Corporate Green

For those rightfully upset by the pointed lessons in Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” I invite you to read “How Business Saw The Light” in the January 15th issue of Time Magazine. According to this article:
-Honda is field testing a first-to-market hydrogen-fuel-cell concept car to turn environmentalism into a competitive advantage;
-Toyota is looking to become the world’s leading automotive manufacturer, with its highly popular Prius hybrid, and a goal to reduce to reduce car emissions worldwide in 2010 by 20% from 2001;
-Among other initiatives, Wal-Mart building experimental green-based stores and is seeking to sell a major volume of ultra-efficient fluorescent light bulbs to consumers;
-Goldman Sachs has pledged to invest $1 billion in renewable energy ventures;
-GE has committed $1.5 billion a year on renewable energy and other green research.

Certainly much more can be done in many areas by these and other companies. But let us give credit where credit is due: these are significant gains on the environmental and social fronts. The profit motive itself should not really be our issue. Yes, in its worst form, it creates the Gordon Gekko types in the movie “Wall Street,” or the Ken Lay/Enron implosion in the all-too-real life. America may have lost many of its edges in manufacturing and services, and potentially in engineering and the sciences. But we are still the very best entrepreneurs in the world. The ability of American innovation to respond to consumer demand is a powerful sight to behold. We simply have to make doing the right thing profitable.

So let us not be knee-jerk antagonists to the corporate business world. Let us appreciate and acknowledge them when they do right, all the while continuing to show them where more right is needed and possible. At the end of the day, no corporate business plan calls for going out of business by making products people do not truly want or will pay for. Corporate America will build what we want as shown by our actions, not our words. It is our job to lead corporate America through our power of taking personal responsibility for our actions.

“Consumers remain depressingly ignorant about the environmental impact of what they do. They find no irony in getting into their SUVs to drive a few miles and buy recycled toilet paper.” (Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com)

PS: As an interesting parallel note, Wal-Mart is going to begin selling organic foods; Starbucks now pays more for its highly-recognized employee health care program than for the coffee it buys.