Corporate Responsibility OR a Disposable Society

Frankly I am amazed almost daily by the breakthroughs companies are making to create more responsible and greener products and humanitarian services.  I am not talking about superficial PR to re-label factory made food as organic or other advertising buzzwords designed to mislead us.  Rather I am impressed that global companies are making genuine progress to reinvent the future.

I have been most recently impressed when I visited the big financial firm ING to learn of their aggressive micro-credit business in India and their European car leasing operation that buys carbon credit for every mile driven to make their auto fleets carbon neutral.  I am inspired that General Electric is making organic lights that are nearly 10 times more effective than every light sold today.  Even if you’re not a raging environmentalist, you’ve got to be impressed with how companies are paying more attention to making more things more energy efficient.

The reason these trends are persisting is that consumers, especially younger ones, are demanding products that are more responsible.  Companies that are responding to this growing consumer demand will continue to grow while those who don’t will fade away.

Why General Motors is Failing

That’s one of the main reasons General Motors is sucking air.  My brother-in-law once owned a GM Geo Metro, a dog of a car if there ever was one.  As the tin and can aged he noticed that the price of parts was beginning to exceed the value of the car.  Finally a mechanic told him, “Hey, the Geo was designed as a disposable car and guess what, it’s time to junk it!”  A disposable car.  Hmmm.

A Disposable Society

In the 1950’s the big American car company accountants came up with the brilliant idea of planned obsolescence that required engineers to design parts to fail at 50, 60, or 70 thousand miles.  This, they were told, would increase their downstream parts business.  What a tragic idea.  But this has been the mindset of leadership over the past 40 years—create one big disposable society.  Disposable cars, disposable marriages and fast food that has as much nourishment as the cardboard package it comes in.  Have we gotten so seduced by “new” things that we have lost sight of the quality of our lives and the strength of our society?

Americans are Rethinking Their Addiction to Waste

Americans are a resilient people.  We seem to have un-ending ingenuity.  So inventors, engineers, and increasingly companies are re-thinking their addiction to waste.  They are doing so because we are demanding it and our children are demanding it.

So what’s the best thing we can do? We should all be fully engaged, noisy consumers.  We need to demand genuine quality, real nutrition, and yes environmentally responsible products.  We should demand personalized, low-stress service to be treated like a person instead of a problem.  The louder our voices are in the market place, the more it will change.  I am seeing this first hand.  Of course progress is slow and imperfect, but at least there is progress.  Progress caused by us.

So what do you think?  Am I into something or is my view to rosy?  What’s the best thing you can think of to drive business to become more responsible?

Insuring the Uninsured

Yesterday morning I helped the board of a Phoenix based non-profit develop a “business” plan to grow during our economic crash. Right now many non-profits are sucking air because people and businesses are thinking about their own survival and hanging on to their money.

This non-profit, the Keogh Health Foundation, is a master at doing the most good with very little. Their goal is to make sure every Arizona resident has health insurance, especially women and children because they are the most vulnerable. They go to poor neighborhoods and enroll at-risk moms and kids in one of the many underutilized public assistance insurance programs available. They’ve developed a simplified enrollment process that gets qualified people insured in 30 minutes via a laptop and Internet connection.

The Keogh Foundation is led by business people with a purpose. They’ve seen the statistic that insured poor children are sick far less than the uninsured. Yes, insured children cost taxpayers less money, and they do far better in school academically (68% better). It turns out that our massive number of uninsured, costs us far more when they finally do get health care than if they were enrolled in assistance programs already funded. And talk about an efficient non-profit. The average cost for the Foundation to get someone access to health care is $6. That means for every $6 raised by the foundation, another mother or child is covered. The Foundation also teaches seminars helping people understand how to get job training, apply for a job and of course get health insurance. What we did this morning was develop sources of sustainable funding to expand their program and create strategies to involve college students as volunteers to help enroll the uninsured.

Whenever I help smart people with projects like this I am greatly encouraged at the quality of our civil society. This Foundation is run primarily on brainpower. Its budget is tiny and its impact is huge. The real capital that supports this organization is vision, intelligence and energy.

