The Triple Bottom Line Blog

Check out this nice little piece from the Columbia Journalism Review online about how and why environmental reporting goes wrong, often generating more buzz and controversy than information (let alone wisdom).

Some of the problems highlighted by author David Downs are pretty much unavoidable. For example, there's the need to constantly define and explain environmental terms and scientific principles, which eats up precious column space and frustrates journalists who want to write brief, snappy, alluring stories. Other problems are products of today's culture of journalism, such as the pressure to build stories around great quotes (whether or not those quotes are truly enlightening) and the urge to treat every factoid or scientific study as important (whether those details represent outliers or genuinely meaningful symptoms of real change).

In any case, it's clear that journalists and editors who read Downs's article and make a conscientious effort to avoid the mistakes he lists will do a better job of informing readers about environments issues. Come to think of it, there are reporters covering lots of other fields, especially politics, who could benefit from a similar analysis.

Labels: David Downs, journalism, Personal Musings

Fairbanks, Alaska, is one of the most isolated cities in the United States--so much so that, until recently, it had no affordable way of recycling paper, plastic, aluminum, and other waste materials. Unlike governments in more southerly Alaskan cities, the Fairbanks municipality can't afford to ship its recyclables to a plant in Washington state for reuse.

Now a big private-sector player has stepped in to offer a solution to the problem. It turns out that the local Wal-Mart is already regularly sending trucks back to Washington--mostly empty, after goods for sale in Fairbanks are unloaded. So now Wal-Mart has started its own recycling program, shipping its waste products to Washington for reuse, and it has offered to include refuse from local people at no cost to the community. A few details:

The store's decision to accept recyclables--in reasonable quantities, as it will fall to the store’s paid employees to handle them--is sure to be a hit with its regular shoppers, who live in a community that lacks a conventional recycling program. It's also likely to create an interesting decision for Wal-Mart critics in Fairbanks who either avoid super-retailers in protest of their significant, indirect impact on locally owned businesses and the labor pool or those who believe Wal-Mart is simply hoping recyclers will be inclined to buy more merchandise from a friendlier company.

Suzy Fenner, a community recycling advocate, said Fairbanks residents are currently left with imperfect options--such as burning gasoline to haul paper and plastic to a willing business, which then burns more energy to ship the products out of state. Fenner applauded Wal-Mart's initiative and suggested it will help nudge public awareness of recycling options closer toward the point of a public program or more private-sector involvement. . . .

Store officials made it clear: They’re not turning into a recycling center. But they also said they can accept some common, everyday recyclables, such as loose paper or old newspapers, empty plastic soda bottles or milk jugs, and empty aluminum cans--during business hours. Managers said anything larger than a heavy armful should be bundled or bagged to help associates manage. Recyclers should also phone ahead with bigger loads and use the company’s back loading dock. They should also separate plastics--Nos. 1 and 2--by type, which is identifiable by the number imprinted on the bottom of products.

Wal-Mart, naturally, is proudly trumpeting this news of its latest "good neighbor" policy. But as is usually the case when private/public lines get blurred, the most appropriate feelings seem to be mixed ones. When cash-strapped governments are unable to provide basic services to their citizens, it's nice that big private companies are willing to fill the gap. (We all remember the spate of stories about Wal-Mart and other firms providing disaster relief after Katrina on a more timely basis than FEMA.)

But let's face it, having private enterprise offer public benefits on a charitable basis is not a sustainable long-term program. What happens when Wal-Mart's trucks get filled with their own recyclables, crowding out public materials? What if the demand for recycling services becomes so great it takes up too much costly time on the part of Wal-Mart employees? At a fundamental level, why should a necessary public good like recycling be provided purely as a "favor" by a self-interested business, rather than as a right funded by taxpayers for the benefit of taxpayers?

After all, unlike rights, favors can always be taken away.

So two cheers to Wal-Mart in this case--but here's hoping the people of Fairbanks won't be willing to settle for this as a long-term answer to their recycling dilemma. It's not one.

Labels: Fairbanks, recycling, Wal-Mart, Waste

Shortly after we wrote this post commending Wal-Mart for moving to all-compact detergents in its stores, our friend Dennis Salazar alerted us to a story he'd recently written about the same phenomenon. After shopping for detergent and buying the new compact bottle, Dennis's take on the change wasn't quite so positive:

The [old] 200-ounce bottle, which sells for $9.99, promised it was good for 64 loads. The new 100-ounce bottle, the one that was double strength so only half the usual amount was now needed, also sells for $9.99--but promised only 52 loads.

