Luminary recipient and a sought after writer, speaker, and educator, Perske specializes in helping organizations with mobility, social media, and technology in the built environment. “Change, particularly big change, only happens when sticking with the old way is more painful than moving to the new. But we cannot afford to feel how bad the way of pillaging can get before we change. We need to mindfully and individually decide to change now how we source products, build buildings, consume energy, etc. and make choices to do it differently from our ancestors. If we do not, the consequences are massive starvation, deteriorating health, environmental collapse, social unrest and eventually war,” he says.

The pendulum is swinging towards meaningful conversations in the workplace characterized by coaching and mentoring employees. Research from the global management consulting firm Hay Group shows that highly engaged employees improve business performance by up to 30% and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their ‘disengaged’ colleagues.

The system breaks down when companies fail to adequately recognize what motivates and engages their employees in the first place. That is why more are embedding sustainability into their organizations. They are increasingly recognizing the key role that their employees play in making these efforts a success. Taking sustainability seriously goes beyond sustainability reports. It is about getting the whole company to move together.

Most employees want to do a good job. When employees take their roles seriously and demonstrate their drive to “Exceed Expectations”, they become key players that will drive a company in a sustainable direction. With younger employees increasingly committed to sustainability as a way of life. eBay’s employee green team has over 2,400 employees across the company working on everything from eliminating Styrofoam cups in break rooms to encouraging eBay to build large solar installations at their San Jose, California headquarters. But green teams are only the tip of the iceberg.

IBM is one of several companies that have gone further, by actually inviting its employees to help determine the company’s overall sustainability strategy. IBM’s Big Green Innovations program includes environmental initiatives. They have discovered that green is good but not enough in itself. ”Greening” the office is fine but the breakdown comes when employees begin struggling with what they themselves perceive to be poor job performance when it comes to green and that can be stressful. Beyond green, workers who feel their poor job performance could result in physical injury, damage to company’s equipment or reputation, or financial loss, they are twice as likely to experience high levels of stress. And employees working long or variable hours tend to experience more workplace stress. The system is broken and unsustainable unless employees have access to resources that address their mental health concerns. Employers should be asking, ‘What am I doing to reduce stress in my most valuable people?’”

Microsoft designed Windows Phone 7 with the mobile business user in mind. It aptly meets the needs of harried workers looking for easy, intuitive ways to handle stressful  business needs from their mobile phones. Equipping employees with smartphones that integrate company IT infrastructure makes working from mobile devices convenient rather than a headache. Cloud computing solutions has also erased the limits that used to exist when workers attempted to conduct business outside the office.

The biggest threat will arrive in the coming decades when many organizations  face operational discontinuity because they cannot transfer knowledge to a stable workforce. Companies have a choice. They can let change happen to them, or they can take a sustainable approach and manage change by designing engaging work experiences.

The best organizations will create core competencies around embracing change, anticipating it, and turning it to their competitive advantage. This brave new world of business will invest in new technologies and development. True sustainability is creating a culture that embraces change and develops creative strategies to serve customers and retain key people during the transition.

From a sustainability perspective, that can take many forms. Yes, it is about reducing your carbon footprint. But it is even more multifaceted, more ubiquitous than that. “Look at what U2 and Bono have come to stand for: a multi-million-dollar entertainment juggernaut pushing an agenda for social justice’” says Richard Kadzis, Vice President Strategic Communications, CoreNet Global. “It is time to pay attention”

As Keith Perske and his co-authors shared in CoreNet Global’s LEADER Magazine, a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report is increasingly integral component of an organization’s relationship with its stakeholders: customers, tenants, employees, and share-holders. A common definition of a CSR report or an integrated report is a form of value reporting where an organization publicly communicates their “economic, environmental, and social performance”.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains a misunderstood and sometimes controversial issue. Kadzis says, “The new ‘uber-sustainability’ is here.” Uber meaning the ultimate, above all, the best, top, something that nothing is better than. It includes design, energy conservation and environmentalism. It extends to smart buildings, community reinvestment and mobility.

