by Mike Michalowicz

I had an eye opening moment one year ago, almost to the day.  I was curious about how effective my website was at engaging visitors.  What better way to determine that, than to see how long people stayed when they landed on my site.  The numbers were shocking!  Nearly 85% of my site’s visitors didn’t stay for more than eight seconds!  Eight measly seconds.

Do you get how bad that is?  That is the same as inviting a guest over for a nice dinner and drinks, and when you open the door to greet them, they look at you, smile and say “It was great seeing you. I gotta run. Have a great night.  Oh, and I’ll never be back.” Ahh!  They didn't even get to taste that delicious homemade apple pie I baked. It's my specialty you know.

Now, imagine that scenario again. This time the doorbell rings, I open the door wearing a tuxedo with a maid and butler at my side.  And the butler has a fresh, steaming slice of apple pie for my guest to sample.  I suspect my visitor would have something new to say.  “Whoa... what’s going on here? You know I had to run, but holy cow, apple pie a la mode?!?  I’m staying!”

That is exactly what I did for my website, and you can do for yours.  I made the simple and inexpensive changes to make my site distinguished.  Mow those eight five percenters are staying for an average of one minute and three seconds.  That is equivalent to eating two slices of apple pie in web time.  And the rest of my visitors?  They are averaging almost five minutes.  That’s effectively a sleep over! 

Here is how you make your site distinguished, and have people really digging in:

1. Real Pictures And Lots Of Them – Ditch the stock photography, and post real pictures of you and your employees.  But don’t use your favorite headshot from highschool (even though you are in your fifties now), instead use a variety of current photos.  The more variety of great shots of you and your team, the more you will become a mini-celebrity in your prospect’s eyes.  Talk about being distinguished.
2. Have Your Own Distinct Voice – People relate to others who are like them. Most people aren't watered down and boring (Are you? I didn't think so!), so how come so many sites are? Have your site be consistent with your own natural voice and style.  The goal here isn’t to make everyone happy (you can’t).  The goal is to make the right people to feel a connection with you.
3. Always Be Blogging - Forget the ABC’s of business, start doing the ABB’s (Always Be Blogging).  Blogs have lost their cache over the years, ironically making them more influential.  As less people blog, your blog will get even better SEO.  Just make sure you maintain your distinct voice, and speak about the industry you're in and what you do.
4. Let The People Speak – Let your following (web visitors) share their voice too. Enable commenting on your blogs, and respond to the comments people post.  Use tools like MediaRoomVIP that allow you to pose a question to your community and have it automatically compile their responses into a blog post.  Hey look at that, there's that blogging again!
5. Integrated Social Media - Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Youtube.  The list goes on and on.  All these social media platforms are powerful ways for your web visitors to keep attuned to your goings on.  The problem is they are all over the place. Used widgets or plugins to integrate your social media directly onto your site. Now people can stay on your site while seeing all the stuff you are tweeting about simultaneously.
6. Give Me Some Variety – Pictures and text are mandatory for a good website, but you shouldn’t stop there.  Add videos, podcasts, infographics, social media feeds, live chats, group video conferences, along with the pictures and text to keep things fresh.  It offers a great way to repurpose content (e.g. a video can be redone into an infographic), and it surely makes your site distinguished.

What are the first thing you are going to do to make your site distinguished?  Share your ideas below.   And if you want a little inspiration, you can visit my site at www.MikeMichalowicz.com to see how I made it distinguished.  Maybe you will stay for at least one minute and three seconds!

Attend the Get Found and Be Chosen presented Barry Moltz hosted by Dex Digital on June 19^th during the LOHAS Business Conference in Boulder. For more information on your business’ findability score please visit: www.HowFindableAreYou.com/LOHAS

Get your Findable Score™. It's fast, free and easy! Learn how consumers search for businesses in your industry and get advice to improve your visibility. Your score is free and so is the marketing insight.

I'm not necessarily a follower. But  I'm proud to announce that I've joined a cult. Cloud Cult, the indie band, originally from Minneapolis, that now lives on an organic, geothermal- powered Wisconsin farm.

At First Avenue a few nights ago, the venue where rock star Prince first came onto the scene—Cloud Cult played to two sold-out shows and put on a show that was pure magic.

Their new album Love, is beautiful, insightful, mystical, wise and takes listeners on an inner odyssey that is guaranteed to rock your world.

The band's label, Earthology, is committed to greening the music industry, offsets carbon from tours and developed the first 100% post-consumer recycled CD packaging in the U.S. 

As a leader in the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability) space, and president of firefly180 marketing, I know the power of music as a vehicle for change.

Working with green artists that include John Denver, Kenny Loggins, Jack Johnson and the Dave Matthews Band,  I know that music speaks to the soul and touches the heart in ways that words alone can't.  Music and lyrics are the ultimate integrated marketing campaign. Songs become doors that open the mind to action. And for environmental artists, music can be a platform that becomes a springboard for change.

Cloud Cult doesn't just write and perform music. They literally shower the world with love.  Just like all of us in  conscious businesses. Although not all of us can sing and compose music, our voices are heard just the same.

Lisa Proctor is the president and creative director of firefly180 marketing—a Minneapolis-based branding and advertising agency that specializes in LOHAS marketing, wellness marketing, green marketing and renewable energy marketing.

I am fortunate to be able to connect with various experts in a variety of LOHAS related categories as well as research various articles predicting what to expect as new opportunities and market trends in the growing LOHAS market. Based on my discussions and findings, here are a few things that I think stand out in the organic and natural food vertical of LOHAS:

1.       A growing awareness of ingredients and sourcing – organic, GMO, fair trade

Those who are opposed to genetically-modified organisms in their food — everything from grains to fish — are getting louder and their concerns heard as demonstrated when, anti-GMO activists hijacked Cheerio’s Facebook page. But following the defeat of California’s Proposition 37, which would have been the first legislation to require GMO labeling, the community is bound to get noisier than ever.

2.       Closing the Price Gap on Organic

Consumers will be able to find certified organic products in all sections of the supermarket and pharmacy.  Expect an evolution of other industry sectors, such as organic personal care, pet food (more like pet treats) dietary supplements. What manufacturers create or retailers carry all depends on the target customer. Capturing discriminating LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) customers goes well beyond one person: it spreads to their families and pets.

3.       Accessible Organic

Larger organic production, from farm acreage expansion to processing facilities, will translate into organic landing where it is most needed: schools, hospitals, food banks, convenience stores and in mainstream America’s home. Some communities are better served by organic than others, but organic will continue to pop up as distribution channels increase beyond grocery stores. New markets will open to organic food growers, makers and sellers as consumers look for cleaner food beyond grocery stores.

4.       Gluten free integrated into all food options and will be a common part of menu options

The gluten-free market, by comparison is expected to have reached US$1.3 billion in sales by 2011. However, the gluten-free market, which is still in its early growth, is expected to achieve higher growth rates (31%) from 2011 to 2014. Sales in the category have doubled in the last 5 years and are expected to double again in the next 3 years to $5.5 billion by 2015. The new ‘gluten-free’ is already here. With food allergies rising worldwide — at least seven per cent of Canadians have a food allergy — more companies will build facilities dedicated to manufacturing foods free of allergens like dairy, peanuts, egg, soy and shellfish.

5.       Healthy Fast Food - Other Chipotle type chains on the rise.

According to Baum & Whiteman, other chains are following suit, but need to make sure they capitalize on more than just comfy décor and made-to-order food: Companies  will needs to wear its heart on its sleeve … incorporating not just value, but values. Expect more fast food chains to promote sustainable food choices and friendly casual atmospheres. Giants like McDonald’s are embracing this with their new calorie information menus

6.       Food waste awareness on the rise

Americans throw out nearly half of their food, tossing up to 40 percent in the garbage each year, according to a new study. That adds up to an estimated $165 billion according to Natural Resources Defense Council. As more people seek to squeeze money out of their budgets this will be scrutinized as more become aware not to mention restaurants that may waste more .

7.       Chia seed and fermented beverages rule

The nutty tasting Chia seed has more protein, energy and fiber than any other whole grain. The seed is one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. Three ounces of Chia contains the same amount of Omega-3 fatty acid as 28 ounces of salmon, as much calcium as 3 cups of milk, as much iron as 5 cups of raw spinach, and as much vitamin C as seven oranges!   Chia drinks & oils have seen over a 1000% growth in 2012 according to SPINS. No, we’re not talking about the kind you grow in a pot, but 2013 is all about adding the chia seed to your diet.

8.        Chill out power drinks

In a rebound from power shots such as 5 hour energy and Red Bull there are now drinks that promote relaxation using supplements and herbs. The drinks, which evolved in Japan as far back as 2005, contain no alcohol but some have melatonin, a hormone that can cause drowsiness for those suffering from insomnia and high stress.

9.       Sustainable seafood continues to grow  

According to the National Restaurant Association’s chef survey, sustainable seafood is a top trend among chefs. And sustainability initiatives, such as the well-known Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, report an increase in the number of chefs and operators following their guidelines.

10.   Organic soil promoted as carbon reduction

According to the Organic Center Analyzing  international experts headed by scientists from the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) in Switzerland have concluded that organic agriculture provides environmental benefits through carbon sequestration in soils. Not only are their health benefits but global environmental benefits.

11.   Increased Demand on Transparency

Consumers demand transparency they will come to know what organic means across categories such as personal care, household cleaners and dietary supplements. Natural retailers are already at the forefront by using shelf talkers that tell the story behind the products. Manufacturers only have so much room on labels but can provide more detailed information on their website, Facebook and Twitter. Social platforms will allow consumers to become educated on organica. Companies such as Stoneyfield Farms and Nature’s Path are leaders in this.

Ted Ning is renowned for leading the annual LOHAS Forum, LOHAS.com and LOHAS Journal the past 9 years Ted Ning is widely regarded as the epicenter of all things LOHAS leading many to affectionately refer to him as ‘Mr. LOHAS’. He is a change agent, trend spotter and principal of the LOHAS Group, which advises large and small corporations on accessing and profiting from the +$300 billion lifestyles of health and sustainability marketplace.  The LOHAS Group is a strategy firm focusing on helping companies discover, create, nurture and develop their unique brand assets.  For more information on Ted visit  www.tedning.com

I know you may be thinking “Why do I need to read about the case for building a community? Everyone already knows it’s the latest and greatest marketing trend.” Which is precisely my point.

If all the community building going on right now is only based on the fact that it’s a marketing trend, it’s doomed to be just another flash in the pan. And haven’t we all had enough of those?

If, however, you build your community with a solid understanding of the fundamental business ROI that a community can bring to the table, it will be an integral part of your business success strategy. And isn’t that what we’re all after?

