Corporate Responsibility

Last week’s guest post from Harvard Kennedy School of Government student Cristiana Fragola referenced some carbon offset services she’d recommended to her fellow undergrads by e-mail but didn’t provide any specifics. That had people in these parts wondering just what those services were. I asked Cristiana and she said we should just post her original e-mail, which I thought was a most excellent idea. Thanks Cristiana!

Yesterday, in another of his elegant and super-eloquent speeches, the former next president of the U.S, Al Gore, clearly said that we may not even have the luxury of figuring out adaptation costs for the impacts of global warming...as we simply will not survive if temperature keep rising at current levels. M

According to some scientists, including Jim Hansen, we have 10-15 years left to stabilize the process. Do you really have to worry about the name of your kid or what to do with your life in the meantime?

Option A: start partying until it lasts.

Option B: make a difference & lead by example.

Meet today’s guest blogger, Cristiana Fragola, a student who first crossed our paths when we went to check out Presence coauthor Otto Scharmer’s class at MIT.

Yesterday I finally met a remarkable man who talked about system change and the importance of looking at a company’s ability to generate value and be productive 3 to 10 years from now, not just in the next 11 months. The auditorium was packed, students seemed moved and were frantically taking notes. Yet today, during the business and environment class I am taking at the Harvard business school, many students commented that what Gore says is not practical and we should not even bother to live a carbon neutral life because individual actions cannot make a difference.

I asked those students what would they do if they were in a leadership position, heading a fortune 500 company, and then they said that maybe they would reconsider their position. A few others though quietly followed me at the end of the class to thank me for having taken Gore’s side and articulated that macrocosmos are made up by microcosmos. They even asked me they could use the argument again. There is hope.

I’m just getting back from a busy couple of weeks. One of the biggest things I did during my time away was head down to Arkansas to attend Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Milestone Meeting in mid-November. It was an interesting experience to say the least, and a largely positive one at that. Here’s my diary from the trip…

It catches me off guard, even though I should have expected it. I’m seated in the front row of the Sam Walton auditorium. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart CEO is pacing in front of the room with a cordless microphone, dressed in grays and blacks, mock turtleneck, frequently adjusting his glasses. He waves everyone in the room to their feet. I may be the only one in the room that doesn’t know the cheer. My momentary anxiety is relieved when I realize that it’s pretty easy to learn! I didn’t know that the Sam’s Club cheer always follows the Wal-Mart cheer.

I’m at the quarterly Milestone meeting, the public place that punctuates the progress of Wal-Mart’s sustainability initiative. The turn-out for Wal-Mart associates is low, seats are empty. Lee notices. The senior management team was out in full force. From the infamous Susan Chambers and Doug McMillan, President of Sam’s Club to the CFO and the head of Global Purchasing.

Well, bless our breathing lungs… International Paper announced yesterday it is not only canceling the test burn of tire chips in its Ticonderoga, NY plant, it’s abandoning the idea altogether. No test. No tires. No pollution. No lung damage. Not now. Not ever.

Turns out they couldn’t burn anywhere near the amount of tire chips they wanted to without exceeding the pollution limits specified in their permit. They were hoping to send 3 tons of tires per hour up in really ugly smoke. But in burning even just a measly ¼ ton they started bumping up against their own safety threshold.

This is total vindication of the point of view that said that without pollution controls this is one really bad idea. And copious thanks are due to everyone who wrote, called, cajoled, begged, pleaded, urged, demanded, implored, and otherwise beseeched International Paper to knock it off and stop being so self-centered. Whether you’re from around here or not, we who are and would have been breathing this junk appreciate the help. Big time. Everybody enjoy a clean lungful of fresh air on me.

Being on a board of directors is a strange thing to do. What a bad name it has… a bunch of directors sitting around being bored. Well not so at Greenpeace. Here, I spend the day pondering the possibilities of how to leverage this worldwide organization to maximize it’s impact on everything from global warming to preventing the international whaling industry from wiping out some of Earth’s largest and most beautiful creatures.