Organizations report for several reasons, including marketplace pressure, brand value, and risk management. When companies state their concern for social responsibility issues such as the environment, it may attract consumers with a green conscience: that in turn increases revenues. Like-minded workers who think it is important that their employer has a CSR policy will work harder and even accept a lower salary than if the firm had no such policy.

CSR initiatives generate government subsidies or tax credits and prevent government regulation aimed at imposing CSR policies. And the cost of capital, or more precisely, the cost of equity may go down. CSR is about the core business functions of a company, and about the demands of company stakeholders that hold companies accountable for the social and environmental impacts of their operations.

Stakeholder expectations are expressed in forms ranging from legislation and regulation to shareholder resolutions and disruptive protests. The legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in history. Often it seems, the more business has begun to embrace corporate responsibility, the more it has been blamed for society’s failures. This diminished trust in business leads political leaders to set policies that undermine competitiveness and sap economic growth.

There is a misunderstanding over CSR may be because it is such an emotionally loaded term. It gives the impression that firms who do not have a CSR program are socially irresponsible. But, let’s be realistic, the demand for results is not new. CSR is about the core business functions of a company, and about the demands of company stakeholders that companies be held accountable for the social and environmental impacts of their operations.

These are expressed in forms ranging from legislation and regulation to shareholder resolutions and disruptive protests. These days the public is raising its expectations of corporations: not just to make things less worse, but to solve social problems. That is a problem. In light of this demand, corporations are trying to figure out the right metric. These metrics are seldom tied to any meaningful outcomes and carry little currency with next to no explanatory value.

The problem lies with companies that remain trapped in an outdated approach to value creation. Sustainability metrics are critical to a company’s credibility, transparency and endurance. Responsibility has never been more important or more appealing, Gensler once reported on new research showing that through simple cost-effective measures, sustainable design can support human performance and workplace. Despite the growing interest in measuring results, measurement often seems to fail. It all ties back to the ever-increasing demand for results. When results are defined upfront and strategies are designed with specific results in mind, measuring these results is easy.

We are not just going through an economic downturn; we are going through a social and environmental downturn. The real driver for results is value creation. Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back together. Yet we lack a framework for guiding these efforts, and so remain stuck in a “social responsibility” mind-set in which societal issues are at the periphery, not the core.

An increasing number of companies known for their hard-nosed approach to business such as Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Unilever, and Wal-Mart have begun to embark on important shared value initiatives. But our understanding of the potential of shared value is just beginning.

Enterprises without Borders Corporations, causes and activists are supplanting governments. As issues get less local, government is less effective at solving problems. “More people vote for who’s going to stay on American Idol than in government elections,” political economist Dr. Noreena Hertz once joked at a CoreNet Global Summit.

Companies often get tangled in the web of stakeholder engagement, spending too much time soliciting input from third parties like distant NGOs and activists, rather than focusing on their direct stakeholders: employees, customers, leadership, investors, and the board. The trick is figuring out what results are most meaningful for your company and designing the right strategies to produce them. Real business strategies are designed to generate business value through social change.

By opening new markets, removing social barriers and creating affordable products to address unmet market needs, customers are transformed into brand advocates. “In the end,” says Kadzis “the drive for measurement is really a drive toward relevance even legitimacy, for companies that report within the triple bottom line format.”

Photo Credit: Logos made by Taylor McKnight for Web2.0

CivicAction’s Greening Greater Toronto’s first annual Race to Reduce Awards had that extra spark. The Race encouraged thousands of companies to better manage their energy use and environmental impact. Office building landlords and tenants participated in the Race to Reduce smart energy office challenge. As a result, they reduced their buildings’ energy use, very smart.

Thomas Edison was a genius. He still holds the record of submitted patents. And he believed whole-heartedly that “some skills are better learned by doing while others simply by understanding”. If Edison was alive today he would understand the need to reduce the damage that we are doing to our planet, Earth. But it does not take a genius to realize that.