It was started by one woman. A woman who just decided to do something about the uninsured. She started without a formal plan but with a noble idea and practical view of reality. The reality of, “How do we erase the barrier of bureaucracy to get the benefits of our tax dollars used for what they are intended for.” Then she surrounded herself with knowledgeable colleagues and just started. One thing led to another and last year 72,000 people got access to health insurance that otherwise would not have because she did something. 72,000!

So what’s the greatest thing we can do…whatever you’re waiting to do when the time is right.

The time is right. Just start.

Recycling Never Caused a Good Business to Fail

Debbie and I were going for a walk this morning on the 101 overlooking Swami’s, the famous surf break.  (Only surfers could call a surf spot Swami’s after a Hindu retreat that sits on the bluff.  Politically correct surfers don’t exist.)

We ran into our friend, Doc, who we often meet for coffee on Saturday mornings.  His daughter is in the Peace Corp. in a remote, no running water or bathrooms part of Africa.  As our conversation continued, Doc told us he was a leader of the Environmental Services Department for the city of San Diego.  This was amazing because ten minutes earlier Debbie was saying she wanted to do more to promote recycling in our little city.  She especially wants to encourage restaurants to separate organic waste (food) from paper waste and plastics.  The organic waste can be mulched at a processing center nearby.  Some of the paper and plastic can be recycled.  Then Doc dropped a bomb.  He said our city was ready to pass an ordinance requiring recycling but that the American Chemistry Council lobbyists and P.R. team had showed up to sweet talk our city council and kill the idea because economic costs would be too high.  They assert that the cost would put the restaurants out of business and the staff would lose their jobs.  So it’s absolutely necessary to poison our land with plastic trash.

I am sick of this.  The economic theory that we are not responsible to clean up our messes is a crazy idea.  Cleaning up after ourselves is part of the real cost of doing business.  Stuffing our 1000-year lasting garbage in a closet called a landfill is not cleaning up.  It’s jut transferring the problem to our kids.  Intelligent, thoughtful regulation creates a level playing field.  If all restaurants in our beautiful city had to do it, they would.  And recycling never caused a good business to fail.  No it’s the meltdown of our unregulated economy that’s likely to close restaurants.  So here’s what I want to know.  Who are these people who get up every morning and go to work using their brains and energy to destroy the planet?  For that matter, how can the tobacco industry get anyone to work for them?  Are we so scared that we’ll do anything for money?

So Doc gave us the names of three city council candidates running in the November 4 election who support recycling.  Debbie’s calling them to see how we can help.  I think that’s the greatest thing we can do.

Shoes for a Happy Planet

Shoes for a Happy Planet™ is Simple’s new motto.  They have developed a line of sustainable sneakers called ecoSNEAKS®.  The ecoSNEAKS® collection uses materials like recycled car tires, certified organic cotton, PET (think recycled plastic bottles), recycled bike tires, and hemp, just to name a few. So they leave a better ecological footprint than ordinary sneakers…  They’re not bad to look at either.  Check them out at http://www.simpleshoes.com/ecoSneaks/ Other eco-friendly collections by Simple are Green Toe® and Planet Walkers®.  Pretty cool.

Check out their story…

And not only is Simple determined to make sustainable, eco-friendly shoes, but they are just as dedicated to the process as they are the product.  They have Ethical Supply Chain Guidelines that all of their business partners must obey.  The following are a few of the guidelines:

• Forced Labor: Our business partners shall not use forced labor whether in the form of prison labor, indentured labor, bonded labor or otherwise.

• Child Labor: Our business partners shall not employ workers below the age of 16, or, in the case of hazardous work, the age of 18. If the legal age for employment is higher than 16, then the higher age shall apply.

• Wages and Benefits: Our business partners, at a minimum, will pay employees wages and benefits that meet applicable laws for all regular hours worked. For overtime hours, employees must receive compensation at premium rates. Employment practices such as training or apprenticeship wages, pre-employment fees, deposits, or other practices that effectively lower an employee’s pay below the legal minimum wage are not permitted.

