The Green Hierarchy

In bringing Active Power Down to market we have analysed the behaviours of many organizations and arrived (with a nod to Maslow and a wry smile) at The Green Hierarchy.

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Polluting for Profit

This is business at its simplest and most raw. The pursuit of profits is a task far too important to be diverted by concerns for pandas, polar bears and far away ice caps (just look at how much snow we had this winter!). There is often a successful meeting between the bottom line and NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) blinkered consumer behaviour. While the customer might espouse green values they often cannot resist a bargain, and turn a blind eye to the pollution that has been outsourced to some offshore, probably third world location.

Accidental Eco-Warrior

The climate is saved through happy accidents rather than design. Companies seeking to cut costs and become efficient often cut power consumption, waste and packaging in pursuit of profit rather than the green agenda. They may, or may not, claim green credentials retrospectively (moving themselves up in the hierarchy to ‘Visible Green’ in the process) but do make a positive environmental contribution nonetheless.

Visible Green

At best these companies are making a real green contribution, at worst they are proudly wearing their eco-bling in public. Their offices will have some solar panels or a wind turbine and their vans will have carbon neutral stickers clearly visible through their exhaust fumes. The joy of being in this zone is that often an organization does not change their behaviour; they just pay others to change for them (through carbon trading, outsourcing or off-shoring their least green activities), and bask in the resultant green glow.This is often a form of product differentiation on meaningless attributes. The companies involved probably haven’t improved their products or the lot of the planet in any meaningful way, but you would never guess that when you listen to the PR.Arguably the Visible Greens might make less of a real contribution than the Accidental Eco Warriors in terms of real environmental impact.However the negatives should not be overstated to the detriment of those companies making a real contribution.

Competitive Green

These companies are seriously looking at green options, doing some proper sums and trying to gain genuine competitive advantage (not to be confused with good PR and marketing hype) through their green actions.They are often quite subtle in their approach, for example Nokia have a strong track record in reducing toxic chemicals, recycling phones, sourcing energy from renewable sources but its mainstream marketing focuses on traditional product attributes.Kenco with its 97% less packaging campaign has clearly struck a chord with consumers, but the sums still need to be done comparing the use of recyclable glass versus the new, hard to recycle foil and laminate.Ben and Jerry’s probably live here with their “lick global warming” campaign and media coups such as the 1,100 pound baked Alaska for Earth Day back in 2005. High profile marketing perhaps, but with a sense that the company is sincere enough in its aims to earn more than Visible Green status.

Eco Pioneer

Pioneers have always been a diverse and eccentric bunch and the green ones are no exception. On the one hand you have companies blazing a trail in thin film solar, on the other the likes of Toyota with the highly successful Prius. While there are some who might argue that a Prius is eco-bling with its embedded carbon, toxic chemicals and the like, but Toyota is investing vast amounts of money into developing the market for low energy cars. If the numbers do not fully stack up for the Prius today – the truly green cars of the future will owe a debt of gratitude to Toyota for the commercial gamble it took.New generation solar panels increasingly depend on materials like Cadmium which is highly toxic (e.g. to aquatic life).

The Holistic Measurement Challenge

One of the biggest problems in assessing the environmental impact of actions is that of taking a properly holistic view. This has been alluded to in the sections above and there are so many variations on this theme. Take packaging: what relative value do you attach to reduced packaging vs. recycled content vs. recyclability vs. miles travelled vs. biodegradability? Add to that there is no universal view – the level of recycling in the US and Germany is vastly different, so similar initiatives could have vastly different environmental impacts.Take bio-fuels: chopping down vast swathes of Amazon rain-forest in order to grow bio-fuels may actually create a carbon debt that may not be paid back for hundreds of years. There is the balancing act between short-term pain and long term gain. The case of the Prius was mentioned above. Tetra-Pak has invested a lot into recyclability and recycling of its foil-lined cartons, but availability of recycling points is still limited – what is the impact and how do you rank the investment. Some would call it pioneering others would call it a cynical marketing abuse of the recyclable emblem.Take public transport, an empty bus pollutes far more than an empty car and an empty bio-fuel bus may fare even worse. More effective and holistic measurement will help move companies up the green hierarchy.