As a human race we would probably find things rather difficult without the Earth, so it makes good sense to try to make it last. Controlling and reducing energy consumption makes sense. It enables you to reduce costs. It is like a tornado. You want to hang on to what you have. You do not want to see everything go. But the more energy consumed, the greater the risk of energy price increases and supply shortages.

The Race challenged Toronto region landlords and tenants from office buildings of all types, sizes and ages to publicly commit to work together to reduce energy use in their buildings. The aim was (is) to improve air quality in the Toronto region and achieve sustained carbon emission reductions in the office-building sector. That sector contributes 20% of the region’s carbon emissions.

“The inaugural Race to Reduce Awards event celebrated some of the region’s best examples of landlord and tenant collaboration to achieve energy and financial savings,” said Linda Mantia, Head, Enterprise Services and Chief Procurement Officer at RBC and voluntary Co-Chair of Greening Greater Toronto and its Commercial Building Energy Leadership Council. “The entries we received are a real testament to how we can reduce our collective energy footprint, and they give us confidence that we will achieve our goal of reducing our collective energy use by ten per cent over the Race’s four years.”

It is a great example of how a market driven initiative can support public policy goals. The Race supports the Ontario government’s timeline for energy conservation targets. The good news keeps getting better. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) have signed an agreement that will create a common platform for measuring and assessing the energy performance of commercial buildings in both countries.

“Energy benchmarking is an important aspect of an effective strategy to improve energy efficiency in buildings, because what gets measured gets done,” said the Honourable Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources. “This agreement is another example of how we are working with the U.S., through the Clean Energy Dialogue, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.”

Benchmarking commercial buildings is a growing United States trend that is coming here. Benchmarking is embraced as a point of entry into strategic energy management and is being undertaken by thousands of commercial enterprises each year. California became the first state to make benchmarking mandatory and require disclosure of commercial building data to tenants, buyers and lenders. It is mandatory in Washington D.C., Austin, Texas, New York, New York, Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California.

Canada’s new national energy benchmarking tool is a smart solution based on the EPA’s Portfolio Manager tool. Available in 2013, the new tool will use information about building characteristics as well as Canadian national survey data to benchmark energy consumption, costs, operational practices, and provide commercial owners and managers with a blueprint for continuous improvement.

Photo Credit: Rob Sinclair

It is a design manifesto to save the biosphere. The popular environmental slogan of the last century—Reduce, Reuse and Recycle—is no longer useful as a strategy. Being eco-efficient is no longer viable; rather eco-effectiveness is what we should be striving for in any development. Our present system of design needs to be changed. Instead of wasting nearly all of the raw materials that go into a product design, we should be cognizant of what Braungart calls the biological and technical nutrients that comprise the manufacture of any new product. If we plan what goes into a product, we don’t have to be concerned with how to dispose of it or how to protect ourselves from its toxicity later when it is no longer useful.

McDonough and Braungart want to eliminate the cradle to grave syndrome that everything in our society suffers from presently, and replace it with a cradle-to-cradle system. Just like in the natural world where nothing goes to waste, every component is useful as a nutrient for something else. The authors call for a second Industrial Revolution to redesign everything in this manner, but if the Industrial Revolution gave us the current set of problems why, even in name only, would we want a second one? McDonough utilizes language quite effectively, and this book is filled with a very descriptive nomenclature to describe various elements of the concept. We need more of this kind of informed terminology to help begin the transition toward a new, wiser design methodology.

Buy now: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
By William McDonough and Michael Braungart
We Make Things © 2002
North Point Press, 193 pages

The most recent thinking on the evolution of homo sapiens is that we shared the planet with as many as 15 to 20 other hominid species for four million years. This is in contrast to the single line evolution theory that was gospel. Until recently, scientists had believed that there wasn’t enough ecological space on earth for more than one culture-bearing species, so they postulated that the species could only have come down through one line. While the evolutionary pathway portion of the theory has been proven wrong, the space aspect of the theory still appears to be quite valid.

