resources

•  The Bay Area Green Business Program provides free eco-checklists as well as the option of official recognition.

• The Green Business Guide, by Glenn Bachman (2009), walks readers through the specific steps for greening a company. “A one-stop resource for businesses of all shapes and sizes to implement eco-friendly policies, programs and practices.”

• The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken (1993), has inspired many with its profound vision of an ecologically sustainable economy.

• Natural Capitalism, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (1999), describes what capitalism can look like when natural and human resources are valued equally with money.

B corporation is a new kind of corporate structure designed to encourage success in the triple bottom line of financial, ecological and social criteria.

Patricia Dines has been a professional writer and public speaker for 25 years, and has specialized in environmental topics for the past 15 years. She consults with businesses, is the author of the syndicated “Ask EcoGirl” column, and has written a wide variety of helpful eco-books, newsletters, articles and more. For more information, see www.patriciadines.info or call (707) 829-2999.

This story ran on the front page of the Business Section of the NY Times. I was interviewed in the article, and found it a great read.
The story is available here, online at The NYTimes.com

By LAWRENCE W. CHEEK

SEATTLE

THE wooden kitchen bar in the suburban home of Richard and Donna Majer has a canyonlike crack ripping right down its middle, which is exactly what the couple cherish most about it. It’s not just furniture — it’s a story, complete with a moral.

“As I spend time with it, I see the beauty of the hard life the tree had,” Mrs. Majer says. “And it helps me find the beauty in my own life’s scars.”

The crack occurred three years ago in a storm that mortally wounded the towering oak in the Majers’s backyard. It was a family member; Mr. Majer had planted it with his father 53 years earlier. Devastated, the Majers consulted an arborist, who said yes, it had to come down, but that there were a couple of guys in Seattle they should talk to.

The guys were Seth Meyer and John Wells. The pair harvest local urban trees doomed by development, disease or storm damage, and turn them into custom furniture, each piece a distinct botanical narrative.

Their business, started four years ago, bears all the markers that would seem to point toward collapse and extinction in a recessionary economy. It’s founded on idealism and emotion. It’s riddled with huge and unavoidable inefficiencies. And it tenders a high-end product that asks buyers to take risks and have faith.

Yet the company, Meyer Wells, has thrived. It’s been profitable from the start, Mr. Wells says, and revenue has grown annually; it reached $850,000 last year, and the business partners say they’re on track to top $1 million this year. There are now nine employees, and the furniture commissions have blown well beyond suburban kitchens to high-visibility clients like Starbucks and the University of Washington.

“I think our idealism is meeting with the demand to make buildings greener,” Mr. Wells says.

Michael Verchot, director of the Business and Economic Development Center at the University of Washington, says his research backs up that theory. “We’ve conducted two small-business surveys in Washington State in the past four months, and we’re seeing that companies that have a green product are the ones that are increasing sales,” he says. “I can’t speak to the whole country, but our surveys here are telling us that green will be here forever. It’s a permanent shift.”

The Northwest has become one of the strongest markets for nurturing innovative, sustainable businesses, says Alan Durning, executive director of the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit research group here. “In the mental geography of the American mind, the Northwest stands for nature,” he says. “It attracts and retains folks who have a strong affinity for our natural heritage.”

A heart of green is no guarantee of success, of course, even in Seattle. Such enterprises can be as fleeting as ripples on a pond — and Mr. Durning says they often fail for the same reasons others do: they race too far ahead of the market or fail to control costs. It’s especially challenging for green businesses to figure out what environmental values consumers want, and what they will pay extra for, he says.

Janet Pomeroy, board president of the San Francisco-based Green Chamber of Commerce, says the green businesses that do well nationally are those that have an authentic story to sell.

Meyer Wells had those elements from the start. It understood Seattle’s environmental gestalt, and had a product that could spin its own story. Although custom furniture builders are as abundant as mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest, Meyer Wells staked out a distinct territory: the big slab, furniture that could bring indoors the raw power of the environment rather than a builder’s vision.

