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The country is facing a shortage of electric power after shutting down all 50 of its nuclear power plants in the wake of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor (pictured) last year,the BBC reports.

Public skepticism about the safety of nuclear power led to the shutdown. The final operational reactor went offline for routine maintenance two weeks ago. None have been turned back on yet, the BBC reports.

As a result, businesses and citizens in the heavily industrialized western area of Japan served by Kansai Electric Power are being asked – but not mandated – to try and cut their energy use by 15 percent, the BBC reports. According to The Wall Street Journal, consumers in other areas of Japan are being asked to try and cut their energy use by 5 to 10 percent in order to feed power to Japan’s west. The reductions are planned from July to September.

Rail stations are dimming passageway lights, according to the BBC. Electronics giant Panasonic plans to set its air conditioning to 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Rival Sharp is planning on using less lighting and letting staff dress more casually to limit heating and cooling use, reports Reuters.

This is not the first time businesses have turned to energy saving techniques as a result of the Fukishima crisis. In March 2011, in the direct aftermath of the tsunami, Tokyo-based tire and rubber company Bridgestone asked employees at its office buildings and technical center to minimize their use of elevators, share office equipment and turn out lights wherever practical. The firm also shut off billboards, minimized the use of IT systems and closed its corporate museum.

Last June the Japanese government launched a “Super Cool Biz” campaign, pushing workers to wear Hawaiian shirts, T-shirts and sandals to save electricity. Then in November, it asked workers to pile on the sweaters.

The original crisis caused rolling blackouts across Japan. An aftershock that hit in northern Japan just weeks after the initial blast left nearly a million people without power and stopped production at several major companies.

At your weekly team meeting, it would be safe to assume sustainability targets would not be the first thing debated. But if green issues are to have a large impact inside the boardroom, it is at this grassroots level that sustainability needs to be discussed. As difficult as it may sound, there are mechanisms many of us have experienced in our younger years that can unite a workforce towards a common green purpose.

Game mechanics, the psychology behind many pastimes and games, provides the tools which can help bring a large audience to address a concern. Regarded by many as the next great thing, the concept has been with the human race since its existence. From an early age, people learn and then master a variety of riddles, board, computer, and physical games. A microcosm of society, games teach children about structure, the rules of the game are learned, cheaters are marginalized.

Modern software makes it relatively easy to bring game mechanics into companies, and terms related to gaming are prevalent in the business world, such as “competition” and “rewards.” Gaming shows no sign of becoming yesterday’s news, either. Figures suggest that today half a billion gamers are online per day and according to Gartner 50 per cent of business applications will be gamified by 2013.

Below are five topics on how game mechanics should be used to maximize the talent in your workforce to hit ambitious sustainability goals:

Playing the game: Staff globally must be responsible for their sustainability performance management by setting aggressive goals and managing them in real-time, across the business. By performing well and not letting down their peers, the employee maintains his/her status amongst them. Now, there is technology available which enables users to find out what their individual green ranking is compared to others and provides tips to decrease water, gas and electricity usage.

Gaming is predominantly social and there is no better way in building rapport between staff by conquering challenges together. The thrill of beating their neighbors will bring endorsement from employees.

Talking company currency: Rewards are there to encourage high achieving employees to do even better. Innovate and reward successful employees using company currency whether it is a day off, a financial bonus or a spa day. Additional research from Ernst and Young adds weight to the long-term benefits to the brand as it suggests sustainable companies are more attractive to investors. Risk management plays a large part in investor confidence, so put any potential risk with the environment to rest now.

6,500 reasons why sustainability helps the balance sheet: Think about financial currency. Reducing energy usage leads to cost savings to the entire business of 10 per cent. In the UK, forthcoming research suggests the individual employee costs businesses nationwide an additional £6,500 on top of salary and tax. The invisible costs which are not taken in account are company subsidized business travel and energy used at work. Impetus must be focused on changing employee behavior so they treat energy usage at work as they would treat it at home.

Right here, right now: To avoid risk and falling foul ofenvironmental legislations, understanding what is being used where is crucial to locate potential savings. Look into technology which captures and reports energy usage and emissions data swiftly and precisely. Use software to provide up-to-date, accurate measurements on internal operations. When these statistics are collected, a pro-environmental strategy can be designed and objectives distributed to each team, department or section. There is great value in having feedback in real time as enhancements can be made as soon as possible.

Press home the business case of sustainability: The hardest part is winning over the person with final authority to sign-off on resources. Sustainability has been previously considered as a “soft” topic, but with its importance to the economic stability of businesses coupled with the current economic climate, this topic cannot be ignored any longer.

Top-down initiatives fail to engage the workforce due to the lack of understanding and ultimately the feeling of being forced to follow orders. A more progressive way is to change behavior in a bottom-up approach. In that way, employees become spokespeople for the green issue and able to educate the board on how technology can provide benefits to all sides.

Look into saving water, light, heat use as they yield faster results than restructuring the entire business. Rather than losing employees, use game mechanics to encourage the whole organization towards meeting green objectives.

Peter Grant is CEO of CloudApps, an award-winning provider of sustainability and energy management software, enabling visionary organizations to make exceptional cost savings and meet sustainability targets by aligning the entire enterprise behind corporate sustainability goals. The software suite solves the sustainability challenge by connecting the sustainability efforts of employees on the front-line, or “bottom-up”, with the “top-down” commitments made by management.

The cost savings span the life of the 15-year contract. Conservation measures include converting constant volume air-handling units to variable air volume units on the Owens campus, installing an irrigation system for the Stanton campus sports fields and installing new chillers to replace the multiple, direct expansion units for the Terry campus. In all, the energy savings project affects 19 buildings—more than one million square feet of building space.

Pepco Energy Services – a subsidiary of utility Pepco Holdings – says the project will reduce annual energy consumption by about 21 percent for the Wilmington and Stanton campuses, 16 percent for the Terry campus, and 8 percent for the Owens campus, while decreasing annual carbon dioxide emissions by more than 2,700 metric tons across all four.

An energy efficiency tax-exempt bond issued by the Delaware Sustainable Energy Utility financed the majority of the project.

Construction began in September 2011 and is scheduled for completion by August 2012. In addition to constructing the capital improvements, Pepco Energy Services will also provide instructional support to the college’s new associate degree program in energy management.

In April, Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport unveiled a 505-kilowatt solar system installed by Pepco Energy Services. The solar array, along with new energy-efficient lighting, is expected to save the facility nearly $400,000 a year. It’s part of a $21 million contract with Pepco to implement an energy efficiency program for both BWI and the Martin State Airport.

In the last decade, Pepco Energy Services has provided its clients more than $210 million in verified energy cost savings, the company says.

Do senior executives of global large and mid-size organizations really understand the CR business case? Have they embedded CR within their core strategies and supply chain? Is CR viewed as an “extra” or a fundamental way to do business?

Although most executives in various research studies declare that CR is extremely important to their business, few organizations globally have integrated CR values into their core strategy and supply chain. There are many reasons why this is happening. One of them is due to the lack of appropriate awareness and education. CR is not yet a core course for the most American or European MBAs, while executives don’t devote much time to professional education in this area since they consider CR a “soft” issue.

Today, sustainable development represents one of the most discussed topics, on a social, environmental, and economic level, mainly as a result of the latest critical transformational changes in all levels of society and adverse environmental impacts. Under this pressure, and due to the growing need for material and quality educational resources on CR and sustainable development, in its 57th meeting in December 2002, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the years from 2005 to 2014 as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), “emphasizing that education is an indispensable element for achieving sustainable development.” Additionally, in October 2011, the European Commission announced its CSR commitments for the next several years. This initiative reflects the mutual commitment and the definition of specific preconditions from all the countries for the confrontation of key problems, but it also constitutes one strong motivation for citizens and organizations in order to act on the same basis.

Therefore, it is becoming more and more obvious that the role of CR managers (chief sustainability officers, or CSOs) is now more important than ever. Corporate executives must find new ways to address the social, economic, and environmental impacts of doing business “as usual,” and organizations must increase the degree to which employees of all levels and functions – not only managers or directors – comprehend, appreciate, embrace and practice the concepts of CR. Specifically for CR managers, required abilities and skills should focus on the alignment of the organization’s strategy with the values and principles of corporate responsibility; and realize that the effective choice of CSR activities and initiatives that address the stakeholders’ needs will constitute a competitive advantage to shape future leaders.

Adopting a more practical outlook, CR managers and other senior executives have to be able to answer crucial questions such as:

The issues above constitute key everyday issues that experienced CR managers from all sectors, around the world, come across every day. Such challenges will be addressed in implementing the appropriate CR strategy through integrated initiatives that respond to the business priorities, and through companywide awareness training programs that are consistent with corporate strategy.

Training programs, responding to the growing demand for awareness and education on issues pertaining to sustainable risks, environmental policy and future legislation, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability reporting, in all levels of hierarchy and in all sectors, are being developed to meet and exceed organizational requests originating from stakeholder demands. The aim of these programs is to train the professionals involved in all stages of the deployment of CR to effectively integrate principles and best practices into the corporate decision making system.

Well trained CR managers, having an overall picture of their organization’s operations, are able to assist organizations in the CR long term journey supporting CR integration. Moreover, ownership of the trained senior business executives is critical in their organizations for the assurance of a long-term competitive advantage. Encouraging businesses to change existing economic and business models – differentiating their products and services to a “green” direction – gives them a high return on investment and elements of excellence and leadership, meeting new strategic objectives and corporate responsibility values.

Leading CR organizations as Heineken Group and Lloyds Banking Group have established a CR culture that is embraced by the company as a whole and is applied to all business processes; it is not treated as an add-on or a separate function. This allows organizations to identity business opportunities faster and act accordingly. Organizations embracing CR are able to measure performance and processes, assess the impact of their decisions and activities, and therefore, realize the true value of their practices. Establishing the “business case for CR” does not prevail anymore, but shapes the national and international agenda of the leading business community.

Nikos Avlonas is founder and president of The Centre for Sustainability and Excellence (CSE), a global sustainability (CSR) strategic consulting and training organization providing in-house and open trainings that meet the needs and requirements of every industry and the business activities of every organization. As an Approved Course and Training Organization under the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), and a GRI Certified Training Provider, CSE offers intensive professional learning opportunities to executives and senior level managers on Corporate Social Responsibility Strategies, Carbon Footprint, CR legislation, Sustainability Reporting, and Climate Change Leadership. The Global Certified Sustainability (CSR) Practitioner and Carbon Strategy Practitioner courses have taken place in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Brussels, Athens, Dubai, and Tokyo. For info about the next trainings programs visit www.cse-net.org

Yet, to create effective, engaging, grassroots energy campaigns, traditional, tried and true campaign tactics are needed. Many companies often overlook traditional, tried and true tactics, such as direct mail, phone banking, and canvassing, because the tactics may seem outdated in a tech focused world. However, if these media are excluded, companies are doing their target audiences a great disservice.

Let’s review the ways in which traditional communicative tactics serve communities effectively. Three particular methods work best in order to forge quality relationships between an organization and a community.

Energy projects generally have a large support base, yet some supporters fail to voice their support. Direct mail allows companies to identify and motivate supporters to ardently back the progress of a new project.

Direct mail should be set up to inform and gauge targeted communities. The direct mail should inform and engage its receiver. Through providing accurate and useful information via direct mail, we are able to debunk any general misinformation regarding the project. To engage the receiver, a series of questions in the direct mail creates a discussion. Receivers’ answers uncover the range of support or opposition to an energy project.

Phone banking is an easy, inexpensive way to find supporters in a community. It can also further your project’s understanding of a particular community. By asking few short questions over the phone, Public Strategy Group is able to identify supporters and determine their level of support.

In understanding the extent of supporter advocacy, we can engage in a discussion regarding potential steps they can take to become more involved in the energy project. Steps may be to write a letter to the governing town body, speak on behalf of the supporting constituency, or simply attending a town meeting.

Canvassing is another tried and true campaign tactic. Renewable energy projects often create a good deal of controversy. Some people enjoy discussing the benefits of these developments, whereas other individuals don’t think these resources are worth time, money, and space. Canvassing allows us to take our analysis of support one step further by entering into real time, face to face discussion with individuals. These individuals may either support or oppose a project. Also, meeting face to face with opposition, shows how your company respects the opposition’s opinions.

Canvassing is a tactic that has been completely forgotten by a variety of public affairs organizations because in today’s world, a great deal of our communication occurs through technology. As a result of this changing element of communication, there seems to be a lack of personal relationships between public affairs and individuals of communities. Canvassing offers an opportunity to meet your target audience face to face and inform, discuss, and forge relationships with individuals.

Today, energy projects face a variety of obstacles. Opposition may occur regardless of a project’s various benefits. Opposition may found its beliefs on misinformation or genuinely opposes any new developments. There is often a group of people that appreciate the benefits of certain projects, but they are tentative to speak their mind. Traditional, tried and true tactics create personal, real time relationships with both sides of a dispute. These tactics create a connection, which enables companies to understand their communities and develop support. A solid communication support system eventually drives project success.

Al Maiorino started Public Strategy Group, Inc. in 1995. He has developed and managed multiple corporate public affairs campaigns in a variety of industries such as gaming, cable television, retail development, auto racing, power plant/wind farm projects, and housing/residential projects. Al received his BA in political science and a MA in American studies from the University of Connecticut.

When working to combat opposition, campaigns often employ the use of new mediums of communication. Facebook, Twitter, and various real-time social media platforms have become a central focus of many public affairs organizations. Utilizing these platforms is effective and produces results in a number of ways. It is even safe to say that in our modern world a communication organization cannot completely reach its full potential without these vehicles of communication.

The preceding may be apocryphal (although it does sound in character with our refreshingly plain-spoken Governor). But it does illustrate a very real point. As Vermonters continue to repair the devastation caused by Irene, we seem to have put on hold our previous hands-off policy towards our local waterways. In my immediate neighborhood, I’ve personally seen a lot of hitherto unprecedented sights, such as wholesale reconstruction of eroded land, rerouted river channels, and (perhaps most astonishing of all) the replacement of fragile riverbanks with stone revetments. This in turn raises an interesting question: Is this change in attitude a temporary measure, or does it represent a more long-term shift in how we view our local rivers and streams?

For the past few decades, Vermont treated its waterways more or less like museum exhibits, not to be altered or affected by humans in any way except in rare, extreme circumstances. Some of this makes good business sense; the Vermont economy is heavily reliant on tourism, and our pristine rivers comprise a very important attraction to out-of-state anglers and other vacationers. Another motivating factor is ecological sensitivity — which, depending on whom you talk to around here, may have been carried to illogical extremes on occasion.

A recent example of this involves my tiny home town. A few years ago, a local flood washed away a culvert, which we proposed to replace with the same type of large, round pipe as the old culvert. However, a state official stopped by the work site and spotted a single brook trout lurking in the small stream that ran though the culvert. He then ordered an immediate stop to the work, and insisted we replace the round pipe with a square, flat-bottomed culvert, under the reasoning that the round variety would confuse the trout and hinder passage through it. Notwithstanding the fact that brook trout are about as common as blackflies up here in Vermont — and leaving unanswered the question about how the poor trout had somehow made due with the old round culvert all the many previous decades it was in use — the square culvert cost my town an additional $50,000 we could not afford. (Even now, my neighbors still grumble about the “$50,000 trout.”)

This “look but don’t touch” approach to waterways may also be a driving factor behind Vermont’s restrictive permitting process for small-scale hydro electrical generators. The US Department of Energy has estimated that the state offers more than enough hydro generation potential to completely satisfy all its energy needs for decades to come. However, the state has developed very little additional hydro capacity in recent years, a situation that some blame on Vermont’s highly restrictive and complicated approval process.

Our Yankee forebears would quite likely consider this latter-day hands-off approach as short-sighted and foolhardy. Instead, they took a much more utilitarian view towards rivers and streams, with flood management an important component. It was simply too risky to leave the local waterways entirely to the vagaries of nature, where each spring runoff might destroy your property and livelihood. Flood control was therefore a vital public concern — indeed, the Vermont village of Bellows Falls claims to be home to the oldest river canal in the US.

Our ancestors also recognized that water’s power for destruction could also be harnessed to perform work for the benefit of society. By the middle of the 19^th century, virtually every town and village of any size sported at least one mill, busily grinding grain, cutting lumber, pressing cider, and doing many other tasks that made life easier. (The remnant of one abuts my property.) Until the advent of electrification, water was a primary source of power in Vermont, as it was throughout the Northeastern states. In their heyday, small mills were among the more common sights in these parts. Although nearly all these mills are now gone or have been converted to other purposes, their memories live on in the innumerable Mill Streets, Mill Brooks, and Mill Hills that dot the region.

Today, many would consider it unthinkable to place a working power mill in sight of a village center. We may rail against the monolithic power grid and the havoc it wreaks on the global environment, and rightfully so. But it does provide us the luxury of adopting an “out of sight, out of mind” perspective when it comes to considering how our electricity gets made. And this perspective has allowed us to indulge our idealized vision of villages as quaint clusters of meticulously scrubbed houses, whose commercial districts consist solely of a photogenic old-timey country store, a bed-and-breakfast, and maybe an art gallery or two. But back in the day, village centers were where common people gathered to conduct business, where things got made and work got done. It is perhaps deeply ironic that a Vermonter of 150 years ago would in all likelihood be more comfortable and familiar with the sight of a working hydro electricity generation mill at the edge of her town than we would be today. Although she may not initially understand concepts such as turbines and electromagnetism, she certainly would readily recognize the use of water power to do useful things.

In the days immediately after Irene, I heard another story for whose veracity I cannot personally vouch. It was told to me by Matt, one-half of our town’s two-person road department. According to Matt, advisers from the Army Corp of Engineers came to Vermont and in no uncertain terms chastised local officials for their previous “let nature take her course” philosophy towards waterway management. In doing so, they would likely have been echoing the voices of Vermonters of yesteryear. As evidenced by the ongoing efforts to recover from Irene, I’d say that for at least the time being, the state has heard the message loud and clear. Whether or not this represents a long-term change in environmental attitude — and with it, an opportunity to consider and take advantage of perhaps our most obvious and natural avenue to complete energy independence — very much remains to be seen.

Explaining the benefits and values of a working forest is often a conversation that pits emotion against science. While many people assume the best thing for a forest is to leave it in its natural state, few understand that variations in age class within a forest helps to promote biodiversity of both plant and animal species.

Management practices cover aspects from harvest planning and tree selection (or exemption) to road building and water protection. Harvesting equipment has evolved to lessen residual damage from felling trees. And depending on the type of environment where bunchers and other vehicles are used, there are lots of wheel options available that are light on the ground while providing just the right amount of soil disturbance to promote regrowth. Roads are constructed with crowns, culverts and ditches to ensure proper drainage. Stabilization and erosion protection are also added to skid trails. Tree tops are also used on the trails which gets turned into mulch ultimately decomposing so the nutrients remain on site.

Of course, paper companies didn’t invent the concept of forest management. As noted by Ross Korpela, our senior wood procurement manager in Cloquet, MN, “Mother Nature has been managing forests forever.” Natural occurrences such as fire, disease, insect infestations and high winds create landscape level events that lead to regeneration of younger forests. But of course these events can also be highly destructive and costly to taxpayers. In fact the USDA budgeted over $2 billion in 2012 for wildland fire management within the Forest Service budget. Korpella adds, “Modern forest techniques mimic the gentler aspects of Mother Nature while providing the fiber to meet society’s needs. That means we are cutting trees in the manner nature intended. The result is, we are creating better forests while also providing economic and environmental benefits to the entire population.”

Laura M. Thompson, Phd, is director of sustainable development and technical marketing at Sappi Fine Paper North America. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire and an M.S. and PhD in Paper Science from the Institute of Paper Science and Technology. Since 1995, she has held a variety of positions within the paper industry including R&D, mill environmental, product development for specialties and coated fine paper, and, most recently, sustainability. Since joining Sappi in 2006, Laura has quickly emerged as an industry leader in the field of sustainable development. This is reposted from The Environmental Quotient with permission from Sappi Fine Paper North America. For more information, please visit Sappi’s eQ Microsite. You can also follow @eQLauraThompson on Twitter.

Sustainability has three main impacts on the bottom line: increased efficiency, revenue growth, and customer preference. It’s really common sense when it comes to efficiency – when you use less energy, less materials, and have a leaner supply chain, your operating costs are less. But what is really important here is understanding the implications that embedding sustainability into your business plan has on your customers.

Here at DuPont, for example, we began producing new polymer-based materials for use in hybrid and electric vehicles, which allowed for lighter, more efficient energy storage options. These materials reduce the weight of cars, reduce energy consumption and emissions, and meet new auto industry regulations for lighter materials, thereby meeting the needs of automakers and allowing the company to increase revenue. In this case, sustainability was more than just a catalyst for innovation; it helped create products that would be more competitive in the current market, thereby increasing overall business success.

In the end, customer preference is key–in order to get people to buy, products or services rendered must meet market demand. But how does sustainability fit into this? Let’s take the case of FREITAG, one of the last industrial companies still in production in the city of Zurich that is run by two Swiss brothers.

Unsatisfied with the durability of available bicycle messenger bags, the pair wanted a functional, heavy-duty, water-repellent bag. So in 1993, they started a company to create one. Instead of sourcing the latest high-tech materials, they formed bags from old truck tarpaulins using second-hand car seat belts as straps[1]. The recycled materials, originally intended to lower their production costs and create an industrial strength product, generated a completely different reaction with customers.

It positioned FREITAG bags not only as green, by re-using industrial waste, but also as a personal commodity[2]. Though the bags were initially sold to bike messengers, the real interest came from the trendy and urban consumers who were willing to pay top dollar for green personality[3]. By incorporating sustainability into the entire identity of the brand, the brothers created a unique product for an entirely new customer market.

So what is the most important thing to keep in mind when developing a sustainable business strategy? Keep it local. This is often where many companies go wrong. One of the key elements to integrating sustainability into an overall business strategy is to think globally, but act locally. You can have the best sustainability strategy in the world, but your strategy will not work if you do not tailor it to the competencies, priorities and capabilities of the local market For example, what might work in Russia might not work in Indonesia due to differences in environment and geography, culture, language, regulatory standards, standard operating procedures, etc. You cannot design one strategy to fit markets with very different cultures or contexts.

You have to know and understand the local issues in order to extract the full value from a corporate sustainability culture. In order to grow your company and expand globally, you must learn to adapt your strategies and programs. But learning how to tailor strategies to local regions and communities is often a challenge especially for large, global companies.

Once you define your strategy, the real work begins. As important as a clear strategy is, it will not be effective without strong leadership, a solid structure, and proper organization. We have found that it is best practice to appoint a chief sustainability officer and give her the responsibility to implement sustainability on the ground.

With a chief sustainability officer in place, you can ensure that the line managers are empowered to execute the strategy. To extract maximum value, we’ve found it best to give line managers the support they need and build an infrastructure around them to provide all the elements they need to do their job well. This infrastructure includes a supportive staff, integrated committees, motivational strategies and performance measurements. Communication, training, standards, audits and evaluations are also key. In order to be successful, sustainability must be truly integrated within the whole hierarchy of an organization, from workers to line managers, mid-level supervisors, all the way to the senior leadership. Another common pitfall for companies is in not compromising on environmental and social balance. It’s not an either/or when you are talking about making environmentally conscious decisions or profitable business decisions. You can – and should – do both. Case in point, a company that focuses only on waste reduction, but does not have an overall strategy in place for energy consumption, will not save as much in the long run.

So a corporation’s transformation is really all about having a culture of sustainability. This means incorporating sustainability into the entire identity of the company and brand, while also developing a sense of ownership of sustainability initiatives within each and every employee.

The first step in enhancing the culture of a business begins with its leaders. My company works with many businesses across diverse industries, and I have consistently observed the overwhelming influence that leaders and their attitudes have on transforming the performance of a company. Leadership is the integrating force that makes standards and systems, the process by which they are managed, and the routine actions of the organization come together to create an effective and profitable business. Leaders are expected to demonstrate commitment and take actions for the well-being of their people across all levels of the organization. They must think, feel, and believe in the value and importance of incorporating sustainability into every single aspect of the business.

In this culture of sustainability, you also must have a culture of innovation. In next month’s post, we will explore the role that innovation plays in sustainability. Stay tuned.

Davide Vassallo is global practice leader of Environmental Management for DuPont Sustainable Solutions. DuPont™ is a trademark of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.

[1] Müller, Lars, et al. Freitag: Individual Recycled FreewayBags. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers GmbH.

[2] Charter, M., et al. “Review: the role of business in realising sustainable consumption and production.” Perspectives on Radical Changes to Sustainable Consumption and Production.Ed. Tukker, A., et al. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing Ltd., 2008.

[3] Müller, Lars, et al. Freitag: Individual Recycled FreewayBags. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers GmbH.

The US society is significantly dependent on fossil fuels. Due to our habits and our infrastructure (water, transportation and energy systems), the US carbon emissions per person is about double that of other countries with the same quality of life and geography. So, the US citizen is relatively “carbon fat” when compared to other modern cultures like Japan or Germany. We are “obese” when compared to China and India whose carbon emissions are only 1/4th and 1/20th respectively. Considering that there are 4 times as many people in China (and roughly same for India), if they emitted as much carbon/person, the world would need far more resources than are available on this planet.

The US produces about 20 metric tons/ person and the Chinese produce about 5 mt/person. Considering there are about 4 times as many people in China, if each Chinese person consumed as much as the US citizen, the growth in world-wide emissions would be huge. For example, if each Chinese person added 15 metric tons (to equal the US person’s emissions), the relative difference would be about 4 X 15 = 60mt. This is a three-fold increase over current US emissions! Adding India in a similar fashion would mean an additional four-fold increase over current US emissions. So the net emissions growth would be equal to the impact of adding 7 more USAs to the planet… and this calculation does not consider population growth! Does anyone in the world still believe that planet Earth could sustain the pollution of 7 more carbon-intense USAs? Considering our limited bodies, is it plausible that an already obese person could add 7 times more fat and still survive?

Carbon emissions are really more like cholesterol (or even cancer). Reducing something you can’t directly see/feel/understand on a daily basis is very difficult. It is also difficult to improve something today when you won’t see the benefits until much later, even decades. You don’t really feel the effects until it is too late.

We are dealing with a problem that is hardly understood and results from improvements may not be felt until much later. On the bright side, due to population differences, the impacts from improvements are also multiples of the effort. That is to say, if the industrialized countries can become “leaders” and develop technologies/methods/philosophies that reduce emissions, for each improvement, there could be a result that is seven times the effort (and that is just counting China and India)…

So it is either win big or lose big; the stakes are high. Big changes are needed and if the US doesn’t lead, who will?

If all countries were in a lifeboat, an observer could say that the US has become an expert at drilling big holes in the bottom. Now, other countries have learned how to make holes and the boat is sinking… and there are seven more people making big holes. If we don’t teach/lead how to patch holes (or not make more), the boat is doomed. The past does not matter… only how fast we can fill those holes.

The US must change its bad habits and teach others the good habits quickly, or we will be dealing with a much larger climate problem and scarcity of resources. We must lead, and there is value in leading. Carbon emissions are like cholesterol: difficult to see/control, but there is value in doing so.

Eric A. Woodroof, Ph.D., is the founder of Profitable Green Solutions, and is completely committed to helping businesses and organizations “go green,” while improving profits. His clients include government agencies, airports, utilities, cities, universities and foreign governments. Private clients include IBM, Pepsi, GM, Verizon, Hertz, Visteon, JP Morgan-Chase, and Lockheed Martin. For further exploration into financing techniques, such as loans, bonds, leases and performance contracting mechanisms, click here to watch a free recorded webinar.

A growing number of companies are working on reducing their environmental impacts and many are showing impressive progress. The leaders have realized, though, that their biggest impacts are often outside of their direct control, in their supply chains. Apparel maker Puma, for instance, has calculated that over 90 percent of the environmental costs of water use and greenhouse gas emissions connected with its business are attributable to its suppliers’ activities. A 2010 analysis by pharmaceutical maker GSK found that its operations were responsible for just 19 percent of its carbon footprint; the supply chain accounted for 41 percent and product use 37 percent. Baxter, a medical equipment manufacturer, calculated that its own operations account for just 24 percent of its global carbon footprint that same year; its supply chain accounted for nearly 38 percent of the total.

