The Clean and Green Club

He sees the job of Chief Sustainability Officers, or eco-minded CEOs as translating sustainability into the rest of the business world (p. 146). Noting that we desperately need business models aimed not at corporate growth but on profitably reducing the negative consequences of human intervention (p. 76), Schein calls out five different ways (pp. 72-84) his interviewees have self-identified their worldviews:

1. Awareness of ecological embeddedness—that a business vision must encompass the environmental context
2. Awareness that planetary ecosystems are vulnerable
3. Belief that nature has intrinsic value
4. Holistic, systemic consciousness
5. Earth-centrism

This level of thinking, he says, evolves over time—and he speculates that one reason so much sustainability thinking is bubbling up right now is simply that people are living longer and have more time for their thinking to evolve. On this, I’m not so sure I agree; I see this consciousness fairly evolved among my children’s generation, but what does evolve is the ability to work in complex, sometimes-frustrating, often-hierarchical organizations to make the change.

Most of the books I’ve been reviewing the last several years have been published relatively recently, often within three years. With a 2008 copyright, this book is outside of that pattern. And while there are pieces of it that are a bit dated—for instance, evaluating and praising BP’s actions on behalf of the environment pre-Deepwater, and of course the dramatic shifts in the fossil fuel climate due to new (and very invasive/destructive) technology and the concurrent shifts in the economy following the recession.

Yet about 90 percent of this book is still intensely relevant, and the orientation toward holistic approaches and working together from different sectors on common goals (e.g., corporate and NGOs or corporate and major government regulators) yields terrific examples and remarkable insights. I like the way it pays attention to both results and process, and demonstrates repeatedly that inclusivity —when combined with holistic thinking and powerful visioning—creates better, longer-lasting, more future-focused results. In other words, it’s not about being less bad, but about rethinking an entire way of doing things to create a greater good in the first place; they see the solution as based in innovation, not coercion—something Buckminster Fuller, who suggested that we humans learn to live on our energy income (i.e., renewables) rather than energy capital (fossil fuels), would agree with (p. 8). By working backward from the world we want to achieve, rather than patching the failures of today’s world, we can leapfrog the incremental small gains and totally rethink and reshape the business world, and heal the planet. So give it a whirl, even if you think 2007 data is too old.

Some of what you’ll learn will be about the changes brought about by the 20th century industrial model—like the shocking statistics that the number of cars in the world leapt from 50 million in 1950 to 800 million less than 60 years later (six times the growth in population), or that (as of 2007) 90 percent of all raw materials ended up as waste (p. 16).

But that second statistic is cause for hope, because it opens up the possibility to use resources far more effectively. If we can bring that 90 percent down to, say, 10 percent, that means we need far less mining, fewer landfills, less energy and water in manufacturing, use, and disposal, and many other benefits.

You’ll also learn powerful stories about individuals who led their organizations not just to a new understanding of how business can profit while serving a higher social and environmental good, but to new products and services—as well as new corporate structures and partnerships (with competitors, trade associations, NGOs/nonprofits, and government agencies), new tools for inclusive decision making and product creation, and new ways of doing business—based in that understanding. If you’ve followed what I’ve written about practical visionaries like Amory Lovins and Dean Cycon (both cited) over the years, or what I’ve written about partnership success strategies, it will not come as news.

Let’s make that hope much more concrete, by sharing just a few of the numerous case studies in the book:

• After a bunch of folks from Xerox went on a guided wilderness retreat, they saw a Xerox copier rusting in a landfill. This caused an epiphany: they could design copiers that sent nothing to the landfill. Putting this into action meant addressing such issues as product lifecycle and energized the group to reinvent copier technology. While the defunct copier they saw had more than 2000 parts and was not easily disassembled, the Lakes Project model this team developed had just 200 parts and came apart easily for reuse and recycling, and kept 122,000,000 pounds of material out of landfills in a single year (pp. 288-289).
• BMW, which had been developing plans to collect and recycle worn-out cars, expanded to create a consortium of all car manufacturers in the European Union, developed practical methods to design cars for eventual disassembly and reuse, and then went to the EU government as a united front, with workable plans for the makers to take end-of-life responsibility for their products. The EU adopted their recommendations, which avoided certain regulations the manufacturers felt were unrealistic or too restrictive while accomplishing the agreement to collect and recycle with essentially no pushback from industry—because industry designed the program (pp. 230-232, 248). 
• Alcoa piloted a massive water reuse project in one plant, and saw an 85 percent reduction in water consumption (p. 182).
• Meanwhile, Coca-Cola partnered with the global environmental group WWF to examine its total water footprint—including, for instance, the huge amount of water needed to grow its sugarcane. (It turns out that other beverages, including coffee and milk, also have enormous water footprints, once we factor in inputs like the amount a cow drinks.) This initiative got urban corporate executives, environmentalists, residents of environmentally sensitive areas, bottlers, and farmers talking to each other in new ways. (pp. 77-95; the case study doesn’t really address the results of the initiative, which was pretty new at the time).

Senge et al tell us it’s crucial to dream big, and to work from a primarily positive vision—that falling a few points short of a massive, world-changing goal is a much greater success than meeting a goal that’s too easy and doesn’t build change (pp. 293, 325-326).

A key point is that innovations, and movements, typically don’t originate at the centers of organizational power—there are exceptions, of course—but at the periphery, with production workers, managers of small units, etc. (p. 364), developing “creative tension” (pp. 294-296). Often, meaningful change happens when one employee champions the cause and makes it happen. Thus, the book features multiple Toolkit sections, which provide an illustrated overview of specific tools that help organizations grapple with these issues—including companies unaccustomed to giving line workers or unit managers a meaningful say in policy. One example is the five pages about understanding when participants are taking on any of four different roles in a meeting (pp. 276-280).

The authors include a zinger at the very end that could be its own book: a brief section (pp. 374-377) on the need to take these group process skills out beyond the human experience, and to not just take the needs of other species into account, but to design processes that include non-human partners. Reading about Amory Lovins’ active collaboration with apes who had learned to communicate with humans, co-designing an ape-friendly living environment, made me jump out of my chair and yell “Wow!”

In the 13 years I’ve been reviewing a book per month, this is my first negative review. Normally, if a book I’m reading is not good enough to share with you, I move on to one that is. There have been months it’s taken three tries to find a book worthy of reviewing.

But there’s been a lot of buzz about this book, and I felt it important to dispel some of the blatant falsehoods he’s spreading.

Note: this is NOT an affiliate arrangement. I do not benefit financially by recommending her.

But let’s put this in perspective; the business use of community is a small fraction of the whole. While many companies have attempted to build communities among their product users, and a fair number have succeeded wildly, from Apple to Harley-Davidson, true community is not about creating shared shopping experiences. It’s about people helping their neighbors, breaking down barriers, caring.

I was particularly moved by Born’s story of first living in a neighborhood where nobody interacted, then discovering what it was like to live in a neighborhood that had created a vibrant and genuine community, to moving back to another hollow neighborhood and taking the initiative to build that sense of community. It turned out to be a lot easier than you might think, and the results were awesome. So another lesson to take away here is that each of us has the power to build community where we live, where we work, and where we interact with others. We don’t have to wait for someone else to do it.

But why make the effort? Because “collective altruism” has positive benefits for those who participate. People feel motivated and rewarded in doing good things for others, and it’s an extra bonus that they experience direct benefits too. Thus, we see communities built around bringing food to an ill neighbor or rebuilding a fire-damaged building.

In other words, you might say, altruism is in our self-interest.

Born identifies three different types of community: shallow, fear-based, and deep (not so different from the three kinds of buyers for green products and services that I discuss in my “Making Green Sexy” talks). Of course, his focus is on achieving deep community. He recognizes that communities may be geographic, but also may be focused on common interests. Some of the others are less-than-healthy, such as fear-based communities organized around keeping out those seen as different. He responds with good suggestions about how to transcend evil by working to do good together. And he points out that this actually goes back at least as far as Charles Darwin, who in his later years modified his ideas about survival of the fittest to determine that cooperative communities of organisms (animal, plant, even bacterial) are “fit” and appropriate in his worldview. Born even uses the phrase, “survival of the kindest.”

Within the framework of deep community, Born highlights five different purposes of successful communities (with a chapter on each)—as:

1. Identity
2. Place
3. Spiritual
4. Intentional
5. Natural living system

He reminds us that each of us have a role to play, as communities develop. He recommends starting any meeting by letting people answer this question: “Why is it important that I am here today?” And one of the things I love is his axiom that community is not about engaging with people who are like us, but with those who are engaged by the same things that engage us.

But even as he cites a successful example of a teen who created deep community via Facebook, he regards nongeographic communities (and particularly online communities) with a certain wary skepticism. And that’s one of the places where I disagree with him. Over and over again, I’ve seen deep communities from online, and I’ve also seen the ability of an online community to provide very firm support to offline communities. Two examples of the latter: the two online discussion groups that gave strength to a community organizing campaign I founded, and the Facebook group serving members of my high school class year—which not only helped us organize our 40th reunion but keeps us actively in touch between events, providing some lubrication to the very rusty in-person relationships.

Sustainability, by definition, is creating systems that maintain the status quo. But thriving goes beyond that, to regeneration, to leaving the world BETTER than we found it. So that means, for instance, buildings and vehicles that are net-energy-positive (producing more than they use) and net-waste-negative (generating more inputs for other systems than things that need to be thrown away).

Among the examples Edwards cites:

• A Native American tribal timber project in Michigan that has been restoring and regenerating the forest ecosystem for more than 150 years, growing the forest by more than 30 percent even while harvesting 30 million board-feed per year (p. 156)
• A program in Berkeley, California (and replicated elsewhere) that allows ownership of solar systems without the huge capital outlay; this is, from the homeowner viewpoint, a big improvement over leaseback programs that had been the only way to get a solar system without plunking down thousands of dollars (p. 160)
• An initiative that lets residents of Sonoma County, California monitor—and thus control—their waste generation (p. 161)

Edwards ends with a beautifully optimistic call for replacing the scarcity mentality with abundance consciousness (something I’ve been saying for years), so that, for example, we can turn a declining ecosystem into a place “that teems with diverse wildlife and is integrated with flourishing human settlements…We can meet the challenges ahead with a vision in which creativity trumps knowledge and imagination is recognized as one of our most powerful assets. These timeless attributes will light our path toward a thriveable future for generations to come.” (pp. 164-165)

While not reaching the heights of the final chapter, there’s plenty of merit in the rest of the book, too. Edwards’ emphasis on accounting for true lifecycle costs make clear that renewables are actually cost-competitive with fossil fuels; he puts the indirect costs of a gallon of gasoline at $12. (p. 69). This is one of several key organizing principles he highlights. Others range from “glocalization” to biomimicry to preserving biolinguistic diversity to putting a dollar value on the environmental services that our ecosystems perform for us.

I’m particularly glad about the many wonderful examples of communities and businesses thriving by doing the right thing. I’ll list a few among the many examples. Projects that:

• Turn confiscated illegal liquor into biofuels, in Sweden (p. 39)
• Use closed-loop systems to recapture all byproducts, so that a Danish industrial plant heats 3000 homes with its surplus steam while a fish farm’s water treatment waste fertilizes agriculture (pp. 53-54)
• Provide a mechanism for recovery and recycling of any computer sold in Texas (p. 55)
• Created 142,000 new jobs in the German wind industry, though tax policies that favor renewable energy (p. 69)
• Allowed an entire Kansas town to rebuild as a green community after being wiped out by a tornado (p. 86)

And just what is possible? Consider this: On average, a resident of the United States generates 20 metric tons of carbon per year, while a resident of the European Union produces half that amount (10 metric tons). But when the green community of Vaxjo, Sweden—a place that obviously needs to create a lot of heat in the winter—turned its attention to reducing carbon, its per-capita output plummeted all the way down to 3.5 metric tons per person per year. That’s one-third of the rest of Europe, and one-sixth of the US. (p. 88).