In marketing especially, high-tech marketing it is important to understand the ‘learning curve’ needed by customers to buy or use a product or service. The steeper the learning curve the tougher the sell.

In sustainability it is the same. Lets take the example of the food sector. If customers need to understand the vast amount of information and knowledge required to understand the life-cycle of the food they eat and then compare the various food products on their own it will be a nightmare.

Expecting customers to do the research for ethical and environmental reasons is right in moral terms however, in the harsh reality of the practical world, it is not possible for customers to do this.

In the world of marketing for example Brands provide a easy to understand message. In a similar sense, the CD and MP3 player markets have followed the button design of the cassette player. Why? To make it easy for the customer.

One such product or idea in the Eco world is labelling. A standard label provides information to a customer in terms which is easy to understand and consistent on all products.

David Miliband, the environment secretary in the UK, is suggesting a eco-label scheme for the UK food products and clearly he understands the challenges.

This kind of “carbon labelling” would help both consumers who often felt “confused and powerless” and producers who felt their environmental efforts were going unrecognised and unrewarded, he said.

Tesco, which said in January that it planned to introduce new labels on the 70,000 products it sells to allow shoppers to compare carbon impacts.

It is currently investigating how to develop a “universally accepted and commonly understood” measuring system and has not said when labelled products will be in its stores.

“This is not an easy piece of work and will take time, particularly if this includes the whole life-cycle impact of food from production to distribution,” he said.

“In the shorter term, we want to develop environmental standards specifically for food production. This could cover a range of factors including energy inputs, fertiliser use, soil management, waste management and water pollution.”

The idea to provide a ‘eco label’ similar in design to a nutritional one is a good idea as it means a lesser learning curve for the customer.

The goal should be to create a label which is consistent, adheres to the highest standards and encompasses the entire life cycle and not just the ‘carbon’ cycle of a product.

Additional Resources:

• TreeHugger suggests Eco-labels.org as a fact-checker for all “green label” claims.
• A good introduction to Eco Labels (PDF) from Landcare Research NZ.

Textiles could be one of the most un-sustainable products in the world. In their entire lifecycle from growing the raw material or creating it from oil to manufacturing and selling and final disposal they can create a serious problem.

The Worsted Witch provides an excellent overview of “Textiles and Sustainability“.

She says:

Not all textiles are created equal. Some fabrics, such as polyester and nylon, which are petroleum-derived, are downright unsustainable. And although rayon is composed of wood pulp, its production is a polluting bad boy. Even ubiquitous cotton isn’t untouchable…

And continues by quoting from the an/Feb 2006 issue of Natural Home & Garden had this to say:

The textile industry creates a host of pollution problems. Factories discharge dyes and chemicals into waterways, and they release heat, fly ash, formaldehyde, and sulfurous and nitrous compounds into the air, thereby contributing to acid rain. Textile packaging, drums, and toxic chemicals are dumped into landfills. Even the used fabrics themselves are a problem. Many can’t be recycled because of their mixed-fiber content.

In this context, The Mint talks about the recent textile trade fair in Paris, Texworld, (Free Reg.) where organic cottons and fair-trade were the new trends helping companies to cash in.

As consumers wake up to global warming and globalization, ethical issues are gaining ground and spinning more and more hard cash in the competitive world of international textiles.

And textile ground-breaker Tencel, one of the world’s leading companies highlighting health and environmental concerns, said business was growing. “Demand for organic cotton is gaining momentum,” said Ram Srinivasan, general manager, marketing, KG Denim Ltd.

Socota uses clean cotton grown in Cameroon, which is then spun in Madagascar, woven in Madagascar and Mauritius, and turned into garments in Madagascar.

But as buyers worldwide look increasingly to eco-friendly fabrics, the ground-breakers in the field are having to look beyond purely environmental concerns to market their goods. Austrian firm Lenzing, which produces the new-age Tencel fibre made of wood pulp that revolutionized textiles in the 1990s, claimed that the fibre was perfect for people with sensitive skin.

As The Worsted Witch reminds us, “When a textile is labeled “organic,” it generally refers to the fiber itself, as opposed to the textile production process.”

There are benefits at different life-cycle stages of the organic and eco-friendly fabrics trade, both for consumers and producers however, in the larger scale of things it is important to see that organic cotton may travel half way around the world to reach the ethical customer.

Resources:

• A tutorial from the Charles Sturt University in Australia.

Business practices rooted in universal values can bring social and economic gains - Ban Ki-Moon | Secretary General of the United Nations

Charles Fishman writes about the relentless pursuit of improvement at Toyota taking the example of the work performed at its North American manufacturing plants. He provides one of the best writing on the Toyota Way.

As recently as 2004, a car body spent 10 hours in painting. Robots did much of the work, then as now, but they were supplied with paint through long hoses from storage tanks. “If we were painting a car red, before we could paint the next car white, we had to stop, flush the red paint out of the lines and the applicator tip, and reload the next color,” Buckner says. Georgetown literally threw away 30% of the pricey car paint it bought, cleaning it out of equipment and supply hoses when switching colors.

