Clear communication essential for green businesses

Good communication may be the key to making greener business practices are reality in your company.

Business analysts report that green initiatives require clear channels for information and clear set of goals. Missing information or garbled communications can easily result in one department undoing the green benefits of another.

A similar problem was reported last year in a UK report:

Green Efforts Hampered by Broken Supply Chains

Broken supply chains and poor communication between different departments and partners are hindering many firms’ effort to reduce carbon emission, according to Dave Food, Oracle’s UK supply chain director, BusinessGreen.com reports.

What are the keys to clear green information?

1) Set green goals at the company-wide level
2) Coordinate each team or department's green goals with the company plan
3) Set up benchmarks to ensure that changes are taking the departments, and the company, in the right direction
4) Have regular meetings to compare notes and address issues common to all departments like paper supplies, low energy light and power or telecommuting options to make sure everyone shares their best resources
5) Where possible, define and check progress against measurable goals like kilowatt hours used or employee commute hours.

Luxury hotel proves green can be comfortable

The latest issue of Green Magazine profiled a restored luxury hotel that has proven that green renovation can be

• Economical
  
• Elegant
  
• Comfortable
  
• Sustainable

According to the site,

The Heathman Hotel, Portland’s independent luxury arts hotel, will complete a 99-percent landfill-free remodel in late April. The renovation, involving the historic hotel’s 155 guest bathrooms, was planned in accordance with the property’s commitment to sustainability which includes ensuring energy efficiency, utilizing local resources, and re-using existing materials whenever possible. The renovation is projected to reduce gas usage by 20 percent and water consumption by 50 percent.

Read the whole story on their site, and learn more about this model restoration, including an astonishing 99% recycled debris rate, 50% reduction in guest water usage and local materials usage.

A green car that goes zoom-zoom

Okay, raise your hand if you like to go REALLY fast in your car. Wave it in the air if the idea of racing around hairpin turns on an alpine road has you reaching for the keys. Now jump up and down if you would love to have all this AND have it in a rechargeable, green vehicle.

How many of you are waving that upraised hand while jumping up and down? This a car is ALL of that and more. Sleek. Sporty. Fast. REALLY fast! 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Powerful. A top speed of 150 miles per hour. And yes, it's green. Do you have any idea how hard it is to type when you're jumping up and down and waving one hand wildly in the air???? But for this car, I am doing it!

The car is a Tesla...a far cry from the boxy, acceleration-challenged hybrids appearing on the roads. This is a real car.

A green car, yes. Absolutely, but a real performance vehicle. Something that draws you onto the open roads of Canada or Germany.

This is an electric vehicle. A car you can recharge in under four hours, then drive for over 200 high performance miles without feeding it again.

Yes, this car is expensive. Very expensive. With a base price of $109,000, it's not likely be appear in suburban driveways any time soon. And the options could easily push it over the $200,000 mark.

So why am I writing a glowing review of a super-expensive green product? Wasn't I just trashing the overpriced greenwashed market a few posts back? Absolutely. But this isn't greenwashing.

This is proof that a product can be green and still match or exceed the performance standards of "traditional" designs. That being green isn't just about duplicating a non-green product in a more earth-friendly version. It's about the green product being remarkably better.

The Tesla gives the green-focused person who has been known to go weak in the knees over a passing Lamborghini something new to dream about. And a whole highway full of hope that someday soon, green will really come to mean better.

Are green mandates a good idea?

Throughout the European Union, there are green mandates in effect for a variety of products and services from store packaging to home construction. Israeli new home construction must incorporate solar power sources, among other sustainable construction mandates.

So far only a few municipalities in the U.S. have enacted similar measures to ensure compliance with new, more environmentally friendly goals. And a few states have enacted piece-meal legislation to address certain industries. But we're nowhere near the level of our European or Israeli cousins.

In fact, earlier, voluntary shifts into greener building standards here have been largely abandoned as the economy has worsened.

So my question for today is...

Should the U.S. mandate green manufacturing, packaging, processing and building standards or will industries move in that direction voluntarily because of consumer demand?

Great big green ideas in the building industry waning?