Buy from Amazon: You Can’t Eat Gnp: Economics As If Ecology Mattered (Merloyd Lawrence Book)

Concerning the well-being of ecological space, the essential thought of Eric A. Davidson’s recent book, You Can’t Eat GNP: Economics as if Ecology Mattered, is just that—we can’t eat GNP. Davidson is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center and the value of his recent book lies in his explanation of economics, cost benefit analysis and discounting, and how these tools don’t work well when evaluating natural resources. This book covers some well-cultivated ground, but it serves as a good primer for the topic because it is written in an accessible, concise style. Its short length, 216 pages, makes it the prefect companion for your next business flight.

If we understand that all our wealth ultimately emanates from the natural world—the soil, the air, the water, the forests and the oceans, then it becomes apparent that our current system of economics is not serving the environment very well. Davidson tells the story of one economist who “argued that we need not worry much about the effects of global warming on the economy, because the only sector of the economy that he considered strongly influenced by the climate is agriculture, which contributes only three percent of the United States’ GNP. This view of how the world works seems to suggest that if the crops fail, the people could eat the 97 percent of the GNP
that remains.”

It seems that a change is slowly occurring in the discussion of the environment, and I’m glad to see scientists like Davidson entering the arena. He states that the problem with moral arguments is that you either accept them or reject them. Although it is apparent that he has bought in to the concept of saving the environment as a moral argument, the author also proposes that we begin to make our decisions on rational criteria that are based on the true value of the environment. However, I wish he would have gone one step further and talked about the need for and application of measurement techniques for the entire ecological debate.

The need persists for the formulation of metrics, a set of standard measurements that are understood by everyone so that the natural world comes to be properly valued. We generally discount the future value of nature so that it is never worth more than at the present moment. Its future value isn’t worth as much to future generations as it is to us today. Davidson writes, “Our current system values the growth of gross national product over conservation of essential natural resources, and it falsely separates the economic system from the ecological system upon which our well-being depends.”

When the author goes in search of sustainability he discusses the differences between the cowboy economy and the spaceship economy. The cowboy economy describes our country when there were very few people and a lot of open space. It did not matter how many resources were used or how much trash was created because the ecological space was much larger than the economic activities and it could absorb any localized detrimental effects. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the spaceship economy understands that economic activity has a critical impact on our natural limited biological life
support system.

The issues of sustainability and equality have become inextricably linked. Architect William McDonough has often said that the issue of over-population will be resolved when women achieve true equality. I would take that thought one step further and say it will happen when all species are equally valued. Davidson offers eight suggestions, most of which depend upon government to institute, that would begin to address the sustainability issue.

We can no longer be cowboys and future population growth will dictate that we recycle everything and waste nothing. In fact, the author states, “If the increasingly difficult challenges of consuming nonsubstitutable resources, providing food and disposing of garbage for a rapidly expanding population leaves us and future generations with fewer options and more problems to resolve—then we already have too many people on the earth.”

It is interesting that in the 25,000 years since we have emerged as the sole survivors of all the hominid species that once existed, we have always thought there were no limits on either our activities or on our numbers. Can the earth continue to support us? Now that there are six billion of us and resources are dwindling, Davidson’s book reminds us that we will have to redirect our economies to reflect the true basis of our prosperity. He is convinced we can continue our culture if we begin to make the necessary adjustments to the way we go about our business. The author even recommends that you lend this book to someone so that its ideas can go beyond preaching to the choir. So lend it to someone who usually does not read scientific, economic or environmental books.

Buy from Amazon: You Can’t Eat Gnp: Economics As If Ecology Mattered (Merloyd Lawrence Book)

From green@work magazine archives.

Andrew Sibley - Desso

The Greeks called it Helios, the Romans Sol and, despite forming over 98% of the solar system, it is technically a Yellow G2 Dwarf, one of over 100 billion other stars in the universe.