Now, each painting robot, eight per car, selects a paint cylinder the size of a large water bottle. A whirling disk at the end of the robot arm flings out a mist of top-coat paint. When a car is painted–it takes just seconds–the paint cartridge is set back down, and a freshly filled cartridge is selected by each robot.

No hoses need to be flushed. There is no cleaning between cars. All the paint is in the cartridges, which are refilled automatically from reservoirs. Cars don’t need to be batched by color–a system that saved paint but caused constant delays. Cars now spend 8 hours in paint, instead of 10. The paint shop at any moment holds 25% fewer cars than it used to. Wasted paint? Practically zero. What used to require 100 gallons now takes 70.

The benefits ripple out. Not only does Georgetown use less paint, it also buys less cleaning solvent and has dramatically reduced disposal costs for both. Together with new programming to make the robots paint more quickly, Buckner’s group has increased the efficiency of its car-wash-sized paint booths from 33 cars an hour to 50.

To achieve this kind of success you need a cultural change in the entire organization and not for example, only in the strategy department. The same goes of environmental ideas. And, there are many different management practices which are compatible with the ideas and principles of sustainability and these need to be incorporated into business strategy as it is aligned with Sustainability.

As reported yesterday on WorldisGreen.com, the Fast 50 was about the business and the environment. I mentioned yesterday about how the government is a major part of the solutions in this area, the Fast 50 has a web exclusive interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was revealing to read the interview and finding out that Schwarzenegger has studies business in college and using it all his life.

We get a lot more done when we create a great partnership to tackle problems. Whenever government does something alone, inevitably it fails. Why? Because even if we include Democrats and Republicans and Independents and say, “We’ve got the best brainpower,” that’s only the public sector. We need the best brainpower from the other half, the private sector. The important thing, as we’re creating a vision and setting guidelines, is that we’re working with business. We can say, “We want to reverse global warming and go after it from every angle without hurting business.” We want to show we’re friends and not the enemy.I come from a business background. I studied business in college, and I was always interested in the business side of everything. In all I’ve ever done–you know, bodybuilding, fitness, the movie business–I’ve always looked at it not only as the joy of doing the sport or the joy of acting but also, how do we make $1 into $10? How can we make a business out of it? Because everything has a business aspect.

What we are trying to do is show leadership in this area. If you look at the globe, you see California as a tiny box geographically speaking. But if you look at the power and influence of California, it immediately changes the picture. We have this huge name. This is what I want to benefit from to get the ball rolling all over the world.

First of all, you should never say, I can’t believe all the obstacles we’re facing. Every time there’s some new idea about anything, you will have people who despise any change. They love to hang on to the status quo. They will fight and they will take it to court. You have to expect it. The car companies have, you know, 25,000 lawyers, and this is what they do. We said, “Look guys, we understand, but eventually you’ve got to come our way, because it’s the best way to go.”

The bigger the obstacles, the more fun it is for me. Because anyone can overcome little obstacles. To overcome the big ones, it’s a huge challenge. If you have the personality that enjoys that, then you enjoy this job. For me, it’s inspirational to have big goals. You can have a tremendous impact on people’s lives. People say, “You can’t get everything done. There’s no way. It’s just too big. You’re one of these big action guys that likes big things, but everything can’t get done.” Well, so be it. But the only way to know if you can lift 500 pounds is if you put 500 pounds on the bar.

If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem - Eldridge Cleaver

In the new trend of cover stories on the greening of the world, Fast Company has this week’s cover story on the Fast 50, companies and individuals making a difference in the greening of the world but with a market-based or profit driven model.

Check out the list (as mentioned on the magazine, it is a list not a ranking) for some of the people and companies making a difference. The best part is the editorial and lead article for the cover story by Andrew Zolli called Business 3.0.

Mark Vomas, editor of Fast Company says in his letter; Greed, in All Its Greatness; that:

We have come to understand is that some problems are simply too big to be solved except by all of us. And that’s where the genius of the market comes in. Planetary troubles like climate change, food insecurity, resource scarcity, and disease represent the challenges of our generation, and of many to come. But for a lot of smart, ambitious people, they also represent the profit making opportunity of a lifetime.

I don’t mean to get all smiley-faced about this. Our challenges remain daunting, and the solutions themselves are sometimes problematic in this interlocking world.

Still, this year’s Fast 50 gives hope even to a cynic like me. If our fate hinges on mankind’s noble impulses, we are all doomed. With greed, on the other hand, good things are possible.

Clearly, this is a big thumbs up to market driven solutions. One big player in this game is the government represented by Arnold Scwarzenegger whose bold plays will create a market for entrepreneurial markets to bloom.

Andrew Zolli writes a great lead story.

As if on cue, however, a suite of new global forces is emerging that will remake the operating environment for global capitalism, obliterate the walls–and the distinctions–between the Friedmanesque Hatfields and the Naderesque McCoys, and inject a “greed is good” mentality into our approach to grand social problems. The clinical, value-neutral capitalism of old is about to follow the recently departed Friedman to the grave.

There are several reasons why this is so, but the first should be obvious to any but the most hardened anti-environmental skeptic: If we don’t do something soon, we’re screwed. A quick (and necessarily depressing) look at the numbers suggests that supplies of our most basic commodities–potable water, fossil fuels, arable land, clean air–as well as critical industrial commodities such as aluminum, steel, and even silicon, are all under stress.

Water provides a typical example: By 2030, more than one in three human beings will not have enough to drink, or will run the risk of dying by drinking what they’ve got. Resource scarcity is going to be a front-page business issue as well, affecting industries from transportation to electronics. According to estimates by the International Institute for Environment and Development, at today’s levels of production, there may be only another 28 years’ worth of copper in the ground, another 21 years’ worth of lead, a 17-year supply of silver, and 37 years’ worth of tin.

Yet despite our precarious position, global catastrophe is by no means a foregone conclusion. Well ahead of slower-moving governments, companies of every size and in every part of the world are now waking up to humanity’s impending and interlocking crises, and the vastly lucrative rewards that solving them might bring. If humanity has a future, it will rest significantly on these companies and entrepreneurs’ ability to create and globally distribute civilization-saving innovations.

As with the Industrial and Information Revolutions before them, the protagonists in the “Eco-Innovation” Revolution will take the field with new approaches, ideas, and technologies that will upend our notions of production, consumption, wealth, and invention. Our current economic system was devised in an era in which labor was scarce and natural resources were abundant. We’re moving into an era in which the opposite is true, and that’s going to change capitalism’s playbook for good.

As I think more about this issue and discuss with people here, I realize that how the experience I have gained, the learning in the MBA, my current job, my current reading and writing in the sustainability field all herald a great future in this area.

The companies and individuals who are in the beginning of this new and exciting Green Wave have a great future ahead and all the while helping the planet. To Business 3.0.

The Mint reports that (reg.), Reliance Industries, the largest private sector company in India (based on Market capitalization), is launching its bio-diesel plant in my home state of Andhra Pradesh in South India through its subsidiary Reliance Petroleum.

RIL has ambitious plans for the biofuels business and is cultivating Jatropha, a plant that can yield high quality biodiesel, in a 200 acre plot at Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. “The company will set up a pilot project at Kakinada this year and once economies of scale are ensured, it will start working on a full-fledged transesterification unit,” said a senior RIL executive who did not wish to be identified.

A recent report of the Energy Information Administration (EIA), an international agency that tracks the energy sector, estimates the demand for biodiesel at 25 million litres in 2010 and 28 million litres in 2020. EIA also says that depending on biodiesel’s potential as a lubricity additive, something that is added to fuels to optimise the functioning of the engine, could reach as much as 1.8 billion litres in 2010 and 2.4 billion litres in 2020.

Last year, Andhra Pradesh set up a separate department to oversee the cultivation of Jatropha and other plants that are sources of biofuel on 7,28,000 hectares of wasteland. According to documents detailing Andhra Pradesh’s biodiesel plans, a Jatropha seed contains 27-31% extractable oil and a plantation of around 1,00,000 hectares can yield 2,50,000-3,00,000 tonnes of crude Jatropha oil a year, or roughly, $100 million in revenue.

There is no business to be done on a dead planet. -David Brower

Purchasing function of various companies (profit, not-for-profit and government) around the world have a lot of clout. In my current role, I have been trying to develop sustainable purchasing practices to improve the environmental performance of the organization.

The Turning the Ship Online Dialogue last week concentrated on Sustainable Purchasing. About Turning the Ship click here and for Week 1 here.

Michelle Wyman, Executive Director of the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives, USA (ICLEI-USA) writes about the power of local government dollars.

U.S. cites large and small can exercise their significant buying power to have both a direct impact on the market because of the volume of products and services they procure and an indirect impact by spurring similar action across the private sector. They do so while also increasing their bottom line. The growing emphasis on green purchasing presents unprecedented opportunity for the business community.

Think about all the local government facilities in your city: courtrooms, city halls, office buildings, police and fire stations, recreational facilities, parking lots, and libraries. Consider their computers, photocopiers, refrigerators, fax machines and lighting, heating and cooling needs. Cities also deal in landscaping, catering, conferences and meetings as well as vehicle fleets.

Of course, making sustainable purchasing choices also enhances the sheer quality of life in communities. It provides direct health benefits for city employees as well as less global warming and air pollution, all of which makes these cities cleaner and safer places to live, work and raise families.

Arthur B. Weissman, Ph.D., President and CEO, Green Seal, Inc.. The discussion is based on the different ways governments have used tools like environment standards to create a market for green products and services. The Global Ecolabeling Network and Green Seal in the US is examined. Read the rest of this entry »