Monthly Archives: May 2007

The News changes at News Corp

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When a visionary like Rupert Murdoch speaks we need to listen…very carefully. From owning a small newspaper in Australia he now owns and heads one of the top media companies in the world. Now, he announces that News Corp has acknowledged the risks in Climate Change and wants to tackle it head on.

Rupert Murdoch gave a speech a couple of years back on how the media landscape has changed and how the audiences are different from before. He saw the trend, accepted the challenge and then, he bought MySpace.com. From nowehere, he owned one of the most popular sites in the world and making more money then he coughed up for the company with a single advertising deal with Google. As he says, he took a small risk and re-invented themselves.

Now, Climate change is similar for News Corp. Going carbon neutral is good. Cutting down energy is good. But Rupert realises that he can make a bigger difference. For good or bad, he has had a strong influence on his large media network across the world. Now, that influence may make a big difference.

In his speech he spells out the potential:

But becoming carbon neutral is only the beginning. The climate problem will not be solved by one company reducing its emissions to zero, and it won’t be solved by one government acting alone.
The climate problem will not be solved without mass participation by the general public in countries around the globe.

And that’s where we come in.

We’re starting with our own carbon footprint. Not nothing. But much of what we’re doing is already, or soon will be, little more than the standard way of doing business.

Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours… That’s the carbon footprint we want to conquer. We cannot do it with gimmicks. We need to reach them in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content– make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just one percent. That would be like turning the State of California off for almost two months.

And imagine if… we were able to take on the carbon footprint of our audience in Asia. Many of the most serious impacts of climate change will be felt there, and China and India’s emissions are rising rapidly. STAR is the number one Hindi-language network in the world. In India alone, we reach 100 million people.

The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

For too long, the threats of climate change have been presented as doom and gloom– because the consequences are so serious.

We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

The biggest challenge that I have seen with Climate Change and other sustainability issues is the marketing. Changing people’s behaviour is a herculean task. We have to wait and see how this strategy actually gets implemented but the signs are positive.

The real message in the speech is this: The unique potential– and duty– of a media company are to help its audiences connect to the issues that define our time. 

Shaping managers for eco management

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Sushil Kumar, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management – Lucknow (IIM-L), one of the top of MBA schools in the country, writes about the newly introduced “Corporate Environmental Management and Carbon Markets” course.

Professor Kumar points to the increasing interest from large corporates from the Indian industry who are interested in the Clean Development Mechanism and he actually puts a number on the certified emission reduction (CER) units per year available in India right now at USD 2 billion.

In this scenario he believes it is important that B-Schools take up the initiative to train managers for a changing future.

The objectives of the course on Corporate Environmental Mangement and Carbon Markets are as follows:

  • To provide an overview of global and national environmental policy/law issues.
  • To discuss the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Environmental Management Plan (EMP), and Environmental Management Systems (EMS).
  • To examine and analyse various strategies of environmental management.
  • To describe implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and understand Emission Trading Systems.
  • To understand the Clean Development Mechanism from the perspective of business in India.

This is great stuff. In my MBA, I had to struggle to find courses which would help to understand this field from a business  point of view better.

I decided to do an elective in Environmental and Resource Economics from the Economics department in Adelaide University which provided the theory and a self-managed course in Environmental Accounting provided a practical grounding. And, all through the MBA I took the time to read books, follow stories and people to connect the learnings in the MBA to the green new world of the future.  For more information on what I did and the books I read check the post Life Study – Continous Personal Development.

I hope more schools around the world take the tip from IIM-L.

Green Business in India

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Dr. Nachiket Mor, Chairman, New Ventures India Steering Committee and Deputy Managing Director, ICICI Bank announces a 100 cr fund to invest in Green Businesses in India (hat tip: Karen Seeh).

Dr. Mor also announced Rs.100 crore investment towards the innovation and development of green businesses in India.

“The burden of climatic changes will be borne by the developing countries, therefore opening up a huge market for green business and the market of clean energy is going to double by 2015″, he said.

India has to maintain its GDP growth to become a developed country and green businesses have lot of growth potential for Indian economy, he added.