Every second it converts about 700 million tons of hydrogen into about 695 million tons of helium and five million tons of energy, generating 386 billion billion mega Watts.

It takes light from the Sun about eight minutes to reach Earth or 1.3 seconds for reflected light to bounce from the Moon, and without it we would be in a cold and dark place and, without photosynthesis, unable to grow food. We couldn’t exist.

The Sun’s generosity is a good place to start in looking at today’s environmental imperatives of climate change and resource depletion, because the Sun’s energy is the only resource that is replenished every day. Everything but the Sun’s energy is finite.

In every other respect, we live in an eco-system that is closed; what we take, make and waste, we waste forever – and that’s the fundamental challenge facing manufacturing industry. When its resources are gone, they’re gone for good, and so too our capacity to make new things.

It was that realisation that created the modern environmental movement, which in many ways can be dated from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. This was an unprecedented UN conference both in size and the scale of its concerns. The Conference Secretary-General, called it a “historic moment for humanity.”

The Summit’s message was that only a complete transformation in our attitudes and behaviour would bring about the changes necessary to safeguard the environment. It also coined the phrase “eco-efficiency.”

This, so it was believed, would transform industry from a system that takes, makes, and wastes into one that integrates economic, environmental and ethical concerns. Essentially, eco-efficiency means doing more with less.

Eco-efficiency has been the guiding principle ever since. For many companies, it has meant assessing manufacturing and distribution processes and then finding ways to minimise their impacts on the environment – for example, by reducing waste or energy consumption. Eco-efficiency has achieved enormous environmental benefits.

More than anything, it has brought the environment into sharp focus, bringing with it a shared sense of our impact on the world around us. In a few short years we have collectively recognised the challenges of resource depletion and climate change and, as individuals, families, companies and governments are doing something about it.

But eco-efficiency doesn’t have all the answers because, effectively, it’s about being “less bad” and believing it to be inherently ethical. The Earth’s resources, except solar energy, will still run out, although at a slower rate. Eco-efficiency buys us time, nothing more.

But a new environmental theory is gaining traction; a theory that suggests that, rather than make the wrong things less bad, we instead make products that are right. The name of this theory is Cradle to Cradle^®.

It was heralded in a book, ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’ by the German chemist Michael Braungart and American architect William McDonough. Published in 2002, its central premise is that products should be conceived from the very start with intelligent design and the intention that they would eventually be endlessly recycled in their entirety as nutrients.

The refinity process, which separates the yarn from the backing so that both can be reused.

Cradle to Cradle^® looks at the Earth’s resources as either biological nutrients that are useful for the biosphere, or technical nutrients that are fundamental to the technosphere, the systems that comprise industrial processes. It’s a theory that draws heavily from nature’s example; in nature, nothing is wasted: everything is reused in closed loops, over and over.

It’s a perspective that sees old products as nourishment: foodstuffs that can be disassembled and used to make new products, eliminating waste from the manufacturing cycle, because every old TV, carpet or washing machine – and everything else – will have been designed for disassembly and reuse.

Braungart and McDonough state that when designers employ the intelligence of natural systems – for example, the effectiveness of nutrient recycling, or the abundance of the Sun’s energy – they can create products, industrial systems, buildings, even regional plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully co-exist.

It is no less than a manifesto for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design; a positive agenda that says that, if we learn from nature, the manufacturing sector can be truly good. Time Magazine has called it “a unified philosophy that – in demonstrable and practical ways – is changing the design of the world.”

The scale of the environmental challenge is particularly significant in the flooring industry. Statistics from the USA suggest that carpeting is replaced on average every seven years, despite usually having a guaranteed life of between ten and 25 years. That means that a lot of perfectly good carpeting is thrown away every year, because it’s faded or just feels dated.

According to a UK study carried out for the Contract Flooring Association, about 500,000 tonnes of carpet is thrown out in the UK every year. One estimate suggests that in the developed world some 2% of landfill waste is made up from old carpeting. Multiply those statistics across the world and you can sense the scale of those wasted resources, when much of that material could be used again.

In 2007, Desso entered into partnership with the Hamburg-based Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA – http://www.epea.com), the brainchild of Cradle to Cradle^® co-founder Michael Braungart. EPEA encourages companies to assess their activities on sustainability, recycling, waste management and energy use – and make improvements throughout.

We have worked with EPEA to first identify the “material health” of each component in our products; assess how each component can be recovered and recycled in a process of “material reutilisation”; assess energy and water usage and, lastly, examine our policies on social responsibility and fair labour practices. We intend that all our products will be designed and produced according to Cradle to Cradle^® design principles by 2020.

For example, we have introduced EcoBase^® – a carpet backing that can be entirely recycled back into carpet backing, and we are introducing Take Back™ programmes to ensure that products can be recycled according to Cradle to Cradle^® principles.

That in itself introduces a new concept alien to most manufacturing industries – the concept of a product of service. Instead of the current paradigm in which goods are bought, owned and disposed of, products containing valuable technical nutrients will be reconceived as new products that new consumers will wish to purchase.

In that manufacturing scenario, consumers would effectively buy the service of that product for a certain period and then, at the end of its useful life, the manufacturer would take it back, take it apart and reuse its nutrients to make new products. Yes, we would still be in the business of selling products but, unlike now, we would retain responsibility for those products – to the end of their useful lives and beyond.

From a manufacturing perspective, that doesn’t mean making products more durable or designed to last longer. It doesn’t mean asking consumers to make do with their mobile phones or TV sets for longer, because consumption is bad. Cradle to Cradle^® makes planned obsolescence good; it makes consumption good. It merely asks us, the consumer, to buy new products from companies committed to the most sustainable closed loop manufacturing methodologies.

There are obvious benefits for all of us. First, it makes good business sense because, without waste, companies save money from having to source valuable new resources and, second, with nutrients being constantly recycled, it diminishes the need to extract any more new materials. That really does change the design of the world.

The challenge for manufacturing industry is to find that elusive balance between people, profit and the planet – the Triple Bottom Line that is at the heart of the environmental agenda. But too often, using the eco-efficient model, we have ended up concentrating on profit, with social or ecological considerations coming second.

Cradle to Cradle^® allows us to use the Triple Bottom Line as a strategic design tool and perhaps, as Braungart and McDonough suggest, turn that matrix on its head and consider corporate strategy as being about a Triple Top Line – a new starting point from which to design products and processes.

The Sun provides us with that starting point, an energy source capable of providing all our energy requirements many times over. It simply requires us to look at our manufacturing processes in a different way: to make best use of the Sun’s abundance to make products circulating in endless closed loops.

It’s nothing less than industrial re-evolution but, as Albert Einstein said, if we are to solve the problems that plague us, our thinking must evolve beyond the level we were using when we created those problems in the first place.

The SUBWAY® restaurant chain, an industry leader in providing healthier options for consumers, announced the opening of five new “Green” SUBWAY Eco-Restaurants – with more on the way – each designed with environmentally friendly aspects to reduce energy, water, and waste consumption in cost effective ways.

This North Haven, Conn., Subway is pending LEED certification.

“All of these new eco-restaurants reflect the brand’s commitment to social responsibility and sustainability,” said Marketing Director Elizabeth Stewart, who heads the SUBWAY brand’s corporate social responsibility efforts. “We have made a commitment to make our restaurants and operations more environmentally responsible. As the largest franchise chain in the U.S., we know we can make a real difference and are working towards that goal.”

Going green is something franchisee Dr. Burhan Ghanayem takes very seriously. Burhan retired as an environmental health scientist, although his passion for conservation continues.

Burhan recently opened two Eco-Restaurants in Cary and Durham, North Carolina, with his brother Marwan. Both restaurants are recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

“I have been a customer of Subway all my life,” said Burhan, who owns a total of 10 SUBWAY restaurants with his brother. “I love the food and the freshness. Compare our food to burgers and other fast food restaurants and ours is a lot healthier.”

