The Triple Bottom Line Blog

Here's a quite interesting report from The Economist about how business executives are incorporating environmental factors into their decision-making. The highlighted list of findings from the survey of 320 international execs includes:

(1) Environmental risk management is frequently managed in an ad hoc fashion.

(2) There is no clear consensus about who should be responsible for environmental risk.

(3) Many companies conduct strategic activities without a formal assessment of environmental risk. . .

That third item is perhaps the most interesting. To spell it out in more detail, consider these specific data:

Less than half [of the companies surveyed] conduct an environmental assessment when developing new products and services, falling to 32 percent when selecting suppliers or partners, 26 percent when planning geographical expansion and 19 percent when planning mergers and acquisitions.

These findings certainly call into question the general assumption that most corporations today are doing a reasonably good job of considering environmental factors when making major decisions. In fact, they suggest just the opposite--that most companies are facing environmental risks not pro-actively but reactively, scrambling to figure out what to do with environmental problems after they jump up and bite them rather than anticipating and avoiding or minimizing them.

The survey leads me to conclude that we're mostly past the point of having to convince CEOs and their stratospheric colleagues of the relevance and importance of environmental issues. Now the challenge is getting these issues built into the decision-making systems of corporations, alongside financial, regulatory, legal, and other issues that routinely get examined and addressed before any big decision is made.

Labels: C-Suite, environmental issues, risk management, strategic planning, The Economist

I recently visited St. Paul, Minnesota, with my seven-year-old daughter to attend the wedding of a friend. At the suggestion of the bride, we stayed at the Radisson Hotel Bloomington, near the airport. "It’s connected to the Mall of America Water Park. Your daughter will be in heaven."

Now, I like Minnesota a lot, especially the Twin Cities: fabulous public universities, the highest literacy rate in the nation, and millions of my kind of people—progressive Democrats, and nice folks too. But this trip threw me for a loop, literally and figuratively.

We checked in and went straight to the water park. "America’s Biggest Indoor Water Park" does not nearly begin to describe the incredible size, variety, and complexity of its many features, which involve pumping millions of gallons of water up and down three-story water slides, surfing safaris, lazy rivers, family rafting excursions, gigantic buckets that fill until they tip over and douse you, artificial beaches with three-foot waves, and much more.

If you’re among those who are concerned about the wastefulness of shipping bottled water around the world, we are talking about waste of another order of magnitude here. Picture—as just one example—thousands of jets of water being pumped up a 30-degree incline so hard and fast that a 200-pound man can actually "surf" along it without ever slipping towards the bottom. And this thing runs from nine a.m. until ten p.m. every day, whether someone is riding the wave or not.

It's well known that Americans, who make up just five percent of the world's population, consume twenty-five percent of its energy resources. Who knew how much of it went to hanging ten in Bloomington?

Don’t get me wrong, my daughter and I had the time of our lives—screaming hilarity, endless giggling, and serious father-daughter bonding as we spent about the monthly income of the average Kenyan to cavort indoors while outside was one of the most beautiful early summer days imaginable.

I thought this was a guilty pleasure until we dried, changed, and crossed the street to experience the Mall of America (MOA).

Of course, it's the largest mall in America--which must mean the world, right? Wrong: A little research reveals that the Mall of America is actually seventeenth on the list of the world's largest malls. As measured by Gross Leasable Area (GLA), it's less than half the size of the South China Mall in Dongguan, China--yet another category in which the United States is being left in the dust by countries many of us still think of as second-rate competition.

Nonetheless, Mall of America boasts a startling list of superlatives. It has an amusement park at its center five times the size of the water park. We rode several different roller-coasters, including Pepsi's Orange Streak (see how I worked in the name of my client there?), but decided to skip the nausea-inducing Splat-O-Sphere after watching it haul 75 people up sixty feet, then drop them fifty-nine feet back down.

Of course, shopping is the main attraction. The mall directory lists over 520 retail stores and restaurants on three gigantic floors. The first-time shopper orients herself by locating the four humongous anchor tenants—Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, and Sears—each of which occupies all three stories and is located at one corner of the mall.

I have written about over-consumption, but we need a new word to describe what happens at MOA. The term mega-consumption comes to mind. You can shop at 17 jewelers, get footwear at 24 shoe stores, and dine at any and all of 74 eateries. Looking for a souvenir to bring home? MOA houses 37 gift shops, from the ubiquitous Yankee Candle and Disney store to regional establishments like Love From Minnesota and the Minnesota Wild Hockey Lodge.

We were in Minnesota for exactly 41 hours (25 of them awake), enough for three trips to the mall. We found great clothing bargains for my fashion-conscious daughter as well as a lifetime supply of SpongeBob SquarePants memorabilia.

I'm still trying to recover from the trip. Not the expense, but the alternating sense of terror and glee that the mall and the water park inspired in me.

I wonder what people will see and think when they visit the same site two hundred years from now. My guess is that the water park will be long gone, a victim of rising energy prices and water shortages. But the mall may still be there, unless virtual shopping has replaced the real deal—or society as we know it has collapsed under its own weight due to causes it will take some future Jared Diamond to analyze and chronicle. In which case MOA will be an abandoned hulk, overgrown by the returning north woods and perhaps used for shelter by animals and the occasional homeless human.

The few witnesses who wander past will probably think, "In their time, they lived like gods." Then again, they may wonder, "What the hell were they thinking?" Maybe both.

This is the first in a new series of columns we're writing for Ethical Corporation magazine.

Labels: Mall of America, Minnesota, Personal Musings