Mr. Wells says the company also saw trajectories in culture and business worldwide — particularly the locavore and slow-food movements — that suggested the time was ripe for their venture. “We’re starting a slow-wood movement,” he says.

In line with typically idealistic sustainable businesses, they’re trying the whole bouillabaisse of green values, from using nontoxic, water-based wood finishes to offering better-than-average employee benefits. “For a small company, they work hard to make us comfortable,” says Keiku Toutonghi, its one-woman finishing operation. “This is the first place I’ve gotten health benefits and paid vacations.”

Its business model does not depend on tree lovers’ anguished calls, but increasingly on networks with other businesses and design professionals. Tutta Bella, a high-end pizzeria chain, asked Meyer Wells to build a 30-foot-long chef’s table from a century-old city park elm that had split in a windstorm. The table helps the restaurant establish its brand, the owner, Joe Fugere, says. “It fits our culture of sustainability and authenticity,” he says.

Despite the increasingly ambitious restaurant and boardroom tables — the latter ironically encrusted with electronic connectivity under the rustic slabs — Mr. Meyer and Mr. Wells seem not to have snipped the emotional roots that led them into the business: a love of raw wood. Mr. Majer recalls the day Mr. Meyer came out to assess their doomed oak. “It’s hard to explain,” he says, “but we knew that Seth could see the soul of that tree.”

MEYER WELLS works out of an 8,000-square-foot, high-ceiling building four miles north of downtown that once housed a Navy swimming pool.

Soft northern light floods in through clerestory windows; bare cedar boughs hang from the open ceiling trusses to cleanse any lingering negative energy from the lumber that enters and the furniture that leaves — a Native American belief that Mr. Wells embraces. A stunning indoor alley is formed by towering slabs of hardwoods the partners have salvaged: oak, walnut, black locust, bigleaf and silver maples, cherry and madrona.

“People who buy furniture here are adventurers,” says Mr. Meyer. “They see the tree and get to be part of the process. They have to have an adventurous spirit, they have to be patient, and they have to trust. There’s an element of risk.”

Those adventurers might be surprised to learn that Mr. Meyer, 40, is a high-school dropout. He radiates a discerning obsession with the details of design and the philosophy of craftsmanship. “Some people drop out of school because they can’t cut it,” says Mr. Wells. “Others drop out because school doesn’t cut it for them. That’s Seth.”

Mr. Meyer says he grew up in a house “with a lot of aesthetic awareness.”

“My stepfather was a furniture maker,” he adds. “There was always a lot of discussion about beauty and craft.” Everything in the built environment was up for critique. “We’d be driving along and someone would say: ‘Look at the back end of that car. What a missed opportunity!’ ”

Mr. Wells is 45, coolly cerebral and stuffed with education. Mr. Meyer describes him as the optimistic force in the partnership, the one who argues for the new tool or venture and sustains the faith that it all will work out. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from the College of Wooster in Ohio, and another in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design. His résumé is also flocked with sawdust. In high school he made a Chippendale desk that scored second in a statewide shop-class competition in North Carolina.

Like Mr. Meyer, he once ran a one-man custom furniture shop. The two met at a mutual friend’s dinner party, worked on a couple of projects together, then decided to form a new company.

Now in production is a large dining table from two storm-felled red elms. At this point, the slabs are propped against a wall, notes and lines chalked on them. A notation beside a two-foot-long crack specifies, “OPEN.” The crack will be cleaned up and stabilized, but not filled or hidden. “I see a bird in it, maybe a heron,” Mr. Meyer says, admiring its form. The slabs will be mated not with ruler-straight joints, but with painstakingly curved cuts in line with the grain patterns.

He suddenly becomes a tour guide to a whole geography embedded in the wood — “islands” and “cathedrals” in the grain. “I’m looking to see how the grain of one board flows into the next so that the composition feels harmonious,” he says. “In every piece, I’m looking for some kind of rhythm and balance. It’s an intuitive process, not something with a set of rules I could ever write down.”

If there’s one rule in the shop, it’s this: Respect the tree’s narrative — including the chapters about its hard urban life. Mr. Meyer once found a steel snippet embedded in a beautiful cherry slab, perhaps a remnant of a nail used to hammer a “lost cat” sign to the tree. He left it in place, a piece of the story.

Nearly all of their pieces feature the trendy “live edge” — an edge of the slab left unmilled to celebrate the topography of the tree trunk. The technique today can be accused of being a cliché, but nature still provides a universe of forms and textures to admire. Some edges seem to ripple with geologic strata; some display miniature badlands of canyons and ridges. The Meyer Wells philosophy is to impose as little human design as possible.

The timber rolls in through motley channels. Some local arborists are plugged in and know when to call. One day, Mr. Meyer was driving near a Seattle lot that was to be the site of a new apartment building. A sprawling bigleaf maple arrested him.

“I had to make several calls, but I finally got to the demolition contractor,” Mr. Meyer recalls. “He said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re just going to take it to the dump.’ ” As usual, Meyer Wells took the timber for nothing, but the cost of trucking it to the company’s yard is typically $500 for an urban tree salvage.

Although the designs are minimalist, the costs add up — for drying, milling, design, joining the component pieces and finishing. Coffee and dining tables mostly range from $3,000 to $10,000, while runwaylike conference tables can easily hit $20,000.

Mr. Wells says they essentially use a cost-plus pricing model, but because each piece — and each tree’s constellation of problems — is different, “sometimes we do well at the pricing, and sometimes we don’t.”

“But it all seems to average out,” he adds, “and we’re getting better at it.”

Where Mr. Meyer still loves to ponder the expressive possibilities of a crack in a slab, Mr. Wells now seems propelled more by the big-ticket issue of sustainability. “I really believe a designer can make better choices, and that can influence people and move us in a direction that’s more sustainable,” he says. “That’s what I’ve chosen to do, and I think it’s what’s made us a successful business.”

SUSTAINABLE furniture isn’t recession-proof. The company’s residential business shrank in the last two years, but increases in corporate commissions more than made up the difference, Mr. Wells said. Now the residential orders are wrenching back up, and Mr. Wells remains a dogged optimist.

“People buy what they believe is right for them to buy,” he says. “If there are options available that fit better with their values, they will buy those options.”

The business’s current challenge is in remaining faithful to its roots. Ms. Pomeroy of the Green Chamber of Commerce notes that one of the universal hazards for green businesses is trying too hard to uphold all their ideals while the gritty realities of everyday economics gnaw away at them. Sometimes, she says, they fail to understand that fully incorporating their values would mean changing the world’s economic systems.

In fact, Meyer Wells is trying to save increasingly large chunks of the world. Early this year, it started a subsidiary venture, Green Tree Mill, that will extend its reach into Puget Sound’s surrounding forests, harvesting and milling trees that the larger sawmills don’t want. Instead of being turned directly into custom furniture, this lumber will be marketed directly to builders.

“I have sleepless nights,” Mr. Wells acknowledges. “The mill is pushing us to a new level of risk, with a potentially higher level of reward.”

Mr. Meyer seems to crave equilibrium more than growth, and longs for more time to put his hands on a fallen tree and massage its natural beauty.

“We’re faced with the not unsatisfying challenge of injecting efficiency into an essentially creative process,” he says. “From the classic viewpoint of American business, it’s probably a fool’s errand. But hey, so far we’re making it work.”

This great presentation tip from my  Eloqui Communications & Presentations Training made me think about what enviro professionals can incorporate into their next talk:

In the cerebral cortex, there is no such thing as ‘words’. The brain sees words as tiny pictures that it has to translate.

When information is presented orally, audiences remember only 10% if tested 72 hours later. Retention goes up 65% when a picture is added. Amazingly, we can remember more than 2,500 pictures with 90% accuracy after several days, with only a 10 second exposure. Some images remain in memory decades later. Researchers named this potent phenomenon PSE, or Pictorial Superiority Effect. So, in a presentation, use visuals paired with your most vital information to make your content memorable. (This is why graphics or images in PowerPoint are far superior to text.) Better still, speak in visual snapshots, to deliver information in a way that is suited to the hardwiring of the brain.

So, I think about the images over the last decade, of all the PowerPoints and big screens, not so big screens, in auditoriums, on walls. And the best image I have come across, by far, is Ray Anderson’s journey in climbing what he calls “mount sustainability”

The graphic is an icon and symbol for Interface to meet their zero-waste goals. Here is their more recent adaption to this illustration, below:

The business magician responsible for Magnet Productions, an innovative trade show production company is onto greener ideas. Attendees wouldn’t think the big swaths of carpet rolled on to thousands of feet of cavernous cement-floor  being suspect, but this trade show staple, designed to “comfort” the soles of exhibitors and attendees, leaves everyone breathless. Here is the recent post on his blog, “Hey Newman”:

Hey Newman, We exhibit at about four trade shows a year, and I’ve yet to do one that didn’t give me a headache. And I mean that literally. Is it the noise? Dehydration? I know you’re not a doctor, but what do you think? –Ann in San Francisco

As part of our ongoing dialogue with the green marketing experts at The Good Mix, we’d like to turn our attention this week to the incredible toxicity of trade show carpeting. You can smell it when you walk onto the trade show floor. Some people have allergic reactions. It emanates from the backing materials and carpets themselves. Breathing in the fumes for three days is bad enough for trade show attendees — and for those of us who make a living on trade show floors it’s an even bigger issue. Inhaling VOC (volatile organic compounds) can absolutely give you a headache. But far more seriously, those VOC’s have been linked to asthma and cancer. And when that carpeting ends up in landfills, it becomes an environmental problem that affects us all. Trade shows should be about the fun of dynamic presentations and the excitement of new products; it should be about the “atmosphere” of the event … not the actual atmosphere.

The good news is the trade show floor is an environment that’s controllable. It’s temporal (built and shut down) as opposed to the L.A. freeway. We can change the materials at these events. We can even change the trade show culture, and with it the “default” materials and products used.

There are companies that create carpet squares made from 100% recycled materials, lowering the amount of carpet that ends up in landfills releasing toxins into the air. There are low- and no-VOC paints for booths. There are plenty of alternatives to using vinyl, which is one of the greatest toxic offenders in the industry (and most industries).

Management companies pride themselves on giving out presentation awards such as “Top New Product.” What if they created incentives for their exhibitors buying booth space along with a “Top Green Exhibitor” award? What if the following year that exhibitor got a discount on booth space or better yet, preferred exhibit space in a prime location for having the greenest booth, most sustainable giveaways and smallest carbon footprint?

There are ways to have a friendlier trade show environment and incentivize the process to keep all parties happy. It will just take a few good ideas and a lot of commitment.

Wal-Mart Chairman Lee Scott can speak at a large corporate conference about sustainability initiatives being more about the bottom line than it is about brand image.

But I don’t buy it.

Yes, I believe Mr. Scott did save money greening supply chain and adopting renewable energy technologies. Approximately 350 of their stores and facilities in Texas use wind energy. They have a laudable vision and monster environmental goals: “To be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain people and the environment.”

(If you want to create a green trivial pursuit game, you can download 23  sustainability fact sheets here)

Why, then, did this big box leader create so much press, hire scads of environmental consultants, speak at The big boys green conferences, and earn a place in the green business debate?

Sure, I believe Mr. Scott was smart. He figured out that in a business of his size, waste equals a lot less profits, and that the bottom line was important driver for sustainability. But he went further than saving money, he invested in new technologies. His company spent some of their resources on research; and training. And, in the end, it helped his brand image with some of the enviros – at least the ones that go to green business conferences.

Brand image is a funny thing. You can’t touch it, but it’s visible and emotive. Brand image is an impression in the minds of the people you call your customers and stakeholders. Brand is even greater than emotion; it’s the experience we have when we interact with the created product, store, or service. And experience eventually translates into value, and “goodwill.”

“A brand’s value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives,” says Marketing Guru Seth Godin,.

And now, in the web 2.0 world, brand is also the many impressions or conversations  created in various networks.

Arguably, consumers choose Wal-Mart over other retailers because of price, and sometimes, because it’s the only retailer around. The experience that Wal-Mart created by going green was ultimately, a smart business decision, but it also was part of helping their brand image. Which, a short while ago was in peril.

In 2006, Business Week, among other media sources, reported on Wal-Mart’s not-so-altruistic business practices:

It’s been that kind of year for Wal-Mart. The Bentonville (Ark.)-based company has been pushing hard to improve its public image, at a time when its financial fortunes increasingly depend on it.It’s come under heavy fire from workers and politicians, for everything from the low wages it pays workers to the small retailers it pushes out of business. That dark reputation has resulted in communities around the country taking on Wal-Mart, by trying to halt construction of new stores or forcing it to pay higher wages and benefits.

Had Wal-Mart wanted to, they probably could have dealt with some of these pressures by giving more to charities, and giving their workers health care. They could have, perhaps, strong-armed their supply chain and brought their prices down lower, without making a fuss about green initiatives. They could h ave closed a lot more stores, and not gotten involved with the complexity of green business.

But Mr. Scott turned the green light on; and Wal-Mart profits under a better light. Profits and image had to co-exist for this brand to make a comeback.

As much as Mr. Scott says he approached sustainability as a business decision, he also says, “If we as a company focus on waste, we can make Wal-Mart a better company and at the same time, become a better citizen.”

Wal-Mart has also been unpredictable and some-what hard to define brand. Are they evil or ultimately, a game changer? What is their place in our larger, vision of the economy? Perhaps Godin has a clue:

“If you want to grow a valuable brand, my advice is to keep awareness close to zero among the people you’re not ready for yet, and build the most predictable, emotional experience you can among those that care about you.”

Sources: Environmental Leader
Business Week

Creating a Facebook page, Tweeting on Twitter , and writing press releases are all worthwhile and fun tactics, but to gain visibility and favorable public attention, consider a brief public relations plan. An effective final plan is written document that will keep you focused and creative, while you build effective public relations activities for your organization.
So gather a few stakeholders in your company, including a customer or trusted advisor, turn of the cell phones, and entertain a strategy session that will answer:

•    What is the main objective for your public relations activities?
Is it to launch a product or company? Gain new customers? Support your partners? Community? Gain website content? Be identified as a thought leader?

•    Which strategies should you select that support those goals?
Think out of the box to create results. Why not try tweeting a reporter with a 140 character pitch about your new product launch instead of sending a 5 paragraph press release via email? If your goal is to build awareness, why not organize a live event in your community that is unusual enough for the press to come? Anything  you can make bigger than life-size so that the public will come experience your product or service What is new, different or helpful about your product or serve and how can you “show” as well as “tell” your story.

•    When will you be achieving your strategies?
If you’re a green business, is Earth Day really the best day to launch a huge press campaign? It may be if it involves a community activity, a Facebook contest or a community trash clean-up. And competition might be stiff for getting the presses’ attention. Your best strategy might be to get a calendar out and mark key dates: holidays, historical events, seasonal milestones, important national dates, and craft an angle that might fit one of those events.

•    How can you use few resources to help achieve your public relations goals?
•    Leverage a partnership, pitch to the press, and also have them also pitch on your behalf.
If you are Realtor, and want to show off a new home technology, can you approach the manufacturer of that product and co-author a release?

•    Look to local traditional outlets for recognition.

There may be a greater chance of earning trust and building relationships in your home turf, which can also assist in building your reputation in your community. Effective press mentions, also called “hits” can help with your search engine optimization and may be picked up by larger media outlets.

• How can you get your target media’s attention?

- Create an intriguing, wild subject line for your email pitch. This one for a trade show presenter, got press attention: “If Houdini were alive today, would he be in trade shows?”