Along with the great Customer Service experience his restaurants provide for customers, Burhan says his Eco-Restaurants are educational as well, even down to the automatic shut off faucets in the bathrooms.

Burhan plans to continue building Eco SUBWAY restaurants, with two new locations already on the horizon.

“I actually learned so much from building my first two eco-restaurants that I want to make my next even greener,” Burham said. “I really care about the environment. If we can all chip in, we can really make a big difference.”

LEED is a third-party certification program for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. As part of their Eat Fresh, Live Green initiative, the SUBWAY brand encourages franchisees to create Eco-Restaurants when possible. Many, who cannot rebuild their restaurants, are incorporating Green elements into their stores such as low flow faucets and toilets, energy saving appliances, motion sensor lights, recyclable trash cans, and more.

George Estep, franchisee of the newly opened Eco-Restaurant in Kokomo, Indiana, constructed a free standing drive-thru restaurant entirely from recycled material. Estep’s restaurant also includes a large monitor that displays real time energy usage of the restaurant, which has turned into a customer favorite.

Subway in Kokomo, Ind., was constructed entirely of recycled stone. It is pending LEED Silver certification.

Additionally, two newly renovated rest areas off the Merritt Parkway in North Haven, Connecticut, each includes a SUBWAY Eco-Restaurant. Among their eco-elements, both operate off of a light harvesting system through solar panels, high efficiency air conditioning, and they even have environmentally friendly plants that do not require any water maintenance.

Among the many soon-to-open Eco-Restaurants is the SUBWAY restaurant on the University of California Los Angeles campus, which is located in the newly renovated “Green” student center. The center will even feature a walkable rooftop terrace and garden.

Many more locations have incorporated sustainable elements, such as franchisee Stephen Maycock’s restaurant in Ephraim, Utah, which now includes solar panels to generate electricity.

SUBWAY brand sustainability efforts do not end with Eco-Restaurants, Elizabeth Stewart said. They also include packaging solutions that are functional, operationally efficient, and cost effective. By reducing the amount of packaging, supply chain transportation is cut back, saving fuel costs and reducing mileage and emissions. These reductions are a result of changes such as recyclable cutlery and paper napkins made out of 100% recycled material. Other efforts include the shift from plastic menu panels to recyclable paper menus, and the new SUBWAYcards which use 30% recycled plastic.

A list of Subway Eco Restaurants with their certification and opening date:

Kissimmee, Fla., LEED Silver, November 2007
St. Helens, Ore., December 2007
Keiser Station, Ore., December 2007
La Place, La., Eco Restaurant Silver, September 2008
Chapel Hill, N.C., LEED Certified, August 2008
Love’s Park, Ill., September 2009
Loveland, Ore., 2010
Cary Park, N.C., LEED Certified, 2010
Durham, N.C., LEED Certified, 2010
Chicago, 2010
Kokomo, Ind., pending LEED Silver, 2011
North Haven, Conn., two pending LEED Certification, 2011
France, 2011

The choice is obvious: reduce our impact on the environment. Doing that can actually open up a whole new world of opportunity. Unfortunately for us all, the problem of illegal dumping is exceptionally large and extremely complex; that it would take tremendous effort, time and money to combat it. Andrew Mangan, executive director at the US Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD) knows something we all need to learn. All crisis are opportunities. The crisis we are facing is huge. But the opportunity hidden in its coils is just as great.

Mangen encourages companies to recognise that one company’s waste can be another company’s raw material. The US BCSD has the solution. Commodity markets are so hot these days that even yellow is translating into green. The By-Products process breaks down the barriers to cross-industry communication. It tears down walls between government and industry and between small and large companies, by fostering dialogue and working across groups to identify supply chain waste minimization opportunities.

The Chemical Logistics Vision 2020 Report predicts higher transport volume concentration around chemical clusters and longer, more complex supply chains by the year 2020. The review published by Cefic’s logistics group, together with Deