That said, I woke up this morning with an overwhelming feeling that I had gotten that wrong; that the reason why sustainability fails over and over is because we ARE willing to put it in the back seat when it gets really hard. I realized that I was being a wimp. That I was letting the press and the hype of all the doom and gloom get under my skin and make a nasty little goal-defeating summer house there.

Now is not the time to retreat. Now is not the time to put all your energy into staying afloat! Now is the time to find REAL balance. Now is the time to find out what you truly NEED for a personally sustainable life. Most likely, recycling and composting is the last thing on you mind…. frankly, it has been the last thing on mine for a while now, but now is the time for that to change. There has never been a better moment in this world to do what we can as businesses and as humans to reach out and see how we can help each other, and help the world around us.

My commitment today is to reach out. What’s your commitment?

I’m sure Arthur Ashe had no idea that his statement of simple positivism would reach so far into the future, into the sustainability movement, and into the minds of so many frustrated change-makers. I’m sure Mr. Ashe just meant that when the chips are down, try your best. right? But that’s the thing about the power of words….once they are out there, they grow and bloom and expand and wiggle their way into our consciousness. They can turn into something so much more powerful than we ever imagined.

Start where you are.

You know those moments, when you are standing at the grocery store, and you realize that you need something else, but you have to go to the other side of the store to get it? Somewhere right after realizing you need that eggplant, just before kicking yourself for not remembering it when you were over there to begin with, is that brief moment when you take stock of where you are right then and how to get to where you need to go. It sounds simple enough, but when was the last time you really thought about where your business is, and how you can get to where you need to go?

Use what you have.

So, you’re back at the grocery store, wracking your brain, trying to remember if you have fish in the freezer or not. You finally realize that you really won’t know for sure until you get home. So, you take stock of what’s in your cart that you could magically turn into dinner (because you really just want to go home and eat, and you are tired of shopping for more stuff, and you had a long day, and you would probably be perfectly happy eating popcorn and leftover rice anyway). Then it hits you….stir-fry, voila! I don’t need fish, I have peas and carrots and broccoli and soy sauce!

Think about it. Take stock. You probably have more in your cart than you realize.  That old can of tomato paste could be tomorrow’s brilliant spaghetti sauce. Use what you have. You probably have more than you realize.

Do what you can.

Remember, doing what you can doesn’t mean the same thing as doing what you are capable of.  Just because you are able to do something doesn’t mean it is a good idea for you. Especially if that thing will preclude your ability to do more/better later. Doing what you can means being comfortable with saying no, so that you always have the time and energy to do the things that light you up and make you the brilliant leader that you are!

Would you be a wildcat? Stalking your prey…risking it all for your next kill? A new puppy perhaps? Finding your way through the world, nipping at the heels of the bigger dogs? Or maybe you’re a sailboat…. alone on the water… facing the storm with nothing but your wits.

Why does it matter, you ask? Businesses fail all the time because they don’t know who they are, and if you don’t know who you are, how can you determine who your customer is? Beyond that, if you don’t know who your business is, how will you know when you have taken it to the next level?

So, when is your business more than a business? Your business is more than a business when it’s a Kia Sephia that desperately wants to be a cherry-red ’65 Mustang convertible.  Your business is more than a business when you decide that you want it to be more than a business. Better than a business. A better business. A ‘More Business’.

‘More Businesses’ are not just money-making/ service providing/ product producing entities.  ‘More Businesses’ provide fuel for their community, stewardship for the planet, and education for their customers.

So, are you an elephant or an orphan, a Mustang or a mouse?

….And how can you be more?

We’ve all heard it…less gas, less toys, less gadgets, less water, less meat, less, less, less. What if we stopped thinking about how we have to stop doing everything we enjoy? We are Americans, right?!? We like gas guzzling muscle cars and Mom’s apple pie. We like hot dogs at the ballpark and purple iPods. Why on god’s ‘Green’ earth would those of us in the sustainability field choose to tell everyone that they must have less of all the things that we fill our lives with, that have become our collective identity, as a way to get us all to care more about the world around us?

If someone told you that you must give up your house, the house your great grandfather built, that you grew up in, that you want to raise your children in, because it was better for the greater good? Wouldn’t that just make you want to throw in the towel? It seems to me that life is not worth living without a quest for more of all the things we truly love. I don’t want there to be a shell of a world, a shell of a culture left for my children. I don’t want them to grow up never knowing the joys of baseball, and fast cars and fresh apple pie. Giving these things away, sacrificing in the name of the greater good, why would anyone want less to be our legacy?

