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From the Incremental to the Monumental: Rock Climbing Tips for Business Leaders
This post was originally published on Sustainable Brands and is reprinted with permission.
Yalmaz Siddiqui, Senior Director, Environmental Strategy at Office Depot, contemplating a route
By: Jeff Mendelsohn, CEO, New Leaf Paper
When rock climbing on a challenging route, one often encounters situations where there is no way to reach the next good hold without moving beyond the security of one’s current position. These are committing moments, requiring vision, confidence, and dynamic movement. They are beyond the realm of the incremental. They are also a powerful analogy for our efforts to create a sustainable business community.
Experienced climbers integrate the principles and fundamentals of ascending a challenging cliff into their body, mind, and spirit. They build internal capacity and confidence from years of practice. This frees them from preoccupation with just hanging on, to look up, establish a clear vision of the path forward and connect that vision with action. Expert climbers almost dance on the wall, moving in sequences rather than one move at a time. It takes real commitment – the first move requiring the next and the next… There is no turning back, and there is no greater feeling.
In contrast, beginning climbers are easy to spot. They use their arms too much. Not yet trusting themselves, they grab each hold with all their might, fatiguing their arms and inviting stress and panic to their thoughts. They over-grip. Not yet tuned in to keeping their center of gravity over their feet, they fail to use their body position to conserve energy. They only have the bandwidth to see what is immediately in front of their face, only as far as the next hold.
What a Toilet Paper Launch Can Teach Us About Innovation
By: Marc Stoiber
I had an interesting conversation with Isabelle Faivre, Marketing Director of Cascades Tissue Group, last week. Cascades just made headlines with the launch of Moka beige bathroom tissue paper, a new twist for the US market and arguably the most environmentally responsible product of its kind.
The only thing is, Moka isn’t exactly a new brand concept. It was, in fact, first launched in non-white napkins in the late ‘90s. But early sales were sluggish at best.
So why is Faivre bullish on Moka, the bathroom tissue? And why are the brand’s napkins increasingly getting an enthusiastic reception in the commercial market (hotels, schools, etc)? What’s changed?
The Hottest Places for Solar Panels
By: James Hawkins
It’s a pretty obvious fact that some countries are much, much hotter than others. However, where is the best place to live to benefit from solar panels – is it where it’s sunniest? In the US, California has excellent environmental conditions for solar panels. In particular, a trip to Inyokern, on the eastern edge of Sierra Nevada, in the Mojave Desert, would be the place where you’d most need sunscreen – it receives more solar radiation annually than anywhere else in the whole of North America.
It would seem logical that this would be where you could earn the most money by installing solar panels, since it is where they’d generate the most power. However, while there is a Federal tax credit for renewable energy, additional incentives vary widely from state to state. The seemingly unlikely best state for installing domestic solar panels is, in fact, New Jersey.
How Dow Corning Uses Innovation to Further CSR and Business Goals
By Amanda MacArthur, Vice President, CDC Development Solutions
In the 21st century marketplace, innovation and the need to constantly seek out new ideas is critical – as we’ve seen across industry sectors, stagnation is the one of the fastest ways to lose customers and forgo potential profit. This is true in the mature markets for that require either completely new products or adaptation of existing ones to meet emerging consumer demand – whether it’s repackaging products to reach the market at the base of the pyramid or it’s redesigning a battery to withstand power surges and disruptions.
Consumers in emerging markets increasingly demand – as they should – products designed to meet their specific needs rather than ones patched together or retro-fitted from existing ones. For companies with US or Western Europe headquarters and R&D divisions, unless one can get its people into that particular country, this presents a very specific challenge. In the past, it often meant long-term placements that required moving entire families for years at a time. It was expensive and thus reserved primarily for employees on the fast track to the C-Suite. But what about those who will never sit in the corner office? Companies who don’t provide these employees – those who design, build and sell products on a daily basis – with the opportunity to experience a slice of life in the critical emerging markets are missing a major opportunity.
Wrapped In Nature: New Biodegradable Food Packages
By Alona Volinsky, NoCamels
An Israeli company named Tipa is developing biodegradable packages that automatically “perish” within 180 days, just like your average orange or banana. Now you can finally throw your junk out the window without feeling too guilty about it.
