The Clean and Green Club

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!”