I want my children to grow up in a thriving, abundant world, full of life, and art, and culture, and nature.

So what if sustainability stops being about less and started being about more? More gardens, more healthy food, more days at the river instead of the pool, more walks in the woods than the golf course, more time with the people we love, more to give to your community.

Here is a list of the ten things you can do today to cultivate sustainable abundance in your life and your business:

1. Get comfortable with more: More = New, we like new. New means fresh, lively, abundant. Do you want less, or do you want more?

2. Do more: Start by doing a little more of something Green you have been meaning to do, but haven’t gotten around to, like using only recycled paper, or refillable ink cartridges.

3. Let the outside in a little more: Try opening your windows a little more often in the mornings when it’s nice and cool. It’s kind of amazing how much fresh air can help you get the day started.

4. Reach out more: Call a few of your best customers a little more…tell them you appreciate them (them, not their business…tell them you appreciate them), ask them how you can do more for them.

5. Love more: Carve out a few minutes today to spend more time with someone you love.

6. Eat more: Next time you go to the grocery store, buy one more organic item than you did last time. Pick one thing that you had never thought of buying in the organic version. Next time you go, add one more. Go as far as you can.

7.  Communicate about Green a little more. If you write a blog or a newsletter, pose a ‘more’ question to your readers. Ask them what ‘Green’ means to them, or what they would like you to do more of to be Greener.

8. Learn more. Search online for a Green blog (like this one!). Commit to reading every post for a month. Worst case scenario…you’ll know more than you do right now.

9. Grow more. Get a plant…or plants. Stop telling yourself that you kill plants. That is a problem that five minutes of asking care questions from the guy at the nursery can easily fix. Plants improve the air quality in your home or office, and are a lot more refreshing than posters of kittens hanging from branches.

10. Give more. Time, money, old stuff, whatever you have excess of. It feels good, and means that someone else gets a little more too. If you are a professional, find someone who could use your skills and give away a few hours of your brainpower (SCORE is a great place to start). If you have cash, use a to help something begin or grow (like a new start-up business). You get the idea.

Wouldn’t you rather have more of more, and less of less?

8:00am: Act One… Set up the story for the following acts…

12:00pm: Intermission… Time for a quick bite….

1:00pm: Act 2…Wrap up the story, or perhaps leave it hanging for another tale?

5:00pm Curtain Call….Take your bows, hope no one noticed that you missed a bit in Act One

….after party….meet with friends, discuss Act One’s flubs….hope for better tomorrow….

Tomorrow: Repeat.

What is business if not a vast, endless blank canvas waiting to be filled with beauty, with life, with profit? What if we stopped ‘starting businesses’, and started ‘creating businesses’? How could this subtle change move our collective needle from what we know works, to what we had no idea was even possible?

So, why can’t business be art? Beautiful, lively, creative? And more importantly, what does this have to do with sustainability?

Think about it. What are the most lasting indicators we have of bygone eras? They are not the spreadsheets and the human resource manuals, they are the brilliant and expressive works of artists, designers, and magical, creative people who were able to capture a moment in time with the stroke of a brush, the slant of a shoulder pad, the snip of a perfect coif, or tip of a pen. This is REAL sustainability. Indelible images of color and hope, there to show us where we’ve been and what (or what not) to do next.

So what if your business was designed, not started? What if your customers were opportunities to create great and wonderful things that will last a lifetime because of their splendor?….and not simply another revenue stream?

To clearly understand how art, sustainability, and business fit together, first you have to get your head around what each means individually. Since all of these are very subjective terms, I am going with what my personal definitions are.

Art: The color we paint the world with. The blues of the gray areas between black and white. The sound of a perfect song, the smell of a perfect meal. Art is the thing that makes you soul sing and your heart dance.

Sustainability: Living your life (or running your business) in such a way that you do not prevent future generations from doing the same.

Business: The wheels on the bus that takes us to the place where all things are possible. Our livelihood. The way we spend most of our life, and the thing we understand least.

So what if your business was designed not only to take you where you want to go, but also leave and indelible imprint on the planet and our culture that continued to be a valuable, enriching,  and thriving force for generations to come?

True sustainability must be beautiful, delightful, and creative, or it will just become another lost idea that we collectively leave behind.

So I ask….what’s beautiful and creative about your business?

-illana

So, the topic today is:

How do the masters in your field implement and define sustainability, and how can you use their frameworks and your own fantastic and creative ideas to leapfrog miles ahead?!?

According to Environmental Leader, there is currently an initiative by the Environmental Defense Fund  called the Climate Corps that pairs MBA students with large corporations for ten week projects to help them improve energy efficiency and sustainable practices.  Last year’s group of seven MBA’s reported savings of $35 million in net operational costs over five years while cutting 57,000 tons of carbon pollution annually. In addition, group identified ways to conserve more than 119 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. All in ten weeks!

Makes it hard to say that Green costs more and isn’t worth investing in, doens’t it?

So, how could your business benefit from the expertise of a Green MBA? Could it save you money? Could it lower your carbon pollution footprint? Could it lower your electric bill? Yes!!! But what this program didn’t cover was communication! This it where your real opportunity comes in. When was the last time your business did something that was so great —and I don’t mean a big sale or a new website– I mean something really, really great, so great that you wanted to shout it from the rooftops?  This is Green marketing. This is why you hire a Green MBA (like me). We have the expertise to help you figure out how your business can be so great that you will have to shout it from the rooftops, and people will want to listen!

Check out my website at: www.illanaburk.com.

If someone asked you to explain what sustainability means to a child (or an adult, for that matter), could you?

Unfortunately, you don’t often hear about what sustainability really is, and why the term itself is important. Instead, everyone wants to know:

What should we do?

How much money will it save me?

I recycle and buy organic food, isn’t that enough?

Green(washed) marketing will tell you that, ‘Simple choices will save us!’ and ‘Every small gesture matters!’ NBC is currently airing public service announcements with prime-time B-list celebrities making statements like, “I’m trying to use cloth bags at the market!” and, “Taking unused stuff out of your trunk will save you gas mileage!” NBC is seriously spending money telling people that taking your pet rock collection out of your trunk is all you need to do to go Green.

Instead of all the chatter, shouldn’t we be really talking about what it means, not what we did wrong (and how little we can do to fix it)? Sustainability is a simple concept. In 1987, the UN Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development.)

In business terms, that translates to, “Doing business in such a way that does not compromise future generations’ ability to do the same.”

How do you feel about that? What’s the first thing that runs through your head after reading that statement? Is your first reaction to be wracked with guilt over the fact that you didn’t buy the recycled paper because it was $1.00 more? Or, do you think about whether it even matters? Do you wonder if we are even supposed to keep on truckin’ for another twenty thousand years?

There is no right answer.

There is only one way to look at sustainability:

We must be fearless.

We must not get bogged down in guilt, and we must not put our head in the sand and hope for brighter days. That means t hat today is a new day. Every day we have new choices to make and new opportinities to be leaders, along with new and inevitable opportunities to fall short.

As I climb down off of today’s soapbox, I would like to ask everyone reading a simple question:

What does SUSTAINABILITY mean to you? Please give it some thought and post a comment with your response. There is no right answer here…if sustainability means nutritious food for your family, or ending world hunger, I invite you to share why it’s important TO YOU to do your best to be green.

-illana

p.s. – Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog (button on left)….how else will you know when I have more genius material for you to read?!?

Stated bias:  UTZ CERTIFIED is one of my clients. I have worked with them for over a year. That said, I chose to work with UTZ because I think they have a very strong value proposition, and I saw real opportunity to make a difference. Additionally, I have also worked for an organic coffee company and with companies that are only Fair Trade. At this point I have strong opinions on all, and am doing my best to state only what I think is most relevant to my readers.

UTZ CERTIFED Good Inside is an agricultural certifier for commodity products (‘agricultural commodities’ refer to the stuff that Mother Earth mass produces…like the Proctor and Gamble of the natural world…includes things like coffee, tea, cocoa, oranges, soy, etc…). UTZ offers two main values that set it apart from the others:  1. They work directly with farmers to help them  become better business people, improve their productivity, and reduce their environmental impact.  2. They have a world-class, only-one-of-its-kind, traceability system. This means that when you buy a bag of UTZ Certified coffee, you can go to their website, put in a number found on the bag and track the coffee in your hand all the way back to the farms where it was grown. Check out IKEA’s tracer here. This is a HUGE idea that, if properly marketed, could change the way people buy things from developing nations. Wouldn’t you like to know where everything you buy comes from? I mean, I stopped feeling warm and fuzzy about those little gold foil ‘MADE IN CHINA’ stickers quite a while ago.

Key points about UTZ:

1. They work in-country. This means that they hire native people who understand the localized challenges and complexities for each coffee growing region to help farmers get certified.

2. They have very few barriers for producer entry. Farms of any size may join and become certified (a challenging, but manageable process).

3. Their business model is designed to help producers become better at what they do, so they can be paid more for a better product, instead of simply setting prices to avoid poverty. Think of UTZ as the ‘teach them to fish’ model. Hand up, not hand out. They are like republican greenies.

4.  UTZ is more than willing to work with any coffee roaster of any size. In my opinion this is good and bad. Because of the nature of the specialty business, no high end roaster wants to work with a label that is also on a Folger’s package…no matter how good the program is. From a marketing standpoint, this is a difficult hurdle, as the high-end roasters often set the trends for the rest of the market. However, no other certifier can handle the volume requirements of the very large companies, they simply do not have enough certified coffee available, so someone needs to grab the middle of the market to steer for more sustainable solutions. That’s where UTZ comes in.

Certified Organic:

Everyone knows what organic is. I don’t need to go in to a lot of detail here, but the basics are that organic coffee is grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or any other man made crap you can think of. Organic is a fantastic program because it improves the nutrient content of the coffee beans, and goes a long way in improving water quality and soil erosion in areas where there is no man-made drainage systems or water filtration.

Key points on Organic:

1. Water is a big issue here. Coffee is grown at high altitudes, often on a terraced hillside. Frequently, area residents live at the bottom of the hill. When the crops are sprayed with pesticides, then it rains….  I’ll give you three guesses as to where the chemicals end up (guess what else rolls down hill). Organic production is known to dramatically improve water quality.

2. Roughly fifty years ago, all coffee was organic. Come to think of it, so was everything else! It is important to remember that chemicals are the new thing. Your grandparents never had to worry about DDT residue on their coffee beans when they were your age. This I can guarantee.

3. Organic has a very high barrier to entry for producers. The cost of transitioning is very high and takes a minimum of three years, however, once certified, producers do make higher average prices and often achieve better yields.

Ok folks….that’s all for your Coffee Certification 101 class. If you have burning coffee questions, feel free to email me at illanaburk@gmail.com.

The topic today is really all about Greenwashing.

I just read an article in Environmental Leader (an online daily source of neato and interesting greenie stuff, http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/05/08/media-oversaturated-with-green-issues/) that was highlighting the fact that ‘Green’ issues of magazines are under-performing.

Gee….do you think it might be because in a bad economy, consumers don’t want to think about anything but keeping their heads above water? Or perhaps by offering one or two ‘green’ issues each year, magazines are saying that we only need to think about ‘green’ once or twice a year? It’s the same reason I think Valentine’s Day is ridiculous. Giving people an excuse to compartmentalize important ideas, that they should probably think about every day, is what got us here in the first place. How many successful relationships do you know, that have lasted for years when the couple only does nice things for each other on V-Day?

Green is not a once-a-year problem. For WAY too long we have all, as a culture, collectively decided that we will only deal with problems when they happen. “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.” Right? The single biggest issue that needs to be addressed is the fact that we have stopped questioning. As a culture, we have stopped thinking about the consequences and implications of how what we do today affects what will happen tomorrow.

The generally accepted definition of sustainability goes something like this:
Live your life (or run your business) in such a way that you are not compromising future generations’ ability to do the same.

So, you want to know why ‘green’ magazine issues are stupid? Because they give us an excuse to only think about how bad the environment has really gotten, and what people are doing to help, just once a year. An alternative you ask? Why not integrate sustainable concepts into the fabric of their publications? Green should not be a section of a magazine, or a single issue. Green is a shift in consciousness, it has to be talked about and explored as at least a subtext in everything we do and plan for. For example, when Newsweek talks about the president’s latest trip to somewhere important, why is there not also a conversation about how he got there, the fuel use, and implications thereof? Or, when a beauty magazine talks about a great new makeup product, why not also talk about the fact that the ingredients are known to cause cancer? What ever happened to investigative journalism? Oh yeah, bloggers, I almost forgot.

I know that this is a broad sweeping political and financial issue that I have no intention of tackling here, but my point is, if we treat Green like a trend, it will be one. Consumers will get totally sick of hearing about it and it will go the way of the dodo bird and Hannah Montana (I’m going out on a limb here and saying that the girl’s days in the public eye are numbered…I’m just sayin’…).

So, my friends, before your collective attention span is totally spent, listen up!