-Create a visual picture in your pitch will help entice reporters: “Risking life and limb, Tim Kelly will escape from a strait jacket while balancing atop of a small plank of wood while seesawing on a small round cylinder.”

-Position yourself as a thought leader. What do you know about your industry that can be articulated clearly to the press?

And don’t forget to prepare your answers and practice them aloud! You’ll be prepared for any unexpected interviews!

On the evening that Health Care Reform passed, it’s relevant to see how the cost and consequences of poor health have wrecked havoc on our system. If we are going to have real reform, it has to be across industries, governments, and the entire health care system. Health is as much as a social responsibility as it is freedom from disease.

Now more than ever, the business of health and environmental improvement is inextricably linked to the business of business. (greener state =  more greenbacks)

What are unhealthy conditions costing us?

Between 2005 and 2007, poor air quality in California caused more than $193 million in hospital-based medical care according to the RAND Corporation.

“Failing to meet federal clean air standards caused nearly 30,000 hospital admissions and ER visits throughout California over 2005–2007. Nearly three-quarters of these events were attributable to high ambient levels of fine particulate matter.”

That means as people sought help for problems such as asthma and pneumonia – conditions and diseases that are caused by the airborne nasties that contribute to climate change.

Buildings, cars, agriculture is also involves public insurers: “Overall, Medicare and Medi-Cal (Medicaid in California) paid for about two-thirds of the estimated ER visits and hospital admissions.”

Now there’s a statistic that can make a federal budget bloated. “Medicare spent an estimated $104 million on hospital care because California failed to meet federal clean air standards during 2005–2007. Medi-Cal spent about $28 million. Private health insurers spent about $56 million.”

Benefits for business:

• You have to breath to work. Dirty air means missed days of work; more hardship and for families, children…and business.

• Happy, healthy, motivated workforce.
• More tourists, better PR campaign for “Visit California” campaign.
• Large Green Jobs workforce (of every collar)
• Drive clean energy innovation which would increase jobs, develop technology and ensure our seat in the global marketplace.
• Savings before regulations. End-of-pipe methods, which capture pollution that has already been created and remove it from the air. (This was a benefit found after the Clean Air Act went into effect).

It wasn’t long ago that we signed the Clean Air Act into law.

Is clean air good for business? Health and welfare of our citizens?
Comments always appreciated!

Other Sources:

Triple Pundit

Inc Online

When you target customers, it helps to know if they’re “dark green”, “light green” or “basic brown” in their attitudes, but, with so many green issues, products, and labels out there, it may be more relevant to your branding and communications to understand their personal green interests and behaviors, not necessarily their labels.

Check out this post by Jacquie Ottman, one of  the thought leaders in green marketing. She has great focus on categorizing green targets.

Green consumers are also citizens. Although it’s cool marketing-speak to address those who purchase as those who consume, but nothing speaks to your prospects and customers (there I go!) than treating them as if they are important and they matter.

What matters to me, as an urban green-leaning Boomer, is that I also enjoy “guilty pleasures” like: “Burn Notice”,”24″ and French Chardonnay. I recycle, live in a small flat with two others, use public transportation and ride my bike. But I am not a vegetarian and I don’t follow the activities of PETA or Green Peace. I consume a vast amount of media, and the most appealing to me are the campaigns that are well-designed. That means stories that show beauty, transparency, clarity and humor are particularly high on my radar.

I might remember a new organization through my association with The Green Chamber of Commerce, but I might also like to try a healthy beauty product that I saw a commercial for on FOX, during a “24″ commercial break.

Sometimes, it IS the message, and not necessarily the media. I am aspiring to wave the green flag, but I also am very much a typical American 40-something.

Way back in 2006, when  author & educator Michael Pollan’s raised concerns about the national supermarket chain Whole Foods in his book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Whole Foods CEO and founder John MacKey wrote a letter to Pollan. The two continued their dialog publicly, while the rise of the organic food movement lifted up small manufacturers and producers as well as large multinationals.

These two eco-minded leaders agreed on the ‘ “reformation” of the American food system,’ supporting more locally grown production: In California this would mean, anyone at a farmers’ markets to Earthbound Farm. While they both disagreed on several points, you could bet your tofu on the fact that both of these guys were advocating for change in the American food system.

But what surprised me in their paper dialog a few years ago was that Pollan was basing his arguments on some fundamental marketing principles. “..As Whole Foods recognized before many others did, there is another consumer being born out there, one who takes a broader view of his interests, understands that spending more on higher-quality food is worth it on so many levels,” says Pollen.

“As competitors like Wal-Mart and Safeway move into selling industrial organic food, Whole Foods can distinguish itself by moving to the next stage, doing things they can’t possibly do. “Local” surely is one of those things: and your buyers already know exactly how to do it. All Wal-Mart knows is how to source industrial organic food from China.”

And then something happened. Whole Foods’ stock prices went on a roller-coaster ride; and the business was expanding. Fast. 65 stores were in development in 2005; and by September 2007, WF acquired their major competitor Wild Oats. WholeFoods has its national price-friendly brand, 365 on its shelves, nation-wide. And the brand, which once stood for local and sustainable, made its mid-course correction to be in favor of big and not so local, and not so green.

Maybe this is sounding a bit like an overwrought “Wolfman” but the hidden side of this food chain is getting ugly.  As a consumer, when I pay premium prices on most of the experience I get here, and I see all the nice little signs in the fresh produce aisles  telling me where my apple, beets and tomatoes come from, I expect the same transparency in the freezers.

The 365 California vegetables, according to a recent ABC report are manufactured in China. Is there that much demand to warrant growing these thousands of miles away from the state whose namesake

Is Whole Foods looking a lot like Safeway? Has green now gone so far mainstream that it must stand by “go big or go home?” Is MacKey wrong to have certified “organic” food from China? Is mainstream television damaging the green business movement?

I think the damage comes from the lack of transparency. Consumers shouldn’t have to do all the work at figuring out the Whole Foods brand. If Whole Foods wants to handle this transparently, and up the ante on “quality” they need to step up and admit who the independent auditors are and change their packaging design immediately that these products, if they are proudly made in China.

Advertising is dead. Won’t sell product in  our interactive age. Won’t be a good use of your  marketing dollar. Can’t compete with the pack and punch from social media.

The dollars once poured into mass media are being siphoned to social media, but the fact remains that nothing sells image and brand quite like a carefully placed billboard or a familiar voice in your car during the morning commute. Especially if you’re trying to gain credibility. Advertising builds awareness. It exposes what the brand thinks of itself – what the manufacturer or service wants you to think of when they show you a fleeting :30 seconds. Advertising is a cultural mirror. And, unfortunately, shows us how mature or immature we are in our response to the material world.

For the eco-economy, this is an opportune moment to learn from the big boys and take back advertising in a way that helps build brand awareness. Advertising isn’t evil, and purchasing air time may not be the best – or most economical – way of using a marketing budget. But it works.

Green Needs Mass Media

Although, critics, like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media monitoring group, contend that the council’s ads mistakenly “seek to change individual behavior, not social conditions,” change-agents, and companies who are urging us to  become more responsible, would do better with building their image with advertising, then, get the public swayed on how fun/wonderful/inspirational/spiritual/ and good “green” is. Check out Method’s ad on You Tube.

For the big boys, who already use adverting, and want us to believe you are change agents, be honest in your message. Toyota’s new Prius recall advertisement, sounds like Nike’s press campaign waxing how altruistic their corporation is around child protection laws – after some of its manufacturing plants got caught using child labor. Advice to Toyota: get your head honchos on the screen and apologize, give a guarantee; make something honest and real of your situation. Your commercial looks like a lot of old B-roll with an actor reading your corporate apology.

Let’s use our current cultural channels more intelligently. Then, maybe – just maybe – we can make some big changes.