So, let’s roll up our sleeves and get neck deep in what I call The ROI of a Fiercely Loyal Community:

ROI #1 – Raving Fans Who Will Help You Spread The Word

In this loud crowded marketplace we all operate in, it’s really really critical to have a group of people who will help you spread the word about what you are up to.

What makes them want to spread the word?

Maybe you’ve let them beta-test your latest new thing for free and they’ve found out how awesome it is. Maybe you asked them to help you create your latest new thing so they feel ownership in it. Or maybe you’ve made them feel like such a vital part of what you are doing that they feel invested in making sure it succeeds.

ROI #2: A Grassroots Research and Development Team

A fiercely loyal community that is invested in your success is like having access to a brain trust comprised of your ideal clients.

Instead of just asking them what they want, tap into their imaginations. Empower them to help you tease out the real problems they are facing so you can co-design powerful solutions. Let them play with the stuff you’re working on so they can help you make it better before you ever release it to the public.

ROI #3: A Client Base Waiting to Gobble Up Whatever You Offer

You’ve got to have clients and customers to stay in business right? Imagine clients who’ve been involved in helping you design and build your latest thing. They know it’s going to solve their problem and that it’s going to fit them like a glove. Think they’ll want to buy it?

Even if they haven’t been intimately involved in the design process, bring them along with you as you are designing. Ask them questions. Learn who they are. This insider feeling helps them see how you design solutions just for them.

ROI #4: Reduced Customer/Client Attrition

We’ve all heard it: “It’s cheaper to keep a client than it is to go out and get a new one.” Happy, thriving, fiercely loyal communities are your greatest asset in keeping your current clients and customers engaged with you.

When your clients are engaged in your community and feel like it plays a vital role in their lives and/ or their businesses, they aren’t likely to leave you for the latest and greatest widget. Leaving you means leaving the community and that is just a price they aren’t willing to pay.

ROI #5: Happier Customers and Clients

Happy customers and clients are a delight to do business with. They complain less, refer more business and actually may spend more money with you.

Did you know that all of the happiness research out there points to two things that are most vital to our happiness: connection and engagement? Many of your customers and clients are actively looking for this connection and engagement. When you provide that for them, they will see you as a source of happiness. Which is a pretty awesome (and uncommon) thing for a business to provide.

So there you are. Five solid business ROI’s of a Fiercely Loyal Community. Which ones speak to you? Which ones would have the biggest and/or most immediate impact on your business? Focus on building your community to achieve those ROI’s first, then focus on the others. You’ll be well on your way to creating a Fiercely Loyal Community that is anything but a flash in the pan.

Attend the Get Found and Be Chosen presented Barry Moltz hosted by Dex Digital on June 19^th during the LOHAS Business Conference in Boulder. For more information on your business’ findability score please visit: www.HowFindableAreYou.com/LOHAS

Get your Findable Score™. It's fast, free and easy! Learn how consumers search for businesses in your industry and get advice to improve your visibility. Your score is free and so is the marketing insight.

Article By Barry Moltz - Barry is a nationally recognized expert on small business who has given hundreds of presentations to audiences ranging in size from 20 to 20,000. Barry Moltz gets business owners growing again by unlocking their long forgotten potential.  With decades of entrepreneurial experience in his own business ventures as well as consulting countless other entrepreneurs, Barry has discovered the formula to get stuck business owners unstuck and marching forward.  Barry applies simple, strategic steps to facilitate change. Details on Barry can be found on his website www.barymoltz.com.

In my leadership work with business owners and executives, I often hear the question: "How can I motivate and inspire my people to perform on a higher level, solve problems more independently, and receive a regular flow of unsolicited ideas to increase my company's level of innovation?"

Here's my response. I have outlined a simple 3-step strategy that you can apply in every situation where you provide feedback or guidance to an employee that will encourage and motivate them to share their new ideas. One thing I want you to know before you start: this strategy only works if you make it a fundamental part of your mindset and continuously apply it. It truly must become a habit and natural response in your repertoire of leadership skills. It simply will not work if it's artificially applied. You must honestly mean it and feel it!

Step 1: See people on the highest level.
This is the basis of the strategy. Put your focus on all the great skills and qualities you can find in the person. Don't stop on a superficial level and think: "… he's doing his job pretty well, he’s a good guy." Go deep. You must be one hundred percent present and specific when you focus on his best talents and highest qualities. Say to yourself, for example, "The way he's speaking and articulating himself is incredible. With his level of clarity and energy he is representing our company in the best possible way." Here, it is important to check your own ego and increase your level of self-awareness. It is often hard to give someone, particularly a team member or employee, a lot of credit and acknowledgement. A brilliant leader steps up to the plate and rejoices in fulling seeing the person’s quality as a big asset for his firm or team.

Apply this view whenever you engage in a feedback conversation with your employee and constantly seek out ways to find and integrate more of his better qualities and skills into his work. I know you might think now that this is a bunch of BS, that this person is not good at this specific thing and he needs to improve it and by me just not focusing on it he will not get better. I totally understand this thought. Not everyone is excellent at everything, but remember one thing - whatever your focus on will expand (positive or negative) - so the more you elicit qualities and skills in people and elevate them, the better the people will become. And here's another big thing, the more you elevate your employees the quicker they will improve on skills they weren't good at before and they better they will perform. And why? It’s because the more you constantly connect them with their inherent resources and talents in what they naturally excel in, the better they will feel, the more confident the will be, and the more inspiration and enthusiasm they will express. The secret of this philosophy is that you will see yourself surrounded by more and more brilliant people who will contribute to your company's success. You will be in GOOD COMPANY ;-)

Step 2: Discover their bright spots and success stories.
Find examples in their work that were exceedingly good. Find situations when they performed on the highest level, did something unexpected that turned into success, contributed with innovative ideas, and solved problems without much advice and guidance from your side. Get curious and find out what they exactly did in these situations. Ask them: "How did you convince this new prospect to partner with us? What exactly did you do, what steps did you follow?" Learn the strategy they followed and the steps they took and give them credit for that. Praise works wonders if you connect it to a specific situation or incident. It will become the resource for your employee to do more of it and to share it so that others can also learn and benefit from his talent and knowledge. Your job as a leader is to discover these bright spots and provide very specific feedback and acknowledgement that will elevate that person.

Step 3: Turn successes into repeatable strategies.
Now you can ask yourself: “How can I support this person to repeat these success stories more often in his work.” Also ask your employee directly and work with him to develop the ideal conditions and circumstances that will enable him to perform on the highest level. Once you understand what he needs you will be much better at creating and providing the resources for success. He will thank you with providing a high level of commitment, outstanding performance, and a flood of new ideas that can contribute to your companies level of innovation.

About Sascha Bosio

The good news for 2013 is that we didn't die in the doom and gloom at the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012.  We are still here, but how are we here?  Are you going to struggle along to just get along?  If you want more and better out of life, the natural principles of sustainability show you how.  To sustain is to be continuously happy and healthy and successful.

The core "sustain ability" for this life of ongoing fulfillment and aliveness is SYNERGY.

Synergy is the principle of exponential and renewable energy that is rooted in the Greek language as "sun ergos," or sun energy – "sunergy" into synergy.  Our sun keeps going and going because it is synergistic, meaning that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and when the parts of this fireball go off, they are refueled by and refuel all other combustions – continuously multiplying and regenerating itself.  

Like the sun, having our own inner fire, how can we stay fired up and keep going in this world of incessant change, increasing complexity, competition, and speed?  Be the sun, synergize yourself!  Remember, energy is the bottom line of life – for continued aliveness, and sustainable success in all endeavors from health to money, personal growth to relationships.  With energy, anything is possible.  The rule of energy is that "energy rules!"

Curiously and synchronistically on an esoteric level, the year 2013 numerologically adds up to the number six, which in the ancient Hebrew Kabalah "tree of life," is represented by the letter, "Vav" that means connection, the hook that holds everything together and unified.  In the venerable tarot "wisdom map of life,"the number six is the VI Lovers archetype card.   The Lovers is all about connection, integration, unification, healing, teaming, partnering, cooperating, co-creating, collaborating.  In a word, all this means wholeness, which in turn is synergistic.

Living wholistically and synergistically is the key step for living well and living long, for surviving and thriving (sustaining) because it fulfills the holy grail of today, being able to "RE" yourself and all aspects of your life.  "Re" means able to reflect, rejuvenate, renew, restart, reinvent, repeat, re, re, re.  This is all good in theory, and it's real, it's the truth, but how do we apply these principles in our daily life?  What are you RE-peating in life today and not De-pleting yourself, the great secret!

("SYNERGY" Card from my VOYAGER TAROT DECK...www.jamesmwanless.com)

Two of today’s greatest megatrends, Conscious Money and Conscious Capitalism, are cut from the same financial cloth. And each of these innovative strategies flies in the face of conventional money thinking—which insists that human values should play no role whatsoever in financial decisions. That view is clearly incorrect. Values powerfully shape our choices (even if we’re unaware of it) and our behavior. Our choices and actions write the story of our lives—and our money lives. I’d go even further: positive values support us make better financial choices. Why? Because values engage the heart in the way that sound financial practices honor the head. When heart and head are in sync, our emotions are steady, our mind is settled, and our direction is clear—all of which enhance our ability to make good economic decisions.

[ Article form the special 20th Anniversary issue of the GreenMoney Journal (Fall 2012) and www.GreenMoney.com ]

The Next 20 Years of Sustainable Business

by Aron Cramer, President and CEO, BSR (Business for Social Responsibility)

Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio, and in this BSR’s 20^th anniversary year, we are both looking back and looking ahead. And as we reflect on the past 20 years, it seems that everything has changed…and nothing has changed. There are reasons to celebrate great achievements, but even more reasons to redouble efforts to achieve the tangible successes that are necessary to put the world on a genuinely sustainable path. Just recently there has been an unprecedented turnout by business and civil society at Rio+20, while at the same time the American Meteorological Society reports that freak heat waves in the US and fatal floods in Russia were likely caused by climate change.

Most businesses, and many other institutions, now recognize that we have in our hands the ability to create an economy that delivers dignified lives of comfort and opportunity for the 9 billion people we expect in 2050; an energy system that enables economic growth without irreversible climate change; and access to food, energy, water, and technology. Whether or not we turn this vision into reality is not just of interest to sustainability professionals, it is nothing less than the central challenge of the 21^st century.

There are indeed many great accomplishments that have been achieved since 1992. As sustainability enters the mainstream, we see that hundreds of millions of people have escaped poverty in the past generation, something never before achieved in human history. Most large multinational companies and countless small and medium enterprises (SMEs) all across the world have embraced sustainability. Consumers, investors, and governments have vastly more information than ever before to enable them to assess how business is performing on sustainability, allowing rewards for the best performers. Collaboration and dialogue between business, NGOs, and community organizations, once taboo, is now considered basic. Technology’s ability to connect us has created a global community unprecedented in human history. And where companies once saw corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a risk mitigation exercise, more and more understand sustainability to be the mother of all innovation opportunities. All this is great cause for optimism.