Read more on the complete list of Simple’s Ethical Supply Chain Guidelines

What’s the Greatest Thing You Could Ever Do?

“So what’s up with you?”  That’s the little vocal bullet Aaron shot at me over breakfast at the 101 Diner.  I was meeting with him and John about the message of my new corporate responsibility website.  Aaron is a marital arts expert with like a 150-degree black belt in some form of Asian violent-tranquility loosely translated as “Green Willow.”  Well Green Willow man started pelting me with jabs about the tone of my recent political blogs.  “Dude, you anger is showing.”  Aaron continued, “Are you sure this is what you want to be known for?  Being Mr. Angry Man?”

“Well,” I shot back, “I am not thinking of what my brand is. I am frustrated about what’s going on with our political debate, so I am just being authentic.”

Then John, the other Green Willow warrior and an expert in consumer opinion research said, “If you had a one sentence message, what would it be?”

Without hesitation I pulled out a stack of notes from a file I had.  I just finished reading a book called Inside Steve’s Mind about Steve Jobs’ amazing turnaround of Apple.  I turned to my last note that captured Jobs’ mantra.  It read, “Imagine the greatest thing you could ever do and do it!”  I said, “That’s it for me.  That’s what I want to encourage everyone to do.”

So John responded, “So make that your signature.  No matter how frustrated or inspired you might be at what’s happening, end your blog or speech or whatever with a suggestion from that greatest thing viewpoint.”  I’ve thought a lot about the advice from the Green Willow brothers in the past 24 hours, and I say I must agree.

A few days ago I was in Phoenix facilitating a strategy meeting for 75 leaders and board members of a non-profit called Fresh Start (wehelpwomen.com).  For nearly a decade they’ve been helping women who find themselves desperate, often battered, and stuck.  Through education, mentoring and some focused social service they literally help women who have the gumption to try to climb up to self-reliance and growth.  Now they are ready to take what they’ve learned to a new level by expanding in several directions.  The people in that room were fiercely dedicated, very bright ordinary citizens doing the best thing they can imagine doing.  And it’s working.  Big time.  That’s what’s best about America.  About all of us.

Well I am all jacked up about the goodness of my fellow citizens when I get clobbered with reality.  One of the ladies I met at lunch is a psychologist in her late 50’s, a grandmother who until a year ago made her living lecturing all over the country.  She told us her job had to change, however, because somehow her name got on the terrorist watch list.  It used to take her an additional four hours at the airport to be invasively screened.  Now she said the airlines tell her to not even bother trying to fly!   This woman is as close to being a terrorist as the Easter Bunny.  But one million Americans are on the list.  She told me she has tried every way possible to be thoroughly investigated so she could get off the list.  Being from Arizona, she tried Senator McCain, her congressman, and even directly appealed to President Bush.  Nothing.  There was no trial, no review, no recourse.  Her basic civil liberties to travel were ripped away from her and she has no recourse.  So here I am in this very inspiring setting with these very inspiring people and I am angry, again.  Damn.  So let me just say my piece and then mention something positive.

Your response to my recent posts have inspired me.  If most Americans are being as thoughtful as you are in choosing who to vote for we have a lot to be encouraged about.  Thank you for your comments and ideas and the reasonableness of your arguments.  It seems to me that whom we elect does mater.  It matters because of the things that happened to my new psychologist friend.  Our leaders do create an agenda of our society that either makes it more fair and opportunity driven or more unfair and fear driven.

At the same time what matters most is how we live our individual lives.  These volunteer leaders will continue to help elevate the lives of women no matter who’s elected.  Likewise, our lives matter when we make them matter.  So I agree with the Green Willow men.  No matter what, in all and every circumstance, imagine the greatest thing you could ever do and do it.  That’s how the world will change.

So that’s what I am going to try to do.  I’ll tell you more about it next week.  In the meantime, what do you think about all this?  Am I too angry?  Is doing our best thing all we can really do?  What are the best things you’re doing or want to do?