Most food and beverages we consume daily are packaged in plastic, which can take up to a thousand years to degrade.
Tipa co-founder and CEO, Daphna Nissenbaum, tells NoCamels that “today recyclable materials are used for disposable dishes, bags and travel packages but not for food, mainly because these materials lack the required qualities: they are too fragile, lack elasticity, are not sealed or contain dangerous ingredients. As a result, most of the food packing industry still relies on plastic.”
Big Business is Finally Taking Climate Seriously
Along with increased environmental awareness, cold, hard facts have led many to stop questioning climate change and environmental degradation. It is not just remote areas of the world that are beginning to feel the impact of climate change. Areas of the Western World are seeing droughts, wild weather, and other phenomena that are associated with human-caused global climate change.
Individuals have begun to make changes in their lifestyles, but what about big business?
While the government lags woefully behind in efforts to prepare the public, and itself, for changes in climate, big business is taking it upon themselves to make preparation efforts. Many businesses, especially within the energy sector are making plans as to how they will manage any sort of climate change, and are also working on efforts to help their customers to prepare in the event of a dramatic climate-based catastrophe.
How Social Media Really Can Produce Social Change
By Stephanie Myers
Across the digital universe, brands are asking consumers to click for the good of the planet.
GE wants consumers to tag green innovations in their neighborhood on an interactive map and then check in while on Foursquare. Danone puts a call out on Facebook and Tumblr for photos that celebrate the environment. Starbucks asks consumers to pledge to switch from paper cups to reuseable mugs – and then publicize it to all their friends.
These social media-driven initiatives are naturally intended to build greater awareness of the brand’s own social responsibility positioning. But in asking consumers to create, vote, like, pledge and share online, can these tactics actually foster a change in attitude or even behaviour? Can social media help build a more sustainable society, one campaign at a time?
Interestingly, a global study from The Netherlands Organization argues that it can.
Community Planning Projects and the Importance of Stakeholder Engagement
By David Jaber
When working for more resilient communities or responsible businesses, one pattern that emerges is that they are more process oriented than results-oriented. This comes across perhaps most clearly in larger-scale planning projects, where a vital piece of the work revolves around stakeholder engagement.
As an illustration, a proposed residential/entertainment/hotel complex in coastal California became quite controversial as the diverse perspectives of a wide array of groups became clear. Chambers of commerce and labor groups wanted the jobs, badly-needed in the economically-depressed area. Citizen and environmental groups were concerned about the air pollution from increased traffic and ecosystem impacts of coastal development. The state’s Bay Conservation and Development Commission needed to know that the project met their standards. The Greenbelt Alliance, an open-space preservation group, needed to know that the project met their standards. A casino was part of the complex, raising ethical concerns around gambling. Yet, the social justice imperative for the project remained. Gaming has been one of the relatively few robust economic development avenues available to Native American tribes, and it was a tribe leading the development effort — seeking to improve the community health that had been decimated by federal policies over the decades — to lift its people out of poverty.
The Best of Opportunity Green – Sustainability Goes Mainstream
In case you missed one of the top sustainability events of the last year, The Best of Opportunity Green created by the team at Yoxi.tv provides a number of actionable quotes from the thought leaders that attended the conference. Piloted by co-founders Karen Solomon and Mike Flynn, Opportunity Green works to “inspire a collaborative culture of new thinking and unconventional ideas that push change in unexpected ways…that seek to balance the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.” This new thinking is laid out via quotes from senior leaders at companies like Starbucks, Sony, SXSW Eco, and many others. Click to hear how in-the-trenches leaders in CSR and sustainability are moving the needle towards actionable change in the corporate world and beyond.
Fundraising for Social Marketing Campaigns?
- Post ads to let Massachusetts citizens express their dismay about recent votes to gut the Clean Air Act.
The importance of fundraising as an element of any social marketing campaign is a consideration that should not be overlooked. Many social marketing campaigns are developed by nonprofits and governmental organizations that recognize the value of the public good they are marketing but have no mechanism for capturing, leveraging or monetizing it in the same way that commercial marketing can. Therefore, such organizations are often dependent on foundation and government dollars for their campaigns…until recently.