India offers a great opportunity for investors who can take risk, invest and take initiative and the current economical growth provides the right pace for venture funding to innovative projects, said Dr. T Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

New Ventures India’s goal is to achieve at least 15 million dollars worth of investments in 20 sustainable and green businesses by 2008. These include areas of green building materials, energy efficiency products and services, renewable energy and water products, said Deikun.

CII – Godrej GBC aims at creating India as one of the global leaders in green businesses and India has leadership potential in green technology in the cement, paper, green buildings and renewable energy sector, said S Raghupathy, Senior Director and Head CII – Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Center (Godrej GBC).

Dr. Mor is a visionary in this area. In Deeshaa, our team had interacted with him at different times and he spearheaded the entry of ICICI bank in the Micro finance and rural banking areas. This will be the new growth area for ICICI.

The Green Wave is spreading in all directions and India has great potential in this area.

Toyota vs Honda

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Andrew Winston provides an explanation of what can be termed as green leadership taking the example of Toyota.

So given the anti-environmental lobbying of Toyota, shouldn’t Honda be crowned the green leader? Yes, but only if we define green leadership to include only the environmental actions. Yes, the lobbying deducts from Toyota’s green bona fides, but the commercial success of the Prius is an overriding factor. Toyota won the marketing battle in a big way.

My point is this: green success cannot just be about being green and creating good eco-products that find a niche. Points have to go to those who can market the best and play somewhat rough with the competition.

The Greening of Corporate America

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GreenBiz.com reports on a SmartMarket report released by McGraw-Hill and produced in partnership with Siemens Building Technologies.

“Today’s corporate leaders are already very conscious of using green practices when considering new facilities, and they expect green building to have an increasing impact in the future,” said Brad Haeberle, director of marketing for Siemens Building Technologies. “Moreover, they believe that green building is in their company’s best interests, not only for the clear economic benefits, but for the market differentiation and competitive advantage.”According to the study’s findings, 18 percent of the corporate leaders surveyed are in a position to transform the market — 15 percent view sustainability as a competitive advantage and the other 3 percent are actually driving their entire businesses through this value-driven lens.

Over the next three years, more companies see themselves as entering this top tier, with nearly a third of the sample aiming to be market leaders in sustainability. The report found that by early 2009, but perhaps sooner, American businesses will have reached a tipping point in embracing green as a cornerstone of their corporate philosophy. At that point, 82 percent of the companies will have greened at least 16 percent of their building stock.

And over the weekend, the CERES annual conference, Advancing Sustainable Prosperity, in Boston conducted a survey. The CERES conference is based on the premise that “businesses can use their market-economy power for environmental good, which at this year’s conference largely means blunting climate disruption, while making an honest profit in the process.”

According to the “Advancing Sustainable Prosperity” survey conducted by Ceres last week at its annual conference in Boston, direct action by government and corporations are the best ways to improve the sustainability of the global economy.

Nearly 80 percent of the nearly 300 respondents cited climate change as the biggest global sustainability challenge today, while an overwhelming majority — 90 percent — of those surveyed said greenhouse gas emission reductions and improved energy efficiency are the most important sustainability issue that corporations need to address in 2007. Two-thirds of the respondents — 67 percent — cited renewable energy technology as the technology with the biggest opportunity for achieving sustainable prosperity.

“Achieving sustainable prosperity will require integrating environmental and social challenges into corporate strategies and capital markets so that the global economy and the global community can flourish hand in hand,” said Ceres president Mindy S. Lubber.

Reinvention for Sustainability

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Jesse Hogan writes in The Age about his interview with Michael Braungart, who runs the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency and is the co-developer of the Cradle to Cradle system.

Braungart provides a very radical (but needed) view:

Michael Braungart…describes the theory of rationing harmful emissions to protect the environment as “like saying you’ll protect your child by beating them a little less”.

“We are far too many people on this planet to (just) be less bad,” he says at his office in Hamburg in Germany. Professor Braungart contests Al Gore’s contention in An Inconvenient Truth that environment problems are linked to overpopulation. He says the weight of all the world’s ants is more than four times the weight of all humans, yet their calorie consumption is the equivalent to that of 30 million humans.

“The question is if we can organise our material flows differently, because we are only a problem because we make waste.”

The agency creates two types of products: biological nutrients, which disintegrate after use, and technical nutrients, which can be reused in future products.