Construction industry stakeholders are increasingly recognizing green building capabilities as “good”—and being a necessary part of a firm’s best practices, ending the view of green building as a niche sector, according to FMI’s 2008 U.S. Construction Overview

According to the Overview, green nonresidential construction put in place was $13.4 billion in 2006, and by 2008 $21.2 billion of all new nonresidential construction will employ the use of green building principles. The growth in green construction has created a shift in perception among owners and the architectural and engineering communities. Construction industry stakeholders have embraced the green movement and sustainable design for its energy savings, worker productivity increases and positive public perception, the report states.

In 2008, the three largest segments for nonresidential construction green building—office, education and health care—will account for more than 80 percent of total nonresidential green construction. Other segments such as lodging and commercial are also experiencing green construction growth, with a 20 percent gain expected from 2007 to 2008.

...from FacilitiesNet.com

That article was from January of 2008...in a search today on the tern "green construction industry" that was the most recent result. Most of the content was from 2007 or even 2006. Before the recession was in full swing. Before the housing market tanked.

So where are they now? Is construction still moving towards green? Or has green given way to the red ink that fills the account books of construction companies? And if the green has stopped flowing, will it pick up again as the economy recovers? Your thought?

Greener can be cheaper Part Four

Simplify, simplify, simplify....

Years ago, Henry David Thoreau said

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify! ... Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.

That sage advice penned on the banks of Walden pond has never been more in need than today. In times of abundance, our lives -- and the products we use each day -- become more elaborate and more complicated. But abundance is not the watchword of the day, and people are looking at those complicated and expensive "toys" and asking why.


That represents a great opportunity for green manufacturers and marketers to offer a simpler -- and ultimately cheaper -- alternative. In this case, it's not about making the product cheaper than a less green version, but offering a product that takes the place of a more expensive and less green tool, service or item.

For example, the last few years have seen the ordinary clothes dryer morph into a gigantic $1,000 plus monster in a dozen decorator colors. Laundry areas formerly housed in closets or behind sliding doors in a kitchen no longer accommodate the huge dryers and their companion washers, so new houses need bedroom-sized laundry rooms. And these rooms need to be decorated, fitted with cabinetry and laundry folding tables and sorting bins, then heated and air conditioned. All to wash and dry dirty clothes.

So where is the green marketing opportunity here? In turning back to Thoreau's message...simplify. Marketing green means offering a cheaper, simpler alternative. Instead of a $1,000 dryer, how about well designed, attractive clotheslines and small energy efficient dryers, the kind that fits in a closet?

In this case, and so many more like it, the greener is cheaper model isn't about making a green clothes dryer that is cheaper than other same-sized clothes dryers...it's about offering a viable, simple alternative to the king-sized dryer.

Greener can be so much cheaper, especially when it's simpler.

With dryers. it's a clothesline. With things like business products, it's not finding a way to make something like a laminated minimum wage poster greener, it's about going back to just paper because really most printed posters and notices don't need to last that long.

Think about the expensive, complicated items in the marketplace. Now envision a less complicated, less expensive way to accomplish the same goal. Many of them may have come from an earlier, more cost conscious time. There is your cheaper, greener marketing opportunity.

Greener can be cheaper part three

Targeting needs, not marketing illusions

One of the great failings of the green movement in this country has been the failure to start the process by looking at where demand already exists but is not met, instead of trying to force a "green" version of products that may not have a significant market.

Creating and marketing a product not in demand results in:

Higher costs. The item needs to be advertised, promoted and otherwise pushed as "green." The potential buyer needs to be sold on your product, rather than happy to find what they already wanted.

More waste. High prices and low demand means more product will end in clearance racks, on discounter shelves and ultimately in the trash.

A bad reputation. The more green products are viewed as indulgent and overpriced, the more people will turn away from the green movement. That's bad for legitimate green manufacturers and providers, and ultimately, bad for the planet.


The lesson for would-be green businesses?

Make sure there is a demand
Check out the competition to verify that the demand is not being met
Find lower cost green raw materials or elements
Skip the gimmicks
Market your products at a price point that will encourage demand to remain high