- ‘Buying green’ is dumb. Yep, I said it. $150 bamboo pants will not save the world, they will only serve as a reminder in your closet, ten years from now, of that phase you went through when ‘being eco-chic was totally ‘in’.
- Compact flourescent light bulbs will not save the world. They are cool, and I do think they are a good move, but they are not perfect, and they are not a solution to the energy crisis.
- Green Marketing is like a fish on a bicycle. It is everything we hate about mass media. Don’t tell me everything that’s good about your product without telling me the implications of buying it. Doing that is the same as any other marketing. So shut up already. I really don’t care if my shampoo comes in a recyclable package if the product itself has chemicals that can disrupt my immune system. Tell us the good, and seriously….DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE BAD…then you’ll actually have something to say that consumers want to hear! There is no such thing as green marketing. There is good marketing, and there is bad marketing.

That’s what the word ‘greenwashing’ means…..Inflating one good ‘eco-point’, just to sell products, while ignoring all of the negatives.

In closing, don’t buy Time’s green issue. If you want to know about green, buy a ‘green’ publication or book. Ask questions, read fine print, read blogs! Subscribe to mine! Don’t let the big kids on the playground tell you what’s right and wrong, and then steal your lunch money. Stand up for yourselves! You are smarter than you know.

An that’s why Green Magazine Issues are Stupid.

P.S.- I’m struck by the irony of this image:

Greenwashing from an actual paint company….HAHAHAHAHA! Greenwashing is bait and switch advertising. It’s basically saying, “Hey, look over here at this shiny green thing! Pay no attention to the child labor behind the curtain.”  I mean seriously? Paint your house with toxic, chemical-rich paint as a way to capture, uh….Green-ology? Did I read that right? So Green really is just a color. Got it. Seriously, this goes out to ad agencies everywhere….Stop helping. Really. We’re good.

Rainforest Alliance partners with the Sustainable Agriculture Network to certify farmers under the RA system. RA also works with several other crops, and is the largest certifier of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) lumber in the world. Unlike Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance does not set minimum price requirements for purchasers, though it does require that a small amount be paid over and above the regular purchase price for being RA certified. This fee is paid in the supply chain, and is not an added to the consumer price. Currently, the fee is averaging approximately $0.10 per pound of green coffee (green means un-roasted…note that coffee loses approximately 20-25% of it’s weight in the roasting process), though this information is not readily available anywhere publicly that I could find….and I looked HARD. RA’s primary value proposition is that it is an environmental steward, though it does have secondary messaging about improving productivity and social programs, it is an expensive program for producers to implement.

Key Points on Rainforest Alliance:

1. Like Fair Trade, RA does not require 100% content to use their label, instead, they require just 30%. Though in my opinion, this may open some market access to companies that can not feasibly convert all of their coffee to a more sustainable option, I just can’t help but wonder about the 70% of coffee in that Yuban can that was grown in a clear cut forest and picked by small children who were sold as day labor by their parents. And no, that is not an exaggeration.

2. RA is HUGE. They have a giant budget and several hundred people telling you how great they are.

3. RA, like Fair Trade, flat out refuses to work with other certifiers at origin (origin is the generic term the coffee business uses to describe anywhere coffee is grown). Their stock answer as to why they refuse is, “Well, not everyone buys a Volkswagon.” I kid you not. I have heard that at several conferences direct from their high-ups.

Overall RA is is a program that has brought tremendous attention to sustainability, just like Fair Trade. Unfortunately, it is also not a market-based program, meaning prices are set by buyers that understand the western market, and sold by farmers that generally don’t, and they do not have mechanisms in their system to change this. There is also no facet of either model that incorporates quality as an indicator of what the price should be into the scheme’s framework.

Fundamentally, one of the largest problems in the coffee industry is that prices are controlled by the very complicated and convoluted commodity market. This means that the crappiest, most undrinkable coffee is all lumped together in the pricing structure with the finest, most exotic and rare varieties. It would be like if we charged the same price for Miller High Life (the undisputed Champagne of Beers) as we did for Dom Perignon….even beyond that, it would be like pouring them together in a big vat, splitting it in half, and selling half as High Life and half as Dom. Does that make sense to you?

Farmers need education, financial help, and environmental support, but much more than that, they need western buyers to be willing to pay what coffee is really worth, and the knowledge to then improve their quality accordingly.

We have to stop throwing money at the problem. Here’s an idea I actually got from a republican: Pay what something is worth. Better quality should get better prices. …….Oh, and crappy quality is destroying the world (I added that last bit myself).

I will cover price in another post very soon. Tomorrow’s coffee topic will be about UTZ CERTIFED, one of my current clients. I will also be talking about why a latte costs $4.00 now, and why you should pay that much (at least sometimes), and whay all those financial planners telling you to stop with the cappuccinos are dead wrong.