Professor Braungart, a member of the German Government’s committee for environmental innovation, says working with large companies does not inevitably compromise green ideals.

“It needs protest on one side but on the other side you need also to reinvent things to be beneficial,” he says.

India and Ethanol

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Jonathan Kingsman, a Paris based broker and MD of Societe J Kingsman is talking about the future of India in ethanol production. The firm concentrates on the sugar industry with a reputation in “physical brokerage, premium reporting, market analysis and price prediction”. They are also covering Ethanol due to its interplay with Sugar.

Bio-fuels are suddenly fashionable. Does ethanol have a future in India?

I believe more than Brazil, it is India that has a future in ethanol, mainly because it is derived from a by-product, molasses, instead of cane juice. In Brazil, ethanol is part of a debate whether the country should use sucrose, which is in demand, to make food or as a fuel. In India that debate is irrelevant.

In fact, as India’s sugar production increases, the output of molasses will increase too. Instead of dumping that in the world market, it would be more profitable to make ethanol out of it.

The entire interview is worth a read however, I want to concentrate here on the raw material used to create ethanol. Ethanol has many benefits. As Jonathan suggests:

They are Green, farmer-friendly, appeal to every politician’s desire to reduce import dependency, allow governments to give subsidy to growers of oilseeds and sugarcane, and generate industrial investment. All this makes bio-fuels very palatable to everyone across the political and economic spectrum.

However, they could be a bigger risk.

Oil is fungible. It can come from any origin and the only risk is price. Bio-fuels are agri-produce, dictated by weather and crop cycles. So the risks of short supply and price swings are much higher. Yet so many countries are now pushing bio-fuels!

Another problem is the food-fuel debate. Brazil produces its ethanol from a cane and in the US it is from Corn. Both have the additional problem of hurting the food supply markets. I had written much about this before. You can check them out here, here (bio fuels and water) and here (bio fuels and forests) and here (bio fuels and food).

In India, it can be produced from a by-product of sugar, Molasses and hence, depending on the local sugar production ethanol’s raw material may be less of an issue than other areas. The water issue still remains. However, this could be an area to watch.

A Greener Apple

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Steve Jobs released yesterday a note on the Apple website about a “Greener Apple”. This was Jobs’s attempt to communicate to the stakeholders of Apple about its environmental programs till date and its future plans.A Greener Apple

When Greenpeace released its “Guide to Greener Electronics” report, I was shocked to find Apple at the bottom of the list. I use a iBook G4 and a iPod Nano. I know what it means to use well designed products. I also knew that Apple’s laptops are one of the best in terms of energy-efficiency.

Good Design is one of the basis for a environmentally friendly product. It did not make logical sense that Apple could be at the bottom of the heap. As Jobs said, “Apple is already a leader in innovation and engineering, and we are applying these same talents to become an environmental leader.”

Now Steve Jobs letter explains how Apple is ahead of the other computer manufacturers and what its plans are for the future.

Some highlights:

Apple completely eliminated the use of CRTs in mid-2006.

Apple products met both the spirit and letter of the RoHS restrictions on cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants years before RoHS went into effect.

Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of arsenic in all of its displays by the end of 2008.

Apple plans to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of mercury by transitioning to LED backlighting for all displays when technically and economically feasible.


Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008.

Apple recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, which is equal to 9.5% of the weight of all products Apple sold seven years earlier. We expect this percentage to grow to 13% in 2007, and to 20% in 2008. By 2010, we forecast recycling 19 million pounds of e-waste per year — nearly 30% of the product weight we sold seven years earlier.

In the above comparison Jobs in his own style clearly demonstrated how much ahead Apple is compared to its competitors and at the sametime pointing to Greenpeace about its method of rating companies.

Jobs highlighted the importance of design and materials, especially the iMac.

Producers must also take responsibility for the design and material choices that create the product in the first place. It is these choices that fundamentally determine the weight and recycling value of material waste at the end of a product’s life. The iMac is a world-class example of material efficiency, having shed 60% of its weight since its debut in 1998. Our designs use aircraft-grade aluminum, stainless steel and high-grade plastics that are in high demand from recyclers, who recover and resell these raw materials for use in other types of products. Few of our competitors do the same.

Unique Lessons

Some unique lessons come out of this note from Jobs.

One, that communicating with your stakeholders is important. As Jobs suggests, even abandoning Apple’s policy of not discussing about the future is important in this scenario. By providing some information about its future environmental plans to its competitors Apple is gaining by communicating to its customers, shareholders and other stakeholders and gaining reputation.

Two, the viral nature of the note from Steve Jobs. Jobs previously wrote about his now famous “Thoughts on Music” suggesting the move to a non-DRM music from iTunes. That created waves. A sincere, direct note from the CEO was a great viral marketing idea. He replicates this again.

Three, What is the methodology used by Greenpeace in its report? Is is just based on plans or plans on releasing plans as Jobs suggest? Greenpeace needs to be have a more transparent and robust methodology in releasiing its reports.

Fourth, the importance of design and innovation in general and to environmental performance in particular. The iMac and the generational change seen in the iPod are both examples of how design can be useful in cutting down size, creating a better product and improving the environmental performance.

The Personal Sustainability Project

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What if the employees of an organization start making sustainability personal? What if the organization can help employees in making this happen? What could be it mean for the employees and the employer? These are some of the questions that I am grappling with daily in my job.

One main issue we were struggling with was to create a compelling sustainability theme which should resonate with all our employees and make them change their behaviours at work. What we hit upon was providing them with a “sustainability lifestyle at work” or “sustainable work practices” program. The best part of this program – it will provide the employee with ideas and solutions to become environmentally friendly at their home and save some money!

Our’s is a state government organization with 7000+ employees spread over 300 offices and other buildings all over the state. Add to this the diversity of the workforce and the reluctance to change and we have a big job at hand.

Sarah Rich at World Changing writes about the “personal sustainability project”. Here, she connects sustainable workplace practices with the example of the personal sustainability project of Walmart. This is exactly what we are planning to do at the Department of Families and Communities in South Australia.

Sarah provides evidence about how “energy -efficient” work practices have increased the productivity of employees at various organizations. According to the Cool Companies report for United States Post Office branch in Reno, Nevada, when the management renovated the lighting system for greater energy-efficiency it has resulted in multiple benefits.

Energy savings projected for the whole building come to about $22,400 a year. The new ceiling also saved $30,000 a year in maintenance costs. Combined energy and maintenance savings came to $50,000 a year, a six-year payback. But the productivity gains were worth $400,000 to $500,000 annually – paying for the renovation in less than 12 months.

The inspiring example to me is however, Wal-Mart.

According to the NyTimes:

In the last year, Wal-Mart has quietly introduced an ambitious program in the United States — in equal parts self-help class, corporate retreat and tent revival — that tries to turn its 1.3 million workers into a model for its 200 million customers on issues ranging from personal health to the environment.

In extensive workshops held nationwide, the company is teaching its employees the benefits of carpooling to work with three colleagues (for a savings of $400 a year on gas), quitting cigarette smoking ($1,500 a year) and turning off a television ($40 a year in electricity, plus more time to spend with family).

The program, called the personal sustainability project, is voluntary, but it is proving popular, with roughly 50 percent of employees in a dozen states signing up so far. The company may eventually extend the program to its workers around the world.

For Wal-Mart, the payoff could be significant: if it succeeds, the initiative could improve employee morale, and therefore productivity; reduce health care spending on a work force with higher rates of heart disease and diabetes than the general public; and improve Wal-Mart’s reputation with the image-conscious consumers it is courting with costlier merchandise.

The main difference in our program is to change the behaviour of people at home and work both. One should follow the other. By doing it right at home and saving money they can bring the same behaviour to work (hopefully!). As the numbers and ideas in the Walmart example show, the experience can create a huge diffrence to the employees. In the end, this should translate into better performance for the organization.

Health programs were not in my agenda but I guess it is an idea which I can incorporate. The sell to the management has been hard but we have won them over. Now, we are building the resources (website, presentations, brochures, ideas, frameworks) needed to make this happen.

We will not have the massive budget of Wal-Mart however, one way of achieving the goal is to partner with voluntary networks inside the organization working on similar stuff.

I am exploring ideas on “social psychology” and “social marketing” to sell this concept to the employees and the office managers at various offices across the state.

Reading this article has provided me with further evidence that we may be on the right track.