Wal-Mart's Move Towards a Sustainability Index

In case you haven't heard about it yet, Wal-Mart is embarking on a project to develop a sustainability index for its suppliers. At this point they are just gathering data and are far from having an index. The article link says Wal-Mart plans to make the index available to the public. They have a webcast of the meeting available on their site. This index should eventually have a huge impact on supply chain. As I've told my students, if you want to run a sustainable company, you need to ensure that members of your supply chain have sustainability in mind as well. As a start up or small company, you don't have a lot of power to influence your suppliers to change their ways and you might not have a lot of options to move to another supplier. But if you do, your best bet is to follow larger companies that are moving towards sustainability and use their suppliers.

Carrotmob

Check out this video to see how people can help a local business be more green.

charleston carrotmob represent. from Justin Nathanson on Vimeo.

Buying Local

I've been a strong supporter of buying local for a long time. It's not only the right thing to do generally (help your neighbors) and economically (keeps money flowing through the local economy, which will eventually come back to you in some way) but also environmentally. Whenever we buy something it has to be transported from its source. For many products that means traveling over oceans. All that travel of course burns fuel. The Buy Local movement has been picking up here in Charleston and ended up in the paper yesterday. If you are a local business, be sure to join Lowcountry Local First. They are a great organization (we do have a lot of those around here). The major project they have going on now is the 10% shift, which is discussed in the article and on their website.

Ecopreneurship

I recently attended the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC), the premier conference for entrepreneurship research. I attended a couple of paper sessions on social entrepreneurship, but there was only one on sustainable- or eco-preneurship. Academically, there seems to be a greater interest in the sociatel than the environmental business. In fact, over the last few years nearly every time there is a paper or session on sustainable business/entrepreneurship, it is always tied with social business/entrepreneurship (and usually ends up being secondary). While I realize the triple bottom line does often represent sustainable views I wonder if sustainable business/entrepreneurship can ever stand on its own. The issue may be that sustainable business is just what many of think of as the way all business should be, but social enterprises are a distinct subset. So I pose the question to those of you that consider yourself ecopreneurs - is there a social aspect to your business philosophy and if so is it equal to, less than or greater than the environmental aspect?

Purchasing New Computer Equipment

If your business (or you personally) is in need of upgrading and expanding your computers, I recommend checking EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) from the Green Electronics Council. I recently was in the market to buy a new laptop and wanted to get the most environmentally benign (let's face it, electronics are far from "environmentally-friendly") laptop I could reasonably afford. Over a couple of days searching the Internet, the best resource I found was EPEAT. What is good about the site is that you can search for various specifications that you are looking for, not just environmental impact, but things like screen size too.

The program rates equipment on "23 required criteria and 28 optional criteria" and groups them into Gold, Silver and Bronze ratings. All three ratings include meeting all required criteria. The optional criteria is used for differentiating Gold, Silver and Bronze. The categories of criteria are broad and include things like elimination/reduction of sensitive material, packaging, end of life, corporate responsibility, packaging and Energy Star. (The information seems to be submitted by the manufacturers.)

What I decided to do was look through all the laptops reported to have no environmentally sensitive materials (lead, cadmium, mercury, etc.) using the search by optional criteria. I also wanted a decent size laptop - 15" or greater. There weren't a lot of options. One was MacBook Pro, which are quite pricey. There were some Dell, Sony and Lenovo that were there mainly due to having an LED backlit screen. I settled on a Asus N50V. I'm quite happy with it.

Green IT for Dummies

Ran across this guide from HP. Don't know if is any good, but it is electronic, only 28 pages and it is free. Here is what the site says:

HP has launched a limited edition "Green IT for Dummies" pocket book as an introduction to help organizations go green. The guide is intended to give organizations simple and straight-forward ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of IT systems and harness the power of IT to reduce the wider environmental impacts of climate change in society.

The guide, produced independently by research and analysis firm Freeform Dynamics, provides guidance for where to start in greening an organization and maps out a pragmatic, yet comprehensive course of action ranked according to expense and difficulty of implementation.

Is your organization ready to embrace and implement an IT-powered green strategy?

Register for your complimentary copy of HP's Green IT for Dummies Limited Edition by answering two simple questions here.

Been a While

So it's been a while since I last posted. But even though there have been no new posts, there are still visits to this blog every day. So there must be some interest. Therefore, I will resume posting, especially since classes are over with and I actually have some of this thing they call "free time."

Green Business Networking event

Join us next Tuesday for this spring's first Green Business Networking event. We will meet January 27th from 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm on the second floor of the Tate Center (enter through the Beatty Center, 5 Liberty Street). For this event we're going to continue what we started last fall. While we're networking I'll have brainstorming sheets available around the Tate Center for collecting ideas on how businesses can be more green. This of course fits with our hope for the monthly event to bring together a variety of knowledge, skills, motivation, and expertise to share ideas about helping businesses be more environmentally-friendly, starting new sustainable businesses, finding employees/employment and generating general networking contacts here in Charleston and the Lowcountry. With the wide range of people that attend, we should be able to come up with a ton of ideas.

Additionally, the deadline for the logo contest is just a few days away. Please submit your entry by January 23rd. The logo should try to incorporate the three basic themes: green/environment/sustainability/eco-friendly; business/entrepreneurship/innovation; and networking/socializing/sharing ideas. The winner will receive a lunch downtown and will be revealed at the January event.

Come out and meet like-minded representatives from local businesses and organizations plus CofC students, alumni, staff and faculty and add your thoughts for improving business. If you know anyone that might be interested, please feel free to pass this along to them, or just bring them with you.

Recycling Polystyrene

With the holidays approaching, no doubt you're buying and receiving numerous products packaged in expanded polystyrene (EPS) - that solid white foam that protects fragile products and makes them so difficult to get out of the box. As you're looking for an alternative to tossing all that white foam into your trash can, take a visit to the Alliance of Foam Packaging for alternatives. Or if you have a huge box full of foam peanuts call the Peanut Hotline (800-828-2214) or check out www.loosefillpackaging.com. According to the website, the 5 Pak Mail locations around Charleston will take the peanuts as well as Postnet in Mt. Pleasant. Although only place in South Carolina that recycles EPS is Foam Fabricators, Inc. in Anderson, SC, they do suggest that you mail it to one of the regional recyclers, including the one in Anderson, rather than driving many miles and burning fuel.

Interesting New Business

I just read a story, linked from GreenBiz.com, about a new gas station in Dover, NH that sell only biofuels (blended) and has a "congreenience" store. The store pledged that 75% of its products will come from within 100 miles. The store is also powered by solar panels. What will be interesting to see, besides whether the business will succeed, is whether the greater availability of biofuels will impact local residents' vehicle purchase decisions. Will they be more likely to by a E85 car or a diesel so they can run on biodiesel? I know that if I could get biodiesel conveniently, I would seriously consider trading in for a diesel. So who wants to open a station like this downtown?