In late 2010, a startup called LoudSauce entered the scene. Founded by entrepreneur Colin Mutchler and incubated at social venture accelerator Hub Ventures, LoudSauce has disrupted the social marketing landscape by introducing a crowd funding platform for marketing campaigns.
Many years before launching LoudSauce, Mutchler had worked at a national youth media network to build an authentic youth voice in the mass media. During this time, he noticed that the work he and others did in the nonprofit world was conspicuously absent from the public dialogue. In fact, it was totally absent from mainstream culture. It was then that Mutchler hatched an idea that would give small social ventures, nonprofits, and individuals a voice. After going to business school and leading global digital marketing campaigns with major brands, he leveraged his experience to launch LoudSauce.
Why Your Startup Needs a Good Lawyer
By: Pricilla Burgess
This article was originally published on Sustainable Industries.
Ignore Shakespeare. Do not kill all the lawyers. You need yours in good health, walking around, and capable of keeping your business on track.
Too many people think of lawyers like a legal AAA. They only call when total disaster has struck. But that’s too late. If you are running a company you need to check in with your lawyer before you make a mistake, not afterwards. Think of your corporate lawyer as your best friend who will be there to guide you down the right path or, if you’ve got a quick mouth and quicker send finger like me, he or she will help pull you out of the morass.
Every startup needs a corporate lawyer. This is a specialized branch of the legal profession. This is not the lawyer you call for a divorce or to sue McDonalds because the coffee’s too hot. They are not your friendly neighborhood generalists who are working out of a bedroom because they just got laid off and desperately need work.
Recognizing Biases: How Our Minds Fool Us
By: Jeff Klein
My late grandmother, when criticized or misunderstood, would often say “we don’t see ourselves.”
While we don’t necessarily respond this way to our clients, customers, colleagues or employers, the truth is, they generally don’t – see themselves, that is, or even know what they are thinking. None of us do.
Most of what goes on in our minds happens “under the hood” – as Neuroscientist David Eagleman illuminates in his best-selling book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. And while we think we make decisions, decisions apparently emerge – almost magically – from internal processes that are invisible to us.
Humane Society Documents Pig Abuse at Major Pork Producer
Ed. note: This post does not necessarily represent the views of 3p, though we applaud the Humane Society’s efforts. We respect the progress WalMart has made on environmental issues and encourage them to work to bring animal welfare into the supplier code of conduct. A version of this post originally appeared on the HSUS blog.
The Humane Society usually tries to work with organizations directly before going public. When asked about the backstory that led them to take the path of submitting this guest post, Kristie Middleton of HSUS said:
The Humane Society of the United States always prefers to work with companies privately on these types of issues. In the past, HSUS had some positive exchanges with Wal-Mart about eggs, and even praised it for ensuring that its private brand eggs are 100% cage-free. However, HSUS’ attempts to continue this dialogue around pig welfare have been met with silence, as have attempts to contact their supplier Seaboard. This gave us no choice but to go public with this investigation.
By: Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of The Humane Society
The HSUS went undercover again to record what’s happening at factory farms, and yesterday we released our latest findings. We announced them at a press conference in Oklahoma City, not far from the pig production facilities we examined.
The facilities we examined are owned by two of the nation’s largest pork producers: Seaboard Foods and Prestage Farms. Seaboard is the nation’s third-largest pork company (and a supplier to Walmart), and Prestage is the nation’s fifth-largest. The results were extremely troubling.
Green Procurement and Business: What It’s All About
Businesses are more aware of the bonuses associated with green procurement than ever before, given the vast number of benefits that it can bring. Essentially, green procurement ensures that businesses protect local environments and economies from the effects of their operations, all the while allowing a business to deliver goods, services and utilities. By focusing heavily on local, or at least ethically-sound national supply chains, you can do your bit for conservation.
Now, it seems that there are plenty of financial incentives to encourage manufacturers to design environmentally-friendly items, whether it’s to avoid taxes and additional costs levied against those uninterested in resource conservation, or the extra outgoings paid through utility bills because of inefficient use of energy and water.
Sourcing locally can certainly boost sales. Flyerzone, an eco-friendly supplier, works particularly hard to forge relationships with nearby clients to boost their productivity, environmental credentials and save themselves money along the way. Many other organisations are very happy to broker regional deals to save money, even if local sourcing demands is becoming a bigger public desire.
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