We’re here to visit Greenpeace’s largest vessel, the 220-foot Esperanza. As we sit in our San Diego meeting room, excitement erupts as we get news that Greenpeace activists are demonstrating at Kimberly-Clark's largest mill facility in North America using a bus outfitted as a giant Kleenex tissue box

So they’re burning tires now at the International Paper plant across the lake. Giant piles of petrochemical compounds going up in toxic smoke that’s going up into our air. Lovely. I’m sure we’re all very excited about the prospect of reduced lung functioning. Let’s all put on haz-mat suits and grill up some particulate-coated veggie burgers to celebrate.

Let's be honest: Aside from the fact that "natural" is a nice idea, it's a term that can nonetheless be applied to anything from nuclear energy to cigarettes. And "organic", while now representing a wonderful system that finally has clear regulatory guidelines, is still not a “whole” idea and an end unto itself.

Why? Because an organic soda filled with lots of organic sugar is still bad for your health just as an organic burrito loaded with organic salt is giving your body things it doesn't need.

So who comes along to reinvent things and create a new paradigm we consumers can use to find food that's really good for us? Not your friendly natural food store – but Hannaford, a large grocery store chain here in the Northeast. They’ve just launched their Guiding Star program, which rates 27,000 of the food products the company sells on their health and nutritional values. The system gives no stars to the least healthy products on Hannaford shelves and three stars to the best. Of the 27,000 products that were plugged into Hannaford’s formula, 77 percent received no stars. This system, while far from perfect, is a huge step forward in looking at healthy eating from a more holistic point of view.

Why do we need it? Because labels and claims like “fair trade,” “not-tested on animals,” “non-toxic,” “low-fat,” and “heart healthy,” to name just a few, don’t tell the whole story nor do they incorporate the whole impact the product bearing them can have on your health. There’s more on the program in the New York Times, but for now all I can say is way to go Hannaford!

As promised last week, here’s that free link to the recent Financial Times article about Seventh. It’s a nice piece that's well worth a few minutes whenever you got them to spare. Just make sure you've got all your voting out of the way first...

Greenpeace’s Green My Apple campaign is continuing to roil the digital waters. At least where its target is concerned.

As reported in the most recent edition of Rachel's Precaution Reporter, Greenpeace's high profile 'Green my Apple' booth at the Mac Expo was shut-down at the start of the event. Organizers of the Mac Expo claimed they had received complaints from “unnamed sources” about the display.

As a Greenpeace board member and lifelong Apple user I’m sad if not angry at Apple’s heavy-handed treatment of Greenpeace campaigners who are attempting to raise awareness of Apple’s poor environmental design standards.

This unwillingness to engage in dialogue, this unwillingness to tolerate criticism is the exact opposite of what corporate responsibility is about. And the use of huge corporate resources and connections to silence those who are challenging business to do better is a terrible example for such an innovative company to set.

I’ve been reflecting on the new Greenpeace Greener Apple Campaign. I don’t own an Apple. (For reasons relating to the various universes in which I travel, I’ve had to suck it up and become a Microsoft man.) But I certainly own a computer. This is being written on a Dell 8400 that’s the repository for everything from the music I love to very nearly every word I’ve ever written. It’s not an Apple but it’s still fast, efficient, and just plain fun to use. Imagining life without it is like trying to picture life without an arm or a leg. Yeah, I could do it. But I sure wouldn’t want to have to try.

So the news that computers are filled with all kinds of things that aren’t good for people or the planet is disturbing. Of course, I’ve known for awhile that the high tech situation isn’t good. What’s distressing about the recent Greenpeace report is the fact that things have not improved as fast as they should have in the years that people have been talking about issues like e-waste and toxic components.

I came across this well-reasoned post on the Temas Blog that offers some valid criticisms of the Greenpeace greener electronics report card. Greenpeace’s heart is in the right place, but its methodology needs improvement and it focuses on certain aspects of computer toxicology at the expense of others it largely ignores. Plus, it’s picking on Apple while other makers actually get lower grades, and that doesn’t seem fair. Rather than point fingers, I’d encourage computer makers to get down to work and fix the problem. Based on our own experiences working to detox some pretty ugly consumer products, here’s some advice: