Businesses prep for green fad to fade

Liz Redman

Just a few years ago “globalization” was all the rage. Books such as Thomas Friedman’s "The World is Flat" was at the top of The New York Times’ Best Sellers list and conference planners across the country lined up speakers to address globalization in keynote addresses. Now, just two years later, the novelty of the “globalization” theme has worn off and people have largely accepted that the United States can’t prevent participating in a global economy. Today's newspaper headlines and conferences are wearing a new color to draw people’s attention. The color is green and it comes in many shapes and sizes: “global climate change,” “sustainability,” “carbon neutrality,” “eco-efficiency,” and the list goes on.

While many attribute America’s recent interest in addressing climate change and assessing our environmental footprint to Al Gore’s persuasive performance in his Academy Award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," interest in sustainability has been growing steadily over the past decade. A recent study conducted by the United Nations Environment Program showed that the average number of pages for companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports rose by 45 percent between 2000 and 2002. By 2003, the CSR Network concluded that almost half of the world's 100 largest companies issued an environmental, social or sustainability report. And by 2005, estimates for the number of companies publishing CSR reports had grown to nearly 3,000.

Every day, businesses add content to Web pages devoted to explanations of their environmental responsibility or green business practices; increasing numbers of business schools offer green MBAs; and cities come up with new policies or incentive programs to attract cleantech businesses. In the last year the concept has hit a “tipping point” and has become much more than just the topic for discussion at annual conferences for environmental organizations or among progressive companies’ PR strategists.

The evidence of sustainability’s popularity appears in all arenas:

In business: “Sustainability” appears in corporate social responsibility programs, staff titles, public relations campaigns and triple bottom line reports. The new mainstream recognition for the concept has given even Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), the world’s largest retailer, the courage to “go green.” Its new program encourage "sustainability" of the world's fisheries, forests and farmlands, decrease energy use and reduce waste, encourage its 60,000 suppliers to move toward more environmentally-safe production processes, and persuade consumers to buy green.

Both British Petroleum Co. (NYSE: BP) and Chevron Texaco (NYSE: CVS) made recent investments in alternative energy. Even companies without historical expertise in environmental technologies or sustainability, including mainstream banks and consulting companies, have developed “green funds” or branches that offer sustainable consulting services. Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, a strategy, design and management consultancy focused on building economic value through sustainability initiatives, explains, “It’s changed from a handful of companies wanting to be leaders in sustainability with the rest in ‘wait and see’ mode to everyone — suddenly — not wanting to be left behind. Companies are no longer asking ‘show us the business case;’ instead they’re asking ‘show us what to do.’”

In city, state and regional economic development strategy: In an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, 500 mayors of large and small cities from 50 states and the District of Columbia have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement. In the Bay Area, San Francisco Mayor Newsom’s Clean Tech Advisory Council, Oakland Mayor Dellums’ Green Tech Advisory Council, and San Jose officials all compete to devise strategies to grow their local green tech/clean tech clusters.

In the Northwest, the Oregon Business Plan has created a new Sustainability Task Force to oversee its plans to integrate sustainability into all its business plan initiatives ranging from education to land use to the state’s permitting process. In Chicago, the Chicago Climate Exchange for emissions permit trading has gotten off to such a strong start that many cities are hoping to replicate it. Massachusetts new Governor, Deval Patrick, has vowed to turn his state into “the renewable energy center of the world.” Even Texas has found a way to take environmental leadership with its capital’s leading clean-energy incubator at the University of Texas-Austin and investing about $210 million of venture capital in cleantech businesses across Texas last year.

In mass media: Green is the theme for TV program specials, magazine covers, political cartoons in newspapers and more. From “Google goes green” to “Greening the Big Apple,” the headlines just can’t seem to get enough of the color. In June 2007, The Wall Street Journal published 19 articles that included the words “alternative energy.” In just one week in June, The New York Times ran 24 articles on greenhouse gas emissions.

But the results from a search of The Economist’s headlines over the past seven and a half years are even more telling:

Source: TheEconomist.com search results                                        

Date: June 27, 2007

At conferences, business summits, etc.: In any of the cities on SustainLane’s top 5 U.S. sustainable cities list (Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) attending events on renewable energy, climate change and sustainable business could be a full-time job. At the fifth annual Oregon Leadership Summit in January 2007, sustainability was the theme that brought together more than 1,000 businesses, academic and legislative leaders helping to shape Oregon's economy. This year, the East Bay Business Times hosted a Sustainable Business Summit. The list goes on.

With all the hype around “green,” how can we prevent the concept from ending up as just a fad? Like all trends, green topics will eventually lose their prime real estate on magazine covers and full page newspaper advertisements. The question we should be asking is: When the color goes out of style, will the ideas and concepts remain?  Both the 19th century’s industrial revolution and the twentieth century’s Internet revolution are past their heyday in the media but no one would argue that this prevented them from having profound impacts on the way we live.