The bottom line for my sustainable purchase? A load of laundry which used to cost my family 13.2 cents in detergent now, thanks to the new sustainable design, will cost 15.6 cents per load. That, my co-consumer friends, amounts to a price increase of 18.2 percent--a splendid windfall for the manufacturer by any standard.

Of course, these calculations do not even take into account that we are all creatures of habit. No doubt, the manufacturer realized and even projected that most of their customers would use more than the recommended "half" of their more expensive product, despite the new concentrated formulation and labeling. Hmmm . . . sell the consumer more product at a substantially higher profit margin? You've got to love this sustainability. And incidentally, the big-box store where I shop, the one that took credit publicly for driving the package design change, isn't complaining about the windfall, probably because they are participating in it.

We asked Dennis whether this apparent windfall applied to just one one detergent brand or had affected many brands. He told us that, without doing an exhaustive survey, he noticed that several detergents seemed to exhibit the same kind of unannounced price increase (most smaller than the one he wrote about).

Dennis also told us he'd written his article with two lessons in mind:

1. For the businessman--to help dispel the misconception that green always costs more. The fact is that going green usually reduces costs and re-sizing is a marvelous opportunity to re-price your product.

2. For the consumer--Don't take everything at face value. Do the homework it takes to determine the best value.

Both are good lessons, of course. But the first lesson makes us a little nervous. If clever business people start regularly using green initiatives as an opportunity to reap windfall profits through "re-pricing," the already significant cynicism many people feel about green propaganda will surely get a lot worse.

One more point. Wal-Mart's own original blog post about the switch to compact detergents drew a number of comments, some of which raised the issue of price. The most substantive of these, by "Sunny," read as follows:

There are two reasons why the cost [of detergent] isn't going to go down, and neither of them really have much to do with the cost of oil.

First, believe it or not, smaller containers are quite a lot more expensive to product than the bigger ones, because the ratio of empty space per unit of plastic is much lower in a smaller bottle. In other words, it doesn't take four times as much plastic to make a one-gallon bottle as it does to make a one-quart bottle. The cost difference isn't as drastic with cardboard cartons, but it exists--and small boxes aren't cheaper per bottle inside than big boxes.

Second, the only thing being taken out of the formulation is water--for which the manufacturers' cost is negligible. It's the surfactants and cleaners and other things that make up the cost--so eliminating the water doesn't change the price enough to be able to mark it down.

So . . . it will take less packaging (but not as a direct ratio to the smaller package size)--and less cardboard--less space on the shelf--less effort to stock the shelves (and carry it home!)--and will allow the manufacturers to load more in a single truck--and the empties will be easier to recycle or will take less space in a landfill.

So--the tangible benefits are many, but the cost savings directly to the consumer really won't change that much.

Realistically, we all know that prices tend to rise, and it's no great shock when the unit cost of an item creeps upward at the same time that a new package, new product formula, or other change is introduced.

But we hope manufacturers and retailers who are trying to earn "green cred" will be very careful about how they handle those increases. The last thing they want to do is besmirch the concept of sustainability and inspire a consumer backlash against it.

Labels: compact detergents, Dennis Salazar, Packaging, Wal-Mart

Since the average business person doesn't regularly read The American Prospect--a liberal magazine focused mainly on politics--we want to call your attention to this special report on water. It includes no fewer than thirteen well-researched and well-written stories on one of tomorrow's hottest environmental, social, political, and economic issues--supplying water to the world.

Topics covered in the report include issues around water supply privatization, the backlash against bottled water, how new water technologies can help alleviate long-term shortages, and close looks at exemplary water struggles in places like Cambodia, the Phillippines, and the Middle East. Well worth a look, especially since water issues will soon be affecting every business in the world.

Labels: The American Prospect, Water

If you happen to be a human resource professional, or if you own or run a smaller company and have "people" functions as part of your mandate, check out this good article by Adrienne Fox from the current issue of HR magazine. (It also happens to quote our fearless leader Andy Savitz, but that's not the reason we like it.) The piece offers a fine, thorough overview of lots of ways companies can get the HR department aligned with broader sustainability goals. Read it and ask yourself: How many of these strategies have we tried? Which ones should we experiment with?

Labels: Adrienne Fox, C-Suite, HR magazine, Small Business