And yet, there are many, many areas in which, twenty years after the initial Earth Summit, progress is insufficient. Our planet continues to warm, with carbon levels nearing 400 parts per million, dangerously close to the point at which irredeemable changes will occur. We need only consider the thousands of record high temperatures in the early summer of 2012 in North America, capping the hottest year on record in the United States, to make the point. The International Energy Agency, hardly an alarmist organization, now sees serious risk of catastrophic climate change. Deforestation proceeds. Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is inconsistent. The number of water-stressed regions in the world grows annually. And our measures of economic vitality remain tied to unsustainable levels of natural resource consumption. Governments have largely abdicated responsibility to take concerted action to promote low-carbon economic growth, wilting in the face of the global financial crisis. This litany makes clear that, by many objective measures, progress is far too slow – at best.

Without a change in course, the remarkable rise in living standards that have enabled countless people to live lives of dignity will either be halted or reversed.

But with new thinking, innovation, and collaborative action, we can transform our world, and turn the vision of sustainable, prosperous lives for nine billion people into a reality.

Where We Need To Go

If we are to build on the successes of the last twenty years, we need to change course. The task ahead is no longer about defining the challenge; it is about meeting the challenge. We don’t need more roadmaps; we need to move faster towards the destination.

The path forward is fundamentally different than the one we have traveled over the past two decades. In the first decade after the original Earth Summit, the time when BSR was founded, the primary challenge was to raise awareness in the business community about why sustainability was a crucial and legitimate topic for the private sector. In the subsequent decade, energies were directed less to awareness raising, and more to the integration of social and environmental strategies into business strategy and operations. For the decade ahead, integration remains crucial. Companies have made great progress in the past two decades, and we have been proud to play a role in that. There is considerable room to go further, and we write about that elsewhere in this article.

But a new decade brings a new approach. More substantial progress, however, depends on change not only inside individual companies, but also within entire systems. The era of the hermetically sealed, vertically integrated company is long gone. Every business, in every part of the world, operates within a web of systems: economic, cultural, political, and natural. Every business in every part of the world relies on networks of suppliers, customers, and investors. Even the most innovative companies won’t capture the potential of their efforts if these systems disregard sustainability. And as much as we value best practices, we also know from the past two decades that even the most creative experiments and demonstration projects are not going to meet the scale of the challenge.

So the solutions we need to achieve our goals must also be systemic. A genuinely sustainable economy depends on four inter-related elements: (1) the operational systems in which companies act; (2) the markets that shape the way investments are made and value is defined; (3) the stakeholder world that holds great promise, and (4) the world of ever more empowered individuals and connected communities.

   •     Truly Integrated Business Models: Business decision-making does not currently integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into investment calculations. Fifteen years after John Elkington popularized the triple bottom line, very few companies have actually integrated this model into their economic valuations. Whether or not financial markets change the game, there is an opportunity for companies to get smarter about the intangible assets that increasingly make or break their success. While some companies are experimenting with economic valuations that include elements like carbon, we have not yet seen widespread adoption of economic models that place a value on ecosystem services, community goodwill, or the risk of stranded assets. It is now widely agreed that these things have value; our task for the next decade is to get more precise about what the value is, and how to measure it. The Natural Capital Declaration that 57 companies signed at Rio+20 is a good start down this path.

   •     Financial Markets That Promote Long-Term Value: Despite the Great Recession, public markets focus as intensely as ever on short-term returns. Shares in publicly traded companies in the United States are held for an average of seven months, down from seven years two generations ago. Markets allocate capital with great effect, and the challenge ahead is to maintain the best aspects of market flexibility while reducing the relentless pressure of short-termism. Financial innovation, which was blamed for the crash in 2008, can also be parlayed into new mechanisms that help create long-term value. Integrated reporting, integration of non-financial risks and opportunities into definitions of fiduciary duty, the creation of “L shares” as proposed by Al Gore and David Blood, as well as other mechanisms will create a virtuous circle in which companies are rewarded for taking the long view, and investors are cushioned from the risks of excessive short-term thinking. And there is little doubt that there is also the need to restore trust in our financial system if the “real economy” is going to thrive.

   •     New Frontiers of Collaboration: The past 20 years introduced the concept of collaboration among companies and an increasingly powerful network of NGOs around the world. The next 20 years will see the lines between for-profit and not-for-profit organizations blur substantially. A world of dialogue between organizations defined by whether they are for-profit or non-profit may be drawing to a close. Can we imagine a world in which every enterprise is a social enterprise? A world in which every NGO thinks about market solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges? How will companies collaborate when every individual has a megaphone bigger than those available to the world’s biggest NGOs 20 years ago?

   •     The Empowered Individual: The next ten years will continue to put more and more information and autonomy into the hands of individuals and self-forming groups. The demise of business models relying on big businesses selling to passive mass audiences will accelerate. More and more information will be available to individuals. The “internet of things” and widespread sensors will make the invisible visible. Advances in biotechnology will provide quantum leaps in our understanding of how the world around us, and our choices as consumers and citizens, affects our health. These changes can – under the right circumstances – be a net positive for sustainability. And it is undeniably the case that companies will need to adapt to a world of truly radical transparency.

At BSR, we want to see a world with a truly inclusive economy that enables all people to meet their needs, shape their futures, and achieve their potential. We want to see a world that values and preserves natural resources so that future generations have the same – or better – opportunity to thrive. We see a world where economic health – for individuals and for nations and enterprises – is measured not by the quantity of consumption, but by the quality of life that economic activity delivers. And we want to see a world in which public policy and markets create the incentives and rules that make it possible for businesses that point in this direction to thrive. Companies that embrace this challenge will be the ones to achieve the greatest success…and the ones who create a world of which we can be proud.

The road ahead needs greater emphasis on systemic solutions like those I describe here. If real progress is made in these areas over the next twenty years, we will have done a great deal to accelerate… and will have more reasons to celebrate.

Article by Aron Cramer, President and CEO, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) (www.bsr.org ). Mr. Cramer is recognized globally as an authority on corporate responsibility by leaders in business and NGOs as well as by his peers in the field. He advises senior executives at BSR’s nearly 300 member companies and other global businesses, and is regularly featured as a speaker at major events and in a range of media outlets. Under his leadership, BSR has doubled its staff and significantly expanded its global presence. Mr. Cramer is co-author of the book Sustainable Excellence: The Future of Business in a Fast-changing World, about the corporate responsibility strategies that drive business success. He joined BSR in 1995 as the founding director of its Business and Human Rights Program, and opened BSR’s Paris office in 2002, where he worked until assuming his current roles in 2004.

Previously he practiced law in San Francisco and worked as a journalist at ABC News in New York. He has expertise in integrating sustainability into business strategy, human rights policies and practices, and stakeholder engagement.

For more information go to- www.GreenMoney.com

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Looking Forward – Relevance Achieved By Amy Domini, CFA, founder, Domini Social Investments ( Article from Fall 2012 - Special 20th Anniversary issue of GreenMoney Journal and  www.GreenMoney.com )

Looking forward ten, even twenty years, what will Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) have become? What will it have accomplished? What will the field look like? Today, I build a case for a good future. In a word, it will largely be marvelous.

Roughly 15 years ago, I spoke in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is a spectacular setting, one that makes a person proud to be in a great nation like ours, one that protects such places. Yet, as I reminded the audience that day, it had not been the public that had kept the Grand Tetons pristine. It was one man, John D. Rockefeller, who had purchased the land and given it to the nation.

This is the classic dilemma we in SRI struggle with every day. It is great that the Grand Tetons are a public treasure, but they became so on the backs of crushed labor forces, pollution and selfishness. One man made his money and then gave it away, but he set in motion the international oil industry, an industry that is robbing us of a climate, a future.

That day I challenged SRI to become relevant. Today, I can see clearly that it has. Over the next twenty years, the positions we have taken and the battles we have fought will lead to a universal understanding that what we have been saying, the way you invest matters, is absolutely correct. We will see our guiding principles integrated into the mainstream. We will be astonished at the acceptance and the impact that we have had.

How We Became Relevant - Performance Matters

Perhaps the most devastating argument we faced early on was the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). It argues that the previous “prudent man” idea of buying good stocks alone, created risk. Introduced in 1952 by Harry Markowitz, the original premise was simple: investors should focus on overall portfolio risk. Simply put, even if you love software, you still shouldn’t build an entire portfolio of software stocks. Astonishingly, this revelation won Mr. Markowitz a Nobel Prize in Economics and caused the entire financial services industry to argue that the individual risk characteristics of a company mattered little.

Against this backdrop, SRI seemed hopelessly old fashioned. We argue that each company, by virtue of the industry within which it operates, faces a series of risks that we label as risks to people or the planet. We then argue that taking too large a risk is not necessary and further, that it perpetuates an acceptance of these risks. Wall Street pundits stated with great authority, but with no basis, that our form of analysis flew in the face of Modern Portfolio Theory and so would fail. Our largest barrier was that, to use the vernacular, every smart person knew SRI was stupid.

The evidence proved otherwise. The MSCI KLD 400 Social Index has not only debunked the premise of MPT, but also shown that risk avoidance works. The index has outperformed -- and has done so with a lower standard deviation. Clearly, examining the risk of corporate behavior tells us something about a company that is useful to investors.

Why We Are Relevant – An Increase in Reporting

SRI practitioners have pushed for “extra-financial” data and have gotten it. At first, true comparative data on companies was extremely scarce in some areas of keen interest to the concerned investor. Any good researcher understands that the newspapers are a lousy place to start. The fact that we know that Apple sourced from Foxconn does not tell us what Hewlett Packard does. What is needed is data that is universally ascertainable, without the company answering a questionnaire (which allows them to self-define), and the data must be quantitative in nature, e.g. I don’t care as much about a statement that a company seeks diversity as I do about how many minorities have been hired.

Today, thousands of companies self-report. Whereas the one or two companies that issued Social Responsibility reports thirty years ago were real outliers, today it is so mainstream that Forbes magazine maintains a blog to follow them. Accounting giant PWC makes available the 2010 survey of CSR reporting on their website. The highlights: 81 percent of all companies have CSR information on their websites; 31 percent have these assured (or verified) by a third party. Their 2012 update contains examples of what to look for when writing (or reading) them.

Who was pushing for this disclosure? It wasn’t civil society, it wasn’t Wall Street; it wasn’t government. It was a loose confederation of concerned investors who consistently pushed for greater and more standardized “non-financial” information.