The power of the world’s largest companies is not just in their vast size; it’s in the potential to influence the hundreds of thousands of usually smaller companies that provide them with goods and services and raw materials. Yet companies have been slow to set hard goals to improve their supply chain impacts. Green Research benchmarking studies across multiple industries have found that companies focus their public sustainability goals predominantly their own operations and rarely on their supply chains. For example, in our recent studyof the largest medical equipment manufacturers, 87 percent of their public goals focused on operations; just four percent addressed a supply chain opportunity. Our studies of other industries show that this is typical.

Some of the companies we studied have internal goals related to supply chain sustainability but decline to publicize them. One reason: corporate sustainability leaders tend to have little influence over the supply chain function itself. According to a recent Green Research survey of senior sustainability executives, just 27 percent believe they have significant influence over supply chain at their companies. But this is starting to change.

For years big buyers have used “supplier scorecards” to rate suppliers on a range of criteria. Increasingly, companies are using scorecards to assess and push for improvements in environmental performance. An early example is Walmart, which introduced a supplier packaging scorecard in 2006 with the goal of driving a modest reduction in the volume of packaging (5 percent over 5 years). In 2009, it announced a supplier sustainability assessment to expand the environmental performance measures on which it evaluated its suppliers. Procter & Gamble rolled out its own supplier sustainability score card in spring of 2010.

The two companies, one a giant consumer goods maker and the other, the worlds largest retailer, are now intensifying their efforts with the goal of extending the influence of their environmental aspirations. P&G has recently published its score card, implemented as an interactive spreadsheet, to encourage other companies to adopt it or something similar. Meanwhile, Walmart recently announced that it will broaden its original 15-question supplier scorecard to address 100 major product categories, with category-specific questions by the end of this year.

Requesting sustainability information from suppliers is a start. But it doesn’t go far enough. In our interviews with suppliers, we’ve seen that some are deluged with information requests but have little idea how their customers are using the information. Suppliers often don’t have a clear idea of what is expected of them and where to focus their own sustainability efforts.

Large companies should maximize their influence over supplier sustainability by investing in suppliers’ success. P&G says it uses its Scorecard not only as a way of judging its suppliers, but as a way of communicating with them and, ultimately, helping them to improve their own environmental performance. The scorecard clearly lays out what environmental performance criteria—from energy and water use to greenhouse gas emissions—P&G cares about and so, by extension, their suppliers should care about. The scorecard also provides a platform for soliciting feedback and ideas from suppliers about how P&G could adjust its own processes to mesh better with suppliers and yield improvements in environmental performance. And P&G says it has made its experts available to suppliers to help them devise sustainability solutions.

This last point represents a very large opportunity. The largest companies have technical expertise and other resources that smaller suppliers lack. Companies that share this expertise with their suppliers can accelerate suppliers’ performance gains and ultimately improve their own. Walmart made a valuable contribution in this regard by supporting the creation of The Sustainability Consortium. P&G is a member of the Consortium as well. Sharing expertise may require additional investment, but it could also lead to efficiencies that will reduce costs in the long term. And sometimes sharing expertise is even a revenue opportunity. Technology giant Siemens sets energy efficient targets that it expects its suppliers to meet—and then offers energy efficiency consulting services to help suppliers meet them.

The world’s biggest companies can change the sustainability game by sharing their environmental goals and their expertise with key suppliers. Leading companies are already doing this. Other companies that expect to lead or even to maintain their relevance in the future will need to seize this opportunity too.

David Schatsky, principal of Green Research, is a consultant and adviser to businesses on a range of topics, from clean tech markets to corporate sustainability best practices to business strategy in the Internet and information technology markets. Having spent almost a decade as an analyst and senior executive at JupiterResearch, a leading research and advisory firm focused on Internet business, Schatsky is an expert in business strategy, industry analysis and market research.