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Recent Posts by Andy Savitz
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This week, I hosted a panel at the Ceres Conference at which Jeff Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, the boot company, and Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of Stonyfield Farms, the organic yogurt company, answered questions about the role of business in society. Prior to the panel, I spoke with them about sustainable consumption. I was very pleasantly surprised. Rather than the usual canned answers one often gets from CEOs at these events, both these Red Sox fans proved to be deeply committed, not to selling less shoes or yogurt, but to sustainable consumption and enlightened consumerism as a potential way out of the ecological and societal quicksand in which we find ourselves. Gary explained that only about half of what we eat is real food, in terms of its nutritional value. For him, sustainable
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I had the opportunity to speak last week about the relationship of sustainability to public policy in Washington's chandeliered, blue-carpeted Senate Caucus Room where, I was informed, John Fitzgerald Kennedy announced his candidacy for President of the United States 48 years ago.That was only one of the day’s many humbling moments. Another was that I was addressing an awesome group of CEOs from Massachusetts who have formed the Progressive Business Leaders Network, dedicated to creating sustainable companies and pushing for public policy that will advance sustainable business development.(Sometimes, despite the weather, the traffic, and the persistent but badly outdated attitude that Boston is the "Hub of the Universe," I love living here. This is one of those times.)I'm blogging
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This is starting to get annoying. Two years ago, when the book came out and I set up my mini-consulting firm, my genius computer guy Dan suggested I use the e-mail address andy@getsustainable.net. I thought that was kind of cute, so I said okay.For about a year and a half, no one except people in my circle remarked on this address.But about three months ago, something weird started happening. I was on the phone with Expedia trying to reserve a flight for the next day when the Expedia representative on the phone asked me for my email address. I said “andy@getsustainable.net” and expected to move on. Instead, a long pause ensued, then the guy said,”That’s cool, I’m into that” and proceeded to tell me about the solar panels he had
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In this post, I want to deviate from my usual discussion about sustainability, corporations, and profits. I want to discuss something that rarely gets discussed in the sustainability world but which I think is going to be a subject of increasing attention. It's the fact that sustainability is really a two-sided coin. On the one side is sustainable production, which is what all of us in business like to talk about--how companies can get leaner and greener. But on the other side is sustainable consumption, which is something that we don't talk about much. I want to frame this issues by talking about globalization--not in economic terms, but in environmental and social terms. One of the most interesting and important aspects of climate change is that it is a global issue with global
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Time flies when you're having fun, which I guess explains how two and a half weeks have elapsed since we last posted here: Christmas, New Year's Day, college bowl games, a wild and unpredictable presidential primary season, and an exhausting schedule of personal activities seem to have conspired to keep us away from our keyboard for an unconscionable period. Our apologies. One day we will share with you some of our adventures during the past few weeks, including sitting in on twelve focus groups in four different cities across the United States to learn about the social and political attitudes of the Millennial Generation (under-30 Americans). Biggest takeaway: For the Millennials, the culture wars are over. It doesn't matter whether they are atheists from California or
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Getting Trumped On My First Speech On Sustainability
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I was running late for the airport and my cab was waiting in front of the hotel. Before I could sit back, the cabdriver asked: "How was your speech?" I looked up and saw, looking at me in his rear view mirror, an older cabbie with a scraggly goatee and a cloth cap.
I asked him how he knew I had been giving a speech, and he told me that the hotel concierge had told him. "What was it about?" he asked.
Hmmm, I thought, how to explain this? "Well, I am an expert on something called sustainability. It's about how companies are expected to do more than just make a profit, and I was speaking about how profits can actually be increased by good social and environmental performance."
He didn't reply, so I tried again.
"Sustainability is about how companies can do the right thing and make money at it."
He still said nothing.
Instead, he reached over into the front passenger seat, and, without taking his eyes off the road, handed back to me a fifteen-page, single-spaced manuscript entitled Sustainable World.
"Read this," he said. "I wrote it three years ago and have given out over 1,700 copies from this very cab."
Huh? The first paragraph began with a quote from the UN Commission On Our Common Future. As I read it, I had three thoughts.
The first one was: "Am I on Candid Camera?"
If you're too young to remember, Candid Camera was a TV show from the 1960s that featured practical jokes played on unsuspecting victims--an early form of reality television. Laugh if you will, but I have three jokester brothers, and it seemed entirely possible that one or all of them had hired an actor and rented a cab to do this to me on my maiden voyage.
I actually accused the cabbie of this. I really did. He assured me he was on the level and had never met my family.
As this sunk in, my next thought was: "Wow, do I have the right book at the right time, or what?"
And then, as I continued to read his highly articulate tract on what companies, governments and NGOs needed to do to save the world, a final and more somber thought occurred: "This guy is a competitor of mine. And at the moment he's 1,600 copies ahead of me."
In hindsight, I realize that the second thought is the most important one. When cabbies are talking and writing about sustainability, can real change be far behind?
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