Why We Are Relevant – An Increase in Regulation to Disclose

Regulators are beginning to expand on the data corporations are required to disclose. Remember, there was no God-given definition of the right way to report financials to investors. In 1932, when reforms to protect investors began, regulators looked at some of the pre-existing methods and evaluated them. This led to audited annual reports on income statements and balance sheets. It led to quarterly unaudited reports. These had, in the past, come to be viewed as important in judging the financial soundness of a corporation.

However, the regulators did not stop with accounting issues. Given that the 1930s were a period of high unemployment, the number of company employees was considered important, and so its disclosure became mandated. There is no reason that more robust social and environmental reporting shouldn’t be in the financial reports. We already disclose a company’s hometown, without companies complaining of the inappropriateness and burden of so doing.

The Initiative for Responsible Investment at Harvard University maintains a database of Global CSR Disclosure requirements. In it we find 34 nations are taking steps. In 2009, Denmark, required companies to disclose CSR activities and use of environmental resources. In 2010, the United Kingdom required companies that use more than 6,000MWh per year to report on all emissions related to energy use. Malaysia, in 2007, required companies to publish CSR information on a "comply or explain" basis. Regulators, recognizing the societal costs of less than full cost accounting, are moving in to mandate disclosure.

Mainstreaming - With this solid base, here come the “big boys”

Conventional asset managers and the academic community have brought SRI to the mainstream. I began by saying the future for SRI is marvelous. Consider a world in which every major financial asset management firm demands that its staff study the social and environmental implications of the investments they make and bases recommendations upon it.

But this has already begun. Consider MEAG, the American portfolio management branch of Munich Re. Their team buys only publicly traded bonds which then back the insurance the firm issues. They use ESG criteria to give their research the edge and to avoid risk. When I met with their research team, I found that they use several of Domini’s Key Indicators. No, we don’t publish the indicators. It also was not a coincidence. The two firms independently discovered the same indicators to be telling because they both use the same logic in approaching the issues. Or there is UBS Investment Bank, where analysts specifically address the social, environmental or governance risks of a company they are recommending.

Finally, look at the all-important realm of academia, where MPT began. Just three recent examples are telling:

The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate Behavior and Performance by Professors Robert Eccles and George Serafeim, Harvard Business School. “… we provide evidence that High Sustainability companies significantly outperform their counterparts over the long-term, both in terms of stock market and accounting performance. The outperformance is stronger in sectors where the customers are individual consumers, companies compete on the basis of brands and reputation, and in sectors where companies' products significantly depend upon extracting large amounts of natural resources.”

Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance by Beiting Cheng, Harvard Business School, Ioannis Ioannou, London Business School, and George Serafeim, Harvard Business School. “Using a large cross-section of firms, we show that firms with better CSR performance face significantly lower capital constraints. The results are confirmed using an instrumental variables and a simultaneous equations approach. Finally, we find that the relation is primarily driven by social and environmental performance, rather than corporate governance.”

An FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for Financial Innovation: Applying the Insurable Interest Doctrine to Twenty-First Century Financial Markets, by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl, Law School, University of Chicago. “We propose that when firms invent new financial products, they be forbidden to sell them until they receive approval from a government agency designed along the lines of the FDA, which screens pharmaceutical innovations. The agency would approve financial products if they satisfy a test for social utility …”

The Next Twenty Years

This article limits its scope to only one leg of the SRI stool. It does not discuss the growth of shareholder activism, which is vibrant. Nor does it address the mainstreaming of selling products with narrow and specific social purpose, also a burgeoning field. Rather, by looking at the application of social criteria to an investable universe alone, we see that barriers have been removed, and that now both a mountain of money, and the force of government and academia, will work with us and introduce our goals into mainstream investment thinking.

We know we can make money, government is increasingly with us, and academia is swinging our way. Now, the rapid acceptance of more robust and integrated accounting has done away with the last barriers. This brings us the assets to have impact. As society sees the full cost of traditional business behavior, SRI will be embraced as the single most important lever towards building a better world than the planet has ever seen.

Article by Amy Domini, who has worked for decades to advocate that financial systems must be used to create a world of universal human dignity and ecological sustainability. She authored or co-authored several books. Her most recent, Socially Responsible Investing: Making a Difference and Making Money, was published by Dearborn Trade in 2001. She writes on the topic frequently. Her articles have appeared on the Huffington Post, the OECD Observer, GreenMoney Journal and the Journal of Investing. She is a regular columnist for Ode Magazine.

Time magazine named her to the “Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people” in 2005. President Clinton honored her at the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, citing her role in making socially responsible investing a global trend. The Dalai Lama, during a Town Meeting on Ethics, heard her presentation and urged his audience to give it credence.

Ms. Domini works with high net worth individuals at the Sustainability Group in Boston; she also founded Domini Social Investments, LLC ( www.domini.com ), a no-load mutual fund family for socially responsible investors. Between the two firms, she manages roughly $2 billion in assets, all invested with environmental and social objectives in mind.

She holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and received her B.A in International Economics from Boston University. In 2006, Ms. Domini was awarded an honorary Doctor of Business Administration from Northeastern University. In 2007, she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. Ms. Domini is a past trustee of the Church Pension Board at the Episcopal Church (U.S.A.). Among others, she is also a past Board member of the Governing board of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, the National Community Capital Association, and the Social Investment Forum.

For more information go to- www.GreenMoney.com

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By Joe Keefe, President and CEO, Pax World Management  (From the special 20th Anniversary issue of the GreenMoney Journal and www.GreenMoney.com )

Twenty years from now, we will have either successfully transitioned from our current economic growth paradigm to a new model of Sustainable Capitalism or we will be suffering the calamitous consequences of our failure to do so. Likewise, sustainable investing will either remain a niche strategy or it will have supplanted mainstream investing. This is the critical point we must embrace: sustainable investing can no longer simply present itself as an alternative to traditional investment approaches that ignore environmental, social and governance (ESG) imperatives; it cannot simply be for some people; it must actually triumph over and displace traditional investing.  

The current model of global capitalism - call it growth capitalism - is premised upon perpetual economic growth that must ultimately invade all accessible habitat and consume all available resources.[Footnote 1] Growth capitalism must eventually collapse, and is in fact collapsing, for the simple reason that a finite planet cannot sustain infinite growth. Moreover, the dislocations associated with this infinite growth paradigm and its incipient demise - climate change, rising inequality and extreme poverty, resource scarcity (including food and water shortages), habitat loss and species extinctions, ever more frequent financial crises, to name just a few - will increasingly bedevil global policy makers in the years ahead. The public sector is already experiencing a high degree of dysfunction associated with its inability to confront a defining feature of this system: the need for perpetual growth in consumption spurs a corresponding growth in public and private debt to fuel that consumption, which has roiled financial markets and sovereign finances across the globe. 

Meanwhile, the environmental fallout from this infinite growth paradigm is becoming acute. All of earth’s natural systems – air, water, minerals, oil, forests and rainforests, soil, wetlands, fisheries, coral reefs, the oceans themselves – are in serious decline. Climate change is just one symptom. “The problem is the delusion that we can have infinite quantitative economic growth, that we can keep having more and more stuff, on a finite planet.”[FN 2] The problem is an economic system that makes no distinction between capital investments that destroy the environment, or worsen public health, or exacerbate economic inequality, and those that are aligned with earth’s natural systems while promoting the general welfare. Under growth capitalism, a dollar of output is a dollar of output, regardless of its side effects; short-term profit is valued regardless of the long-term consequences or externalities. 

It is therefore discouraging that, in the U.S. at least, there is no serious discussion in mainstream policy circles about alternatives to the present system. Nor do I think there will be for some time given our current political/cultural drift. Political and economic elites, and the public itself, remain committed to growth capitalism, accustomed to “having more and more stuff,” for a host of economic, social and psychological reasons. As Jeremy Grantham has written, “[t]he problems of compounding growth in the face of finite resources are not easily understood by optimistic, short-term-oriented, and relatively innumerate humans (especially the political variety).”[FN 3] Our campaign finance system, wherein policy makers are essentially bought off by and incentivized to advance the very interests that stand to profit most from the current system, is no help. Making matters worse, large segments of the public do not even accept what science teaches us about climate change, or natural systems, or evolution, or a host of other pressing realities. The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. Today, it seems that a growing number of people, aided and abetted by special interests that stand to benefit from public ignorance, are increasingly opting for their own “facts.”

So, neither the public sector nor corporate and economic elites, as a result of some newfound enlightenment, seem poised to consider alternatives to the current system. To the contrary, their first impulse will be to resist any such efforts. This is the critical problem at the moment: while there is an array of powerful forces aligned against the type of sweeping, systemic change that is needed, there is no organized constituency for it. There are individuals and groups who support this or that reform, or who are focused on critical pieces of the larger puzzle (e.g., climate change, sustainable food & agriculture, gender equality, sustainable investing), but there is no movement, no political party or leader, no policy agenda to connect the dots.

That is a shame because there is a clear alternative to growth capitalism that has been articulated in recent years by a diverse body of economists, ecologists, scientists and other leading thinkers - including leaders in the sustainable investment community.[FN 4]

Although there is as of yet no unified theory or common language, let alone any sort of organized movement to speak of, what has emerged is essentially a unified vision, and that vision might best be described as Sustainable Capitalism.[FN 5]

Sustainable Capitalism may be thought of as a market system where the quality of output replaces the quantity of output as the measure of economic well-being. Sustainable Capitalism “explicitly integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into strategy, the measurement of outputs and the assessment of both risks and opportunities…. encourages us to generate financial returns in a long-term and responsible manner, and calls for internalizing negative externalities through appropriate pricing.”[FN 6] Essentially, business corporations and markets alter their focus from maximizing short-term profit to maximizing long-term value, and long-term value expressly includes the societal benefits associated with or derived from economic activity. The connections between economic output and ecological/societal health are no longer obscured but are expressly linked.[FN 7]

There is no question that growth capitalism must give way to Sustainable Capitalism. It’s as simple, and as urgent, as that. Over the next 20 years, the sustainable investing industry must play a pivotal leadership role in ushering in this historic transformation. We will need to connect the dots and catalyze the movement. Why us? For the simple reason that finance is where the battle must be joined. It is the financial system that determines how and where capital is invested, what is valued and not valued, priced and not priced. The sustainable investment community’s role is vital because the fundamental struggle is between a long-term perspective that fully integrates ESG factors into economic and investment decisions and our current paradigm which is increasingly organized around short-term trading gains as the primary driver of capital investment and economic growth regardless of consequences/externalities.

The notion that sustainable investing can simply keep to its current trajectory - a few more assets under management here, a few more successful shareholder resolutions there, a few more GRI reports issued, another UN conference, an occasional victory at the SEC - and achieve what needs to be achieved on the scale required is, frankly, untenable. We need to be more ambitious in our agenda.

We will also need to take a more critical stance, not only advocating for ESG integration but against economic and investment approaches that ignore ESG concerns. We will need to consistently critique the notion that externalities associated with economic output are somehow collateral, or that financial return is sufficient without beneficial societal returns, or that markets are inherently efficient and self-correcting. We will need to unabashedly offer sustainable investing not as an alternative approach but as a better approach - as the only sensible, responsible way to invest.

I believe the sustainable investing industry will also need to align itself with a more explicit public policy agenda - while remaining non-partisan - and work with like-minded reformers to advocate for that agenda. For example, sustainable investors should be sounding the alarm about resource scarcity and advocating for a massive public/private investment plan in clean energy, efficiency technologies and modernized infrastructure.[FN 8] The age of resource scarcity and the need for efficiency solutions is upon us.[FN 9] At Pax World, we offer a fund - the Global Environmental Markets Fund (formerly the Global Green Fund) - whose investment focus is precisely that. Our industry needs to fashion such investment solutions, and I believe there will be opportunities to do so collaboratively as well as competitively.

I also feel strongly that the greatest impediment to sustainable development across the globe is gender inequality. Advancing and empowering women and girls is not only a moral imperative but can unleash enormous potential that is now locked up in our patriarchal global economy. Sustainable investors need to press the case that gender equality needs to be a pillar of Sustainable Capitalism. At Pax World, we also have a fund - the Global Women’s Equality Fund - whose investment focus is exactly that.

In my view, the sustainable investing community should also be advocating for public funding of federal elections, either through a constitutional amendment or, absent an amendment, through a voluntary public funding system. The notion that we can tackle any major public policy issue, let alone undertake the epochal transition to Sustainable Capitalism, while politicians and regulators are captive to the very interests they are supposed to regulate, is beyond naïve. We will not be able to reform capitalism if we cannot reform Congress. 

Finally, asset management firms like my own will need to find ways to craft new, more persuasive messages, launch new products, form new partnerships, and fashion new distribution strategies and alliances that are focused on lifting the industry as a whole, because a rising tide will lift all boats. Pax World has taken a step in this direction in launching our ESG Managers Portfolios, where many ESG managers and strategies are now available under one roof in one set of asset allocation funds. There is more to be done - together, as an industry. 

The times call for leadership. The transition to Sustainable Capitalism is necessary and urgent, as is the triumph of sustainable investing over investment approaches that effectively prolong and exacerbate the current crisis. Twenty years from now, our industry will be judged by whether we have met this burden of leadership. Our impact either will be dramatic or inconsequential. We either will succeed or we will fail. We should resolve to succeed, and to work collaboratively toward that end. 

Article by Joe Keefe, President & CEO of Pax World Management, headquartered in Portsmouth, NH. Pax World manages approximately $2.5 billion in assets, including mutual funds, asset allocation funds and ETFs, all of which follow a sustainable investing approach. Prior to joining Pax World, Joe was President of NewCircle Communications (2000-2005), served as Senior Adviser for Strategic Social Policy at Calvert Group (2003 – 2005), and was Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Citizens Advisers (1997-2000). A former member of the board of US SIF (2000 - 2005), Joe was named by Ethisphere Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics” for 2007, 2008 and 2011, and in 2012 was recognized by Women’s eNews a one of “21 Leaders for the 21^st Century, where he was the sole male honoree. 

You should consider a fund's investment objectives, risks and charges and expenses carefully before investing. For this and other important information, please obtain a fund prospectus by calling 800.767.1729 or visiting www.paxworld.com . Please read it carefully before investing.

Equity investments are subject to market fluctuations, a fund’s share price can fall because of weakness in the broad market, a particular industry, or specific holdings. Emerging market and international investments involve risk of capital loss from unfavorable fluctuations in currency values, differences in generally accepted accounting principles, economic or political instability in other nations or increased volatility and lower trading volume.

Distributed by ALPS Distributors, Inc., Member: FINRA            PAX002590 08/13

Footnotes:

[1] See, William E. Rees, “Toward a Sustainable World Economy,” Paper delivered at Institute for New Economic Thinking Annual Conference, Bretton Woods, NH, April 2011, p. 4.

[2] Paul Gilding, The Great Disruption, Bloomsbury Press, 2011, p. 186.

[3] Jeremy Grantham, “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever,” April 2011 GMO Quarterly Letter.

[4] I am thinking of such writers and thinkers as Wendell Berry, Lester Brown, Paul Gilding, Herman Daly, Thomas Friedman, Paul Hawken, Richard Heinberg, Mark Hertsgaard, Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, Bill McKibben, Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers & Dennis Meadows, James Gustave Speth and, of course, E.F. Schumacher. Contributions from the sustainable investing community include Steven Lydenberg’s Corporations and The Public Interest, Robert Monks’s The New Global Investors, Marjorie Kelly’s The Divine Right of Capital, and The New Capitalists by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik & David Pitt-Watson. See also the work of The Capital Institute, www.capitalinstitute.org

[5] Credit Al Gore, David Blood, Peter Wright and the folks at Generation Investment Management for putting a stake in the ground and endeavoring to define and popularize this concept.

[6] “Sustainable Capitalism,” Generation Investment Management LLP, 2012, p. 2.

[7] This notion of Sustainable Capitalism is not unlike the concept of “shared value” s advanced by Michael E. Porter and Mark E. Kramer. See, “Creating Shared Value,” Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2011.

[8] See Daniel Alpert, Robert Hockett & Nouriel Roubini, “The Way Forward: Moving From the Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy to Renewed Growth and Competitiveness,” © 2011, New America Foundation, www.newamerica.net

[9] See Jeremy Grantham, “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever,” supra; See also, “Resource Scarcity and The Efficiency Revolution,” Impax Asset Management, www.impaxam.com

For more information go to- www.GreenMoney.com

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The field of sustainability has evolved from a small niche of environmentalists into a transdisciplinary field that spans from local agriculture to global business. Today, people around the globe are much more aware of the problems facing mankind and the planet as a whole. The population is estimated to grow to nine billion by 2050, an increase that will only further strain our planet's natural resources. In these universities, teachers and students are committing their careers to developing the principles and practices that will allow the human race to achieve a sustainable future.

Every day, more medical professionals and patients are recognizing the benefits of an integrative approach to health care. Integrative medicine (IM) is a health philosophy that focuses on the whole person, not just the disease. In treating an illness or disorder, a doctor who practices IMworks to heal the whole patient; mind, body and spirit.

Because the evidence is stacking in favor of integrative medicine, there is a growing interest in learning more about how to use the philosophy for well-being. To answer this curiosity, some medical schools that teach the IM philosophy have chosen to offer individual online classes about the subject, many of them open to the public.

If you are interested in learning more about integrative medicine, the University of Arizona’s Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine offers some of the best online classes on the topic. These courses are fully accredited, and most are open to the public. Tuition fees for each class range from free to $240.

Course topics include prostate cancer and IM, breast cancer and IM, anti-inflammatory diet, introduction to integrative mental health: anxiety and depression, environmental medicine, nutrition and cardiovascular health, nutrition and cancer and Ayurveda.

These courses can be taken at any time. However, you must complete the course within the allotted time frame, before losing access to the online course material. These classes do not provide students with any type of college credit. Registration and payment may be completed online at www.IntegrativeMedicine.Arizona.edu.

If you are not a medical professional, it is best to use what you learn as a supplement to professional medical care. As always, share all information about physical activity, diet and other at-home health care treatments with your doctor. If you are interested in using integrative medicine to treat a current illness, discuss the possibility first with your current medical practitioner.

In addition to the above online courses, there are other sources on the internet for information about IM, but only content provided by an accredited institution should be used. Lastly, before agreeing to pay for any online course, make sure that the school offering the course is a fully accredited institution.

Barbara Jolie is a freelance writer and blogger who contributes most of her work to www.OnlineClasses.org. She writes about the advantages of online college and is particularly interested in writing and language education. If you have any questions, please email her at barbara.jolie876@gmail.com.

Sources:

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/alternative-medicine-integrative-medicine

http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/education/online_courses.html

Laguna Niguel, CA — America is going green, but not the way environmentalists had planned it. The unlikely hero is none other than Corporate America, which is giving consumers the green whether they realize it or not. Why? Because it’s good for the customer, it’s good business, and let’s face it, as MGM Senior Vice President of Environment and Energy Cindy Ortega articulates, “It is also good for employee morale and retention — people want to work for companies who care about the world around them.”

"Over 70 percent of the wood we now sell is certified. But you won't find us advertising or promoting that fact," said Ron Jarvis, senior vice president of Environmental Innovation for The Home Depot. Photo by Mathew Wilson (Courtesy of Flickr).

Here’s a great example of this sales strategy as employed by The Home Depot: “Over 70 percent of the wood we now sell is certified. But you won’t find us advertising or promoting that fact,” said Ron Jarvis, senior vice president of Environmental Innovation for The Home Depot at its Atlanta headquarters. Jarvis was in Laguna Niguel recently to attend “Fortune Brainstorm Green,” a high level conference attended by many prominent green industry corporate and NGO executives.

“Our data shows that most customers will not pay extra for sustainable wood, and in some cases, they consider “green” wood a negative. We believe that FSC wood is the best way to go for both quality and sustainability reasons, so, most of the wood we sell in developing countries is FSC certified. We do believe in educating our customers and employees about sustainability, but at the same time the voice of the customer is always our top priority. Thus including FSC wood without charging a price premium is the right thing to do, and thankfully, due to our enormous volume and purchasing power, we can make this equation work business-wise,” Jarvis explained.

Jarvis’ competitors at Lowe’s also have a couple examples of this same premise. “There are multiple variations of a “green” consumer. In fact, according to the 2011 US LOHAS Consumers Trends poll, 83 percent of consumers identify with “green” at some level. However, the greenness of consumers changes with multiple factors, including the economy and available income, as well as age and generations,” said Michael Chenard, Director of Corporate Sustainability for Lowe’s at its Mooresville, NC headquarters. “Today, 100 percent of the bathroom faucets Lowe’s carries are WaterSense (low flow) certified, and that’s been the case for more than three years. Lowe’s also has more in-stock Energy Star-qualified appliances and lighting fixtures than any other major home improvement retailer.”

According to the 2011 US LOHAS Consumers Trends poll, 83 percent of consumers identify with "green" at some level. Graph by Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), 2009 LOHAS Consumer Trends Database.

Keeping with the theme of “going green through the back door,” shipping giant UPS is using sophisticated software and data to develop the cheapest, most fuel efficient way to move packages from point A to point B. These savings are passed along to the consumer, according to Scott Wicker, UPS’ chief sustainability officer at its Atlanta headquarters. Also in attendance at Fortune Brainstorm Green, Wicker said UPS is testing all types of fuel efficient vehicles in its massive fleet, including full electric, hybrid, compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas, among others. Vehicles that operate out of central depots in large urban areas are the best prospect for going full greenfleet because of the range limitations of electric and other nascent technologies. “We also use telematics to monitor over 200 data points via satellite from our trucks, which helps us train the drivers in maximum fuel efficient driving techniques and ensure they are taking the shortest routes, not letting the engines idle excessively, among other factors,” Wicker said. Alas, out of over 100,000 vehicles, only about 2,600 are truly alt-fuel at this time. Wicker says that number will grow over time, but not surprisingly, cost will ultimately trump all other considerations.

UPS is testing all types of fuel efficient vehicles in its massive fleet, including full electric, hybrid, compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas, among others. Photo by Schnaars (Courtesy of Flickr).

How about the clothes we wear? Levi’s is also employing the “going green through the back door” technique. “We are committed to the Better Cotton Initiative because we believe it can change the way cotton is grown around the world, positively impacting the environment and supporting 300 million people engaged in cotton farming around the world — without creating higher prices for consumers,” said Brianna Wolf, Manager of Environmental Sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co. “Last fall, we started blending the first Better Cotton harvest into Levi and Denizen products. To date, we’ve produced more than five million garments containing a Better Cotton blend.” However, you won’t find a label identifying clothing made with Better Cotton quite yet. “Participating brands are holding off on direct product labeling during this start-up phase, to allow supply to scale to meet demand. For now, we encourage consumers to learn more about Better Cotton and support brands who are integrating it into their product lines at bettercotton.org,” explained Wolf.

And what about that all-important cup of morning Joe? While many consumers are frustrated by Starbucks’ lack of recyclable cups, the company does take good care of its key suppliers — the coffee growers toiling in the fields of faraway places. “When someone buys a cup of our coffee, they probably don’t know that the beans are produced with social, environmental and economic best practices in mind. Our C.A.F.E. Practices coffee-buying program includes rigorous sourcing standards covering: fair wages and benefits; access to medical care and education; specific high standards for conservation and biodiversity; amongst other criteria.” said Kelly Goodejohn, Director of Ethical Sourcing for Starbucks. “For the past ten years we have partnered with Conservation International on C.A.F.E. Practices. Currently, 84% of our coffee is ethically sourced through this model. By 2015, 100% of our coffee will be third party verified or certified, ensuring that all the coffee we purchase has been grown and processed responsibly.”

By 2015, Starbucks vows to have 100% of their coffee be third party verified or certified, ensuring that all the coffee they purchase has been grown and processed responsibly. Photo Courtesy of Starbucks. 

Indeed, there are some case histories that bear out the thesis that mostly due to the economy, consumers simply have not embraced going green over the past several years. This is a bitter pill to swallow for green opinion leaders, but may explain why products like Clorox Green Works home cleaning products have gone straight up, then plunged back to earth with a resounding thud. Recall that Green Works was launched in 2008 with great fanfare, and zoomed to over $100 million in sales within two years. Inexplicably, sales started to drop off, and even a price reduction to parity with non-green competitive products could not revive Green Works. Adding insult to injury, general opinion of experts was that the Green Works products performed very well, and backed up the claims made by Clorox. This is worthy of mention because a number of green products have been rushed to market without proper testing, bringing a black eye to the movement when consumers felt snake bit by paying premium prices for products that did not live up to their hype.

“In the past, consumers have felt that purchasing green products would require some form of sacrifice — spending more money or an inferior design. Today, that has changed,” declared Joel Babbit, CEO and co-founder of online daily green news magazine Mother Nature Network (MNN). “Not only have prices become more comparable — but the associated savings in lower energy bills, water usage, and using lesser quantities that come with green products often result in a cost advantage. On the design side — as opposed to the clunky or boring approach so common just a few years ago — many of the most innovative and attractive products now entering the market are green.”

You can read more by Jennifer Schwab by following her blog, Inner Green.

LOHAS Asia, the sister organization to LOHAS USA, is thrilled to announce that the first round of the LOHAS Asia Funding Initiative has resulted in investment in US based LOHAS company, Artterro. Artterro produces eco art kits for children, and following three rigorous rounds of assessment by a funding panel in Singapore, Artterro was selected to receive investment to help it grow to the next level.

What Is The LOHAS Asia Funding Initiative?

The LOHAS Asia Funding Initiative has been created to achieve the following:
1. To fill the gap in traditional funding models to provide a much-needed link between investors and entrepreneurs that meet the demands of the LOHAS consumer in Asia
2. To accelerate the development of small, sustainable businesses that meet the needs of the LOHAS consumer, and who – through their success – have the capacity to drive industry-wide change
3. To demonstrate the viability of triple bottom-line business to the wider investment community
4. To promote sustainable consumption in Asia by supporting the provision of a wider choice of price competitive, sustainable and aspirational LOHAS products.

LOHAS Asia’s Funding Initiative combines access to funds of up to US$10 million in growth capital per company with ongoing marketing, technology and strategic planning mentoring and support from a number of the world’s leading corporations. The Initiative is targeted at for-profit LOHAS companies from all over the world who have a clear Asia strategy (supply, production or distribution) and a minimum of one year’s trading revenues.The funding panel, made up of finance, branding, technology, retail experts and entrepreneurs, chose Artterro because it represents a strong example of a for-profit company strongly underpinned by LOHAS values.

“Artterro is exactly the kind of company that we wish to see funded to be able to grow to the next stage of their business. They are a business founded on solid LOHAS values, with adherence to triple bottom line principles. We wish to be able to show that integration of social justice and environmental protection into a company’s operations can yield normal returns to the investor community. Being LOHAS should not be an excuse for poor profitability and sub standard quality of goods and services, but can actually yield greater profits versus business-as-usual and deliver products and services that can compete with any company in the market. Furthermore, profits are then used for the greater good in turn, according to the company values.” said Adam Horler, President of LOHAS Asia.

The LOHAS Asia Funding Initiative represents the future of sustainable innovation. Its breakthrough platform brings together a diverse set of partners (entrepreneurs, industry specialists, and financial institutions) to accelerate the development of new enterprises with responsible business models. I'm proud to be a part of this visionary organization and excited about it supporting Artterro, an energetic firm with real promise to disrupt its industry for good." said funding panel member, Dustin Garis, Global Brand Manager at P&G Futureworks.

The Funding Initiative is focused on companies that have an end consumer for their products or services and an Asia strategy. The investment received by Artterro will be used to increase its marketing and sales capacity and to help the company expand production and distribution in Asia.

"We have always been inspired by the amazing work LOHAS is doing, so this opportunity is both an honor and further inspiration to grow sustainably. We are thrilled that the LOHAS Asia Funding Initiative chose Artterro for investment, and we look forward to working with our new strategic mentors to reach our potential as a truly global brand with LOHAS values." said Forrest Espinoza, Founder and CEO of Artterro.

The second round of the LOHAS Asia Funding Initiative was launched on Friday 15th June. Any interested companies should contact info@lohas-asia.org for more information on how to apply.

LOHAS Asia is a social enterprise based in Singapore seeking to encourage sustainable consumption, particularly across urban Asia. The purchasing decisions of the ever growing population of affluent Asian middle class consumers is critically important - both as a market for companies and for future of the planet as a whole. LOHAS Asia works on both sides of the sustainable consumption equation, seeking to engage with consumers themselves and to support the growing community of LOHAS companies, thereby helping to increase the choice of aspirational yet sustainable products and lifestyles available to consumers. LOHAS Asia has created THE HUB by LOHAS, an online network for LOHAS companies across the world to connect, collaborate and seek opportunities. www.thehub.lohas.com

Artterro is an award winning eco art kit company based in Madison, WI, USA. Helping people tap into their creativity with inspiring, open-ended art projects is at the core of Artterro’s mission, as is their commitment to sustainability. Artterro sources artist-quality, natural materials from ethical suppliers, and people with special needs assemble the kits at Goodwill Industries.  Their kits make art more accessible and bring friends and families together across generations.  www.artterro.com

Ted Ning is renowned for leading the annual LOHAS Forum, LOHAS.com and LOHAS Journal the past 9 years Ted Ning is widely regarded as the epicenter of all things LOHAS leading many to affectionately refer to him as ‘Mr. LOHAS’. He is a change agent, trend spotter and principal of the LOHAS Group, which advises large and small corporations on accessing and profiting from the +$300 billion lifestyles of health and sustainability marketplace.  The LOHAS Group is a strategy firm focusing on helping companies discover, create, nurture and develop their unique brand assets.  For more information on Ted visit  www.tedning.com

Photo courtesy of Bigadventures

Unlike this lucky bloke,  green innovation is starting to feel pretty dam hard.

Many out there are struggling to develop new sustainable strategies, products, processes and implementing them all by pushing against the current flow.  Most are attempting to look at this world with green tinted glasses and reform almost all of the products and processes we live by.  The opportunity is certainly abounding and yet the reality can be sobering.  
Innovators are being asked to be more even more compelling, operate with less resources, and eek-out more value to each respective need.  A greater responsibility to improve current models, under the lens of sustainability, is falling on the brave and courageous few people to change the world.  The true goal may be to actually recruit "green" marines, the few and the proud… Hooo-Rah!


Pick any challenging real world issue and look closely… you can find just a handful of truly passionate social entrepreneurs working for change in that arena.  Whether the innovation is in food, agriculture, energy, technologies, products, or waste... we are being asked to redesign them all.  Only a few out there are truly developing system-wide changes to save time, resources and precious money, all in the greater name of sustainability.  When did the fate of so many lay in the hands of so few? But are we all trying to rebuild a ship after is has hit the iceberg and taking in water? Let's hope not.


At some point it all begins to feel like paddling upstream against the current while having "conventional" rocks appear in your path.  One can imagine the timeless innovators felt this great resistance… maybe we are no different now.  Oddly, most what we are transforming makes a product, service or process- simpler, easier, cheaper, with have less impact.  Consider clean technologies such as electric vehicles; simple to use (no gas), effective operations (gets you there) and easy to power (plug-in). Yet in today's ecological thinking, we must still prove the business case for them. Who is being asked to prove the business case for pollution, obvious waste with the harsh negative impacts we see daily... no one!


A collective grand vision for the green movement is to get all parties involved into the millions of innovations, as our evolution is seeking the best collaborative solutions to our varied modern problems. If we leave these crucial tasks only for a few to solve, making major inroads may simply take too long.  The conventional model is to work in a resource constrained systems that are functioning under old corporate cultures of; time equals money, bigger and better, and of course... not "my" problem.  

Our greatest task as innovators is now recruitment of conscious leaders... yes I do mean you! If you have made it this far, then you too could decide that now is the time to rally and gain momentum. Whether it be for noble ideals, lofty aspirations, personal gain or for the greater collective good of future generations... does it really matter anymore?  What matters now is what you do, how you live and what you support. We are all gifted with constant access to new communication channels, reliable information and available resources.  Even though there are few valid excuses left to claim… some certainly will.


