January 2008
A Fad with Staying Power By Jonathan Bardzik

On Jan. 29, 2007, the cover of BusinessWeek magazine proclaimed that a world where eco-friendly business practices help a company’s bottom line was closer than we thought. Corporate America, it reported, had discovered sustainability as the new frontier in cost-saving measures. With Wal-Mart leading the way, big business was not only going to save the world; they were going to improve their bottom lines and restore their public image in one clean stroke. By Oct. 29, the words “Little Green Lies” were printed across the same magazine’s cover. In exactly 10 months, sustainability had gone from the next big initiative to the latest failed fad.

Today, businesses are asking whether sustainability has already come and gone, and what that means to consumers. But even more importantly, we should be asking what sustainability means to this industry, and what should we be doing about it?

Easy Come, Easy Go — Easy Stay

Is sustainability a short-lived trend? Yes and no. If you follow the cover of BusinessWeek, sustainability is a fad that has already peaked. Consumer press would suggest the same thing. In the past few weeks, claims of “greenwashing,” the practice of inflating or falsifying environmental claims about products, services and operations, have surfaced more than once surrounding the increase of sustainable products on retailers’ shelves. A report issued Nov. 19 by Terra Choice Environmental Marketing found that, out of 1,018 consumer products bearing 1,753 environmental claims, “all but one made claims that are either demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences.”

Observers of history should not be surprised by the recent accusations of greenwashing. The term itself was coined in 1991 by Mother Jones magazine in response to the explosion of environmentalism-driven marketing in the late ’80s and early ’90s. According to the J. Walter Thompson Company, green claims made by consumer-products manufacturers quadrupled between 1989 and 1990. The environmental marketing greenrush resulted in “skepticism, confusion and regulatory nightmares, which proved that environmental marketing involves more than tweaking one or two product attributes and dressing up packages with meaningless (and often misleading) claims,” says Jacquelyn Ottman, founder of J. Ottman Consulting, an environmental marketing firm based in New York City.

So was the late ’80s eco-friendly product proliferation just a fad? Like today, in terms of its presence on front pages and store shelves, it certainly was. For several years, Earth Day, the hole in the ozone layer and biodegradable trash bags attracted a lot of public attention. And then it stopped. But Ottman reports that, “In 1991, In Business magazine, the handbook of eco-entrepreneurs, counted 11 green retailers in the United States.” In the next five years, 400 more would emerge.

How do you explain the strong growth in retail to meet consumer demand after the demise of the fad? In the book Green Marketing, Ottman quotes market research firm GfK Roper Consulting, saying that “hot” social issues such as the environment pass through three distinct phases:

  • Phase 1: Anxiety is high, activities are relatively low.
  • Phase 2: People become more informed about the issue and activity overtakes anxiety.
  • Phase 3: Activities become integrated into people’s lifestyles.

In fact, in the past few years, we have already seen the integration of sustainability into our lifestyles, businesses and government. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, since its inception in 1998, has grown to encompass more than 14,000 projects in all 50 states and 30 countries. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is providing tax credits for green roofs. Even carbon credits, which you can purchase for everything from manufacturing to driving to work, are being defined under a recently released standard.

While reports like those from Terra Choice Environmental Marketing frustrate consumers, they also represent consumer education. Once the “fad” of sustainability winds down, and it is no longer shocking to consider that plastic grocery bags may in fact be better than paper (with their lower mass, they generate less carbon through shipping and storage), consumers will begin the real work of educating themselves about sustainable purchasing and integrate it into their everyday shopping habits.

Sustainability is here to stay and will have long-lasting effects on consumer purchasing habits, the regulatory environment and our business practices, long after it disappears from the front pages of our newspapers.

What Is It?

You’ve heard the classic definition of good art: “I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.” Earlier this year, that is exactly how consumers defined sustainability. They found it in an energy-efficient light bulb, walking instead of taking the car and free-range poultry. But over the course of the year, they were informed about mercury in compact fluorescent light bulbs, and the Omnivore’s Dilemma revealed that most free-range chickens never venture outside.

In practice, sustainability is complicated. It must take into account many factors, ranging from the manufacturing process and shipping to consumer use and eventual reverse logistics, or reuse. Last January, about the same time BusinessWeek told America about Wal-Mart’s big plans to go green, Dr. William McDonough, an internationally recognized sustainability guru, spoke at ANLA’s Management Clinic. He shared his vision and definition of sustainability:

  • The Industrial Revolution model of “takes, makes and wastes” needs to be redesigned to eliminate or reuse the waste products of manufacturing and consumption.
  • Regulation of negative waste is a symptom of design failure and can only result in being “less bad.” Get the manufacturing and consumption designs right, and such regulation ceases to serve a purpose.
  • The concept of sustainability — the ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely — can be a cause that drives future growth, not retards it.

Unlike the environmentalist movement of the last 30 years, sustainability sees consumer demand and business as allies, not enemies, of change. McDonough asks, “Is our goal… to deprive ourselves, to aim for zero? How inspiring a goal is that? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, rather than bemoaning human industry, we had reason to champion it?” The bottom line is that we need to find ways to make positive contributions to the environment and to our planet’s resources. That’s exciting! But how do we get there?

It Starts at Home

What does this big idea mean for your small business? For us to embrace the concept and adjust how we run our businesses and the products and services we offer, we need to take a more complex and imaginative view of sustainability. Being good takes a lot more creative thinking than simply being less bad.

The first step is to recognize that our industry, in big and small ways, is already engaged in many positive practices, including water recapture and reuse, integrated pest management, and the sale and use of organic or environmentally friendly fertilizers and disease and pest controls. Sharing these practices at events, through educational programs and through the editorial initiatives of many in the industry’s trade press will go a long way toward providing the industry with the tools needed to become more sustainable.

Secondly, as William McDonough states in his book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, “We begin to make human systems and industries fit [with their environment] when we recognize that all sustainability (just like all politics) is local.” Again, this takes more creativity than being less bad. Being less bad is banning all “invasive” plants; being good is putting the right plants in the right places and using the right care and maintenance practices. As we know in this industry, we must take into account that sustainability, as well as the relative effect of our business practices and products, varies with geography and population. Spraying every rose planted on Cape Cod has a far greater impact than fertilizing every lawn in Wyoming. Water use is a completely different issue in Denver than it is in Detroit, where they have considered exporting water!

Finally, consumers and businesses create longer-lasting change reacting to a carrot than a stick. At the consumer level, there is a clear desire for actionable information regarding sustainability. While consumers show strong resistance to being told to stop driving a car, they are happy switch to energy-efficient light bulbs or biodegradable household cleansers. Our businesses are no different. If we start by creating a list of practices to stop and products to remove from the shelves, we will soon find ourselves with empty shelves, closing our doors.

What does the carrot look like? You may be thinking that it doesn’t look like the bottles of Neem oil and bags of corn gluten gathering dust in your store. “The vast majority of consumers… will ask, ‘If I use green products, what’s in it for me?'” Jacquelyn Ottman says. “To avoid green marketing myopia, marketers must fulfill consumer needs and interests beyond what is good for the environment.” The good news is that this is right at the heart of what you do well.

Know your customers. Know their wants, needs and tastes. Then teach them how to satisfy those needs with your products and services. (Seriously, when is the last time someone asked you for soil amendments when they bought a tree? You’ve got years of practice educating your customers.) Clearing chemicals off your shelves and changing your entire product mix to native, site-adapted plants next spring is probably not a real sustainable business plan in most of the country. Slow and steady wins the race.

Recently, I was speaking with someone who had been active in the early years of the organic farming movement. Each time he brought up profitability, he was shushed. “We aren’t interested in making money,” the farmers told him. “We want to change the world!” One day, fed up with being told that profits were not a factor, he replied, “If your business does not exist in 20 years, then you have failed to change the world.”

To become sustainable, your business must rely on products and practices that recognize geographic and population diversity. You will need to learn constantly from your peers and remain profitable by effectively satisfying consumer demand. You will also need to become active in the next stage of the “hot-button” issue cycle, which is educating customers so they can turn their environmental concerns into action.

Now, get to it! I’ll check back in with you in 20 years — when you’ve saved the world.

Jonathan Bardzik

Jonathan Bardzik is the director of marketing and industry relations for the American Nursery and Landscape Association. He grew up working in the family business, Tarnow Nursery, and other businesses around New England, and later earned his MBA. He can be reached at [email protected].