If we wait, if we dilly-dally, if we decide not to give these bold efforts 110% now... where will it leave us all exactly?  Will we be able to move our own evolution forward fast enough to make real progress? Can we recruit others fast enough to the grand vision, so they can grasp it for themselves and realize this is our only way forward.  It may simply come down to values and a few questions to ask.


Trust- Do we have enough to move forward together?


Integrity- Similar to trust, can we commit to do what we say we will?


Responsibility- Can we find our own and help others see theirs?

Creativity- Can we look at the real issues with freedom and inspiration?


Motivation- Will what we are building move others to action?

Interested to hear your ideas, solutions and opinions?  Please share them here, it is a first step towards change. 

Jared Brick recently attained an MBA in Sustainable Management at the Presidio Graduate School in SF.  He is developing the first ever reusables tracking platform, rewarding consumers everywhere in their retail experiences.  Follow the journey at traxactions.com or on twitter: traxactions

A radical shift is happening in the marketplace—consumers are increasingly basing purchasing decisions not just on value, but on their values.

As I describe in my book, The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler; February 2011), now more than ever, consumers of all stripes are demanding that the brands they buy and the companies that make them, share their own personal social and environmental values.

Consumers are increasingly seeing businesses as linchpins with the resources and the incentives to address pressing societal needs (and this is especially so when government is seen as falling behind or inadequate in this regard.) This perception is changing the rules of the road for marketers who must respond quickly or risk being left behind by offerings viewed as more authentic and committed to sustainability.

As I detail in the book, new rules are being written by consumers for manufacturers and marketers.

1. Values guide consumer purchasing. Historically, consumers bought solely on price, performance, and convenience. But today, how products are sourced, manufactured, packaged, disposed of - and even such social aspects as how factory and farm workers are treated - all matter. This green consciousness is not confined to the younger generations. Over half of Baby Boomers consider themselves socially conscious shoppers. That’s 40 million green boomers who choose to organize, pluck resource-conserving products from the shelves, boycott products of companies that pollute, and “pro-cott” the products of companies that give back to the community.

2. Life Cycle considerations are important. Today’s consumers are doing more than just checking prices and seeking out familiar brand names. They turn over packages in search of descriptors that reflect a panoply of environmental and social issues that can impact a product throughout its entire life cycle. In the same breath, consumers can look for products that are at once, “pesticide free” “fair trade” and “sustainably harvested.” Representing a sea change in the history of promotion, marketers need to move beyond sheer product benefits in their messages and tell the whole story behind their offerings.

3. Manufacturer and retailer reputation count now more than ever. Not all greener products have ecolabels or green claims emblazoned on them. Many consumers defer to manufacturer and retailer reputations as a defacto eco-label. Consumers are asking, “Who makes this brand? Did they produce this product with high environmental and social standards?” That’s one reason why S.C. Johnson is quick to remind us that they are “A Family Company”, and why CEOs such as Tom Chappell (Tom’s of Maine), Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Farm) and Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia) maintain high profiles.

4. Businesses are their philosophies. It used to be that companies were what they made. International Business Machines. General Foods. General Motors. Now, businesses and brands are what they stand for. San Francisco-based Method’s innovative line of household cleaning products uses design, fragrance, efficacy, and environmental and personal safety to make cleaning a positive experience for the individual and the environment. Their “People Against Dirty” campaign” featured on the methodhome.com website and their equally empowering “Say no to (laundry) jugs” campaign supporting their new 8X concentrated laundry detergent in waste-free squirt bottle equip consumers with the wherewithal to make a difference.

Meanwhile, “Starbucks proves that a global company serving 50 million people per day can turn a proactive approach to sustainable sourcing and operations into a strategic and profitable part of its brand. And Timberland’s attention to quality, passion for the environment and society, and commitment to transparency has helped earn a strong customer following willing to pay its premium.

5. Nearly everyone is a corporate stakeholder. A reflection of the growing social consciousness that exists among today’s consumers, corporate stakeholders are no longer confined to just customers, employees, and investors; today, publics of all stripes are now corporate stakeholders including environmentalists, educators, and children - even the unborn. For instance, the astronomic rise in cause-related marketing efforts, now refined to a science helps business such as Starbucks and in turn, their enlightened customers support people living with AIDS in Africa.

6. Authenticity. It’s not enough to slap on a recycling logo or make a biodegradability claim. Brands viewed as the most genuine integrate relevant sustainability benefits into their products. That’s why HSBC and Stonyfield Farm aim to reduce the carbon impacts of their corporate operations. Their industry-leading track record for managing their carbon footprint (which we at J. Ottman Consulting advised them on) undergirded HSBC’s Effie award- winning “No Small Change” green marketing campaign which empowered consumers to reduce their own carbon footprint, in line with the bank’s own experience.

*** Jacquelyn Ottman is the founder and principal of J. Ottman Consulting, Inc., an expert advisers on green marketing to consumer product marketers and U.S. government labeling programs. She is the author of four books on green marketing, including the recently released The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler, 2011).
Download a free chapter and get more information her.

Excerpted from The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler 2011) by Jacquelyn A. Ottman. 
 

Green has gone mainstream. Not too long ago, just a small group of deep green consumers existed. Today, 83% of consumers (Source: Natural Marketing Institute, 2009) - representing four generations, Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen Ys and Gen Zs - are some shade of green. Each in their own way, these generations are quickly transforming what used to be a fringe market that appealed to a faction of eco-hippies is now a bona fide $290 billion industry ranging from organic foods to hybrid cars, ecotourism to green home furnishings. Teen daughters of yesterday’s activist moms search out Burt’s Bees lip balm made from beeswax while their “twenty-something” brothers opt to clean their new digs with Method ‘s cucumber-fragranced dish liquid. Today’s Dads boast of higher mileage, fewer fill-ups, and the peppy look of their new Mini Coopers or diesel-powered Jettas that get 50-plus miles to the gallon; expect their Gen X sons to be kicking the tires of Nissan’s electric Leaf, now heading towards showroom floors.
 
Thanks to advances in materials and technology, today’s “greener” products (defined as having a lighter impact on the planet than alternatives) and today’s more “sustainable” products (those that add a social dimension, e.g., fair trade) now not only work well, they likely work better and more efficiently than the “brown” counterparts they were designed to replace. Channels of distribution have changed have changed, too.  As I point out in my just released book, The New Rules of Green Marketing (Berrett-Koehler, February 2011)  today, sustainable products are readily available in conventional supermarkets such as Fred Meyer and Safeway, brightly lit emporiums such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market, while mighty Wal-Mart leads the charge towards lifecycle-based standards for products through its groundbreaking Sustainability Consortium
 
Once confined to open spaces and rooftops, solar power is now mobile, fueling a modern-day, on-the-go lifestyle embedded in cellphone chargers, backpacks, and even the latest fleet of powerboats. Or confined to the tissue boxes or wrappers of days gone by, recycled content is now good enough for Kimberly-Clark’s own Scott Naturals line of tissue products (with its new “coreless role”)  and Staples’ EcoEasy office paper, Patagonia’s Synchilla PCR (post-consumer recycled) T-shirts made from recycled soda bottles, and Aveda’s Uruku cosmetics packaging made from recycled newsprint, to name just a few.
 
A sure sign that caring for nature and the planet and the people who live here now and in the future is here to stay – “Sustainability” is a core value of every living generation, starting with the Baby Boomers, the nation’s primary household shoppers and societal leaders who led the green charge back in the mid to late-1960s, and extending right through to Internet-savvy Generations X, Y, and Z who promise to transform markets as future decades unfold.
 
Four Generations of Green
The consuming power of the four current generations is remarkable if marketers can target them by what appeals to them uniquely.
 
Boomers: The First Modern Green Generation
Now the heads of millions of U.S. households, the Baby Boomers and been influencing society since the 1960s when they planted the seeds of the modern day green movement when as idealistic youths, gathered to celebrate the first Earth Day, in 1970, followed by the first Solar Day in 1971. Their peaceful demonstrations of concern gave rise to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the founding of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts that same year, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
 
The Middle East oil embargo, marking the beginning of the energy crisis of 1973-75, then focused the Baby Boomers on the need for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.  Witnesses to the 1979 the release of the fictional The China Syndrome, a movie about safety cover-ups at a nuclear power plant, serendipitously opened at theaters two weeks prior to the partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear-generating station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They learned first hand about the need for renewable energy.
 
Taking the values and attitudes they have instilled upon society and have imparted to their children and grandchildren to supermarket aisles, today, over half of Baby Boomers consider themselves socially conscious shoppers. That’s 40 million green boomers who, as illustrated in the chart below. choose to organize, pluck resource-conserving products from the shelves, boycott products of companies that pollute, and “pro-cott” the products of companies that give back to the community.
 
GenX: Eyes on the World
CNN brought global issues into the living room of this generation 24/7.  Counting among them actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz as two of the most outspoken environmentalists of their generation, Gen Xers see environmental concerns through a lens that aligns social, educational, and political issues. They witnessed the fire in the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal India, and the aftermath of the explosion in Chernobyl. In 1985, the Live Aid concert helped to instill in them the need for famine relief in developing nations to an unprecedented 400 million worldwide, and more pointedly, in 1989, Gen Xers saw the massive devastation wrought by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
 
Millennials: Digital Media at Their Command
This generation grew up in front of computers and unleashing the power of the Internet is second nature to them. Having lived through Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Spill, and with growing awareness of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (the size of Texas), they tend to be distrustful of government and authority, and are quick to challenge greenwash and other marketing practices they deem to be unauthentic or untruthful. With their majority believing that humans cause climate change and the Millenials (aka Gen Y) are twice as likely to buy green products than those who believe climate change is occurring naturally.
 
Green is an integral part of this generation’s college experience. Legions of students now opt for newly created environmental studies courses (and majors) and are active in campus sustainability initiatives.
 
Reusable water bottles and coffee mugs are ubiquitous on college campuses where many savvy companies now reach out with sustainability messages to future householders with significant incomes. Not content to sacrifice all for the almighty dollar, Millennials seek to balance “quality of life” and the “quest for wealth”; they seek to work for socially conscious employers.
 
As the offspring of the Baby Boomers whose social and environmental values they share, Millennials are the likely new leaders of the modern-day green movement. With the ability to express their opinions through blogging, texting, and social networks, they are capable of mustering immediate responses from millions around the globe.
 
Generation Z: Green is a Natural Part of Their Lives
The first generation to be brought up entirely in an environmentally conscious world, green is part of their everyday life. This generation - currently under the age of 16 - think nothing of living in solar-powered homes with a hybrid car in the driveway. In school and at home the 3Rs of waste management, “reduce, reuse, and recycle,” are as common as the 3Rs of “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.”  Sorting paper and plastic for recycling is a normal part of “taking out the trash.”  As school kids, they likely viewed The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute animated video that divulges the environmental impact of our daily consumption. Environmentally sensitive cleaning aids, locally grown produce, and recycled-paper goods likely top their parents’ shopping lists; clothes made from organically grown cotton and biobased fibers are part of their own Gen Z uniform.
 

******
Jacquelyn Ottman is the founder and principal of J. Ottman Consulting, Inc., an expert advisers on green marketing to consumer product marketers and U.S. government labeling programs. She is the author of four books on green marketing, including the recently released The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler, 2011).
Download a free chapter and get more information here. Excerpted from The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler 2011) by Jacquelyn A. Ottman. 

Over the past few years, we have watched companies focus more and more on reducing carbon emissions in their supply chains. We have attended the same conferences that you attend, we have read the same reports and white papers, we have analyzed the same types of CO2 emissions data, and we agree: a large percentage of your corporate emissions—and therefore large opportunities to reduce your footprint—reside in your supply chain.

Wal-Mart famously has begun a campaign to require their suppliers to reduce emissions. Timberland is working with some of its competitors and the Outdoor Industry Association to improve processes in their supply chains. Stonyfield Farm measured cow burps and learned that the cows were their largest emitters. The coffee industry is taking a long, hard look at issues in and around its supply.

With the knowledge that addressing emissions in a supply chain can be overwhelming and complex, we have developed an integrated approach for companies. Our original model of developing and marketing carbon offset projects now includes strategies to identify and fund opportunities in our clients’ supply chains. So far, we have used our knowledge, experience, and connections to create emissions reductions by:

• Improving efficiency and re-purposing waste on the farms that supply milk and crops to our food industry clients
• Providing safe, clean drinking water, preventing deforestation, and encouraging reforestation in the regions that grow coffee for our coffee industry clients

The excitement of discovering new ways to reduce carbon emissions—and realizing how the programs can also benefit employees and growers in a company’s supply chain—was particularly evident following a recent trip by members of our project development team to coffee growing regions in Africa. During this trip, they oversaw the installation of water filtration systems in the homes of people who work on coffee plantations. Normally, these workers have to burn wood to boil and purify their water. But the new filters provide clean drinking water without the need for combustion, which improves the air quality in their homes, conserves trees, and, of course, reduces greenhouse gas pollution.

During the trip to Africa, the project development team also met with one of our partner NGO organizations to begin evaluating the cost and carbon reduction benefits associated with planting shade trees in and around coffee groves. This project is now being modeled and we expect it will be implemented in 2013.  

There are many opportunities for organizations to reduce their carbon emissions both onsite and off—some that are obvious, and some that take time to uncover. But one thing is clear: reducing greenhouse gas pollution is an important goal. Over the coming months, we look forward to seeing how we can utilize our expertise to further reduce emissions within corporate supply chains.  

If you have an opportunity or idea you would like to explore, we want to hear from you. Contact us at 800-924-6826 or business@nativeenergy.com.

NativeEnergy is an expert provider of carbon offsets, renewable energy credits, and carbon accounting software. With NativeEnergy’s Help Build™ offsets, businesses and individuals can help finance the construction of wind, biogas, solar, and other carbon reduction projects with strong social and environmental benefits. Since 2000, NativeEnergy’s customers have helped build over 50 projects, reducing more than 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gases, and the company has over 4 million tons under contract. All NativeEnergy carbon offsets undergo third-party validation and verification. Learn more at www.nativeenergy.com.

Original source

Eco-labels are an excellent way to enhance credibility for green marketing claims, but they are not without risk. While 28% of consumers look to green certification seals or labels to confirm that a product adheres to claims, these labels can also confuse. Happily there’s enough method within the madness for marketers to pave a way forward.
 
Eco-labeling challenges
More than 400 different eco-labels or green certification systems are now on the market. Questions such as which label is better, which product is safer for the environment and what does a label even mean are common questions that well-intended green shoppers may find themselves asking when trying to make an environmentally responsible purchase.
 
Confusion can arise from labels that certify too much or too little information. Some eco-labels focus on a single product attribute (e.g., recycled content), which keeps things simple but can inadvertently mislead consumers into thinking the product is green overall. Other labels look at several characteristics of a product or even a product’s entire life cycle; such multi-attribute certifications may raise questions about the credibility of a single-attribute certified product while also preventing easy comparisons.
 
Some products, such as electrical appliances, have a number of labels and certifications, while others, such as mattresses or flatware, have none. Another common reason for confusion is the discrepancy in the levels of rigor applied to some eco-labeling—some require independent, third-party verifications while others allow self-certification.
 
Here are some important criteria to consider when seeking the labeling most relevant to your brand:
 
Single-attribute labels
 Single-attribute seals focus on one environmental issue, e.g., energy efficiency or sustainable-wood harvesting. Before certification, an independent third-party auditor is typically required to verify that the product meets a publicly available standard.
 
Many single-attribute labels are sponsored by industry associations looking to defend or capture new markets. Others are sponsored by environmental groups or NGOs that want to protect a natural resource or further a cause. Two single-attribute labels with a global presence are the Forest Stewardship Council (or FSC) label, ensuring the sustainable harvesting of wood and paper, and Fair Trade Certified, ensuring that strict economic, social and environmental criteria were met in the production and trade of such agricultural products as coffee.
 
Voluntary U.S. government labels
Unlike in some countries, such as Canada, Japan and South Korea, the U.S. government has opted for voluntary single- rather than multi-attribute labels. (The private sector and not-for-profit groups hold sway in the area of multiattribute eco-labeling.) Outside of those associated with independent testing, the government-backed labels don’t involve fees. One of the most visible and influential labels is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR (for which we at J. Ottman Consulting were proud to advise over many years).
 
ENERGY STAR promotes energy efficiency in more than 60 product categories, and almost 3,000 manufactured products now feature the ENERGY STAR label. In fact, according to the Natural Marketing Institute, in 2009, 93% of the American public recognized the ENERGY STAR label and 73% said they would be more likely to purchase products that carried that label.
 
Other EPA labels include WaterSense, SmartWay (transportation) and Design for Environment (safer chemicals). The USDA stewards the USDA Organic and USDA Certified Biobased labels (another J. Ottman Consulting client).
 
Multi-attribute labels
As the name suggests, multi-attribute labels examine two or more environmental impacts. Founded in 1989, Green Seal is the granddaddy of them all. It provides a seal of approval for a variety of products that meet specific criteria on a category-by-category basis. Products are reviewed annually for a fee. A few of the organizations whose products now bear the Green Seal certification include Wausau Paper, Clorox, Kimberly-Clark and Hilton.

If your green ads showcase the now tiresome images of babies, daisies, and planets, your messages will likely be irrelevant to mainstream consumers. Eco-imagery may have tugged at the purse-strings of “deep green” consumers, but their lighter green counterparts, who make up the bulk of the market, want to know how even the greenest of products benefit them personally. While the environment may be the underlying reason a product was created or upgraded, it will likely not be the primary motivation for consumers to choose your brand over those of competitors.
 
Avoid green marketing myopia
In other words, don’t commit the fatal sin of “green marketing myopia”. As my colleagues, Ed Stafford and Cathy Hartman of the Huntsman Business School of Utah State, and I point out in our much-quoted article, “Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia,” remember that consumers buy products to meet basic needs - not altruism.
When consumers enter a store, they don their consumer, not citizen caps. They are looking to find the products that will get their clothes clean, that will taste great, that will save them money or that will make themselves appear attractive to others. Environmental and social benefits are best positioned as an important plus that can help sway purchase decisions, particularly between two otherwise comparable products.
 
Quiet Green Marketing
Underscoring the primary reasons why consumers purchase your brand - sometimes referred to as “quiet green” - can broaden the appeal of your greener products and services way beyond the niche of deepest green consumers. Quiet green might also help overcome a premium price hurdle. So, focus communication for greener products on how consumers can protect their health, save money, or keep their home and community safe and clean. Show busy consumers how some environmentally inclined behaviors can save time and effort.
 
To be clear, this does not mean focusing exclusively on such benefits - to do so would be to go back to conventional marketing altogether. But focusing too heavily on environmental benefits at the expense of primary benefits will put your product in the green graveyard, buried under good intentions. Happily, thanks to advances in technology, many greener products these days do provide added value in the form of enhanced benefits.

Does your green product improve health?
Keep in mind that the number one reason why consumers buy greener products is not to “save the planet” but to protect their own health. Categories most closely aligned with health are growing the fastest and tend to command the highest premiums. Health messages can apply to a wide variety of product categories. Consider, for instance, a print ad for AFM Safecoat (that ran here in the U.S.) featuring 16 buckets of paint; 15 of the buckets are painted red and bear labels such as “Gorgeous Paints,” “100% Pure,” “Low Odor,” and “Sustainable.” However, the last bucket stands out in green and announces “The Only Paint that is Doctor Recommended.”
 
Does your product appeal to the style-conscious?
American Apparel was created as a brand that provides excellent working conditions for its employees and uses organic cotton. But, in 2004, when its “sweatshop free” label did not bring in the numbers that CEO Dov Charney was hoping for, he switched to promoting a sexy, youthful image for his company - complete with racy, controversial ads with young women. Three years later, the company has 180 stores and revenue estimated at $380 million. Sounds heretical? Keep in mind that the same sustainably responsible clothing is still being sold to consumers, together with all the same benefits to society and the environment.
 
Does your product save consumers money?
Many brands find that their green benefits neatly translate into something direct and meaningful to the customer, such as energy savings translating into cost savings. Ads for Sears’ Kenmore’s HE5t steamwasher state that it uses 77% less water and 81% less energy than older models. The headline grabs readers with the compelling promise, “You pay for the washer. It pays for the dryer.” In New Jersey, Marcal’s Small Steps campaign positioned the use of 100% recycled household paper products as an easy measure to take for the environment and save money.
 
Today’s consumers want to know the back-story about products and packages, so focus on primary benefits in the context of a full story that incorporates the environment as a desirable extra benefit. Better yet, integrate relevant environmental and social benefits within your brand’s already established market positioning, and you’ve got the stuff for a meaningful sale.

******
Jacquelyn Ottman is the founder and principal of J. Ottman Consulting, Inc., an expert advisers on green marketing to consumer product marketers and U.S. government labeling programs. She is the author of four books on green marketing, including the recently released The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler, 2011).
Download a free chapter and get more information here.

Excerpted from The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding (Berrett-Koehler 2011) by Jacquelyn A. Ottman.
 

Originally published in The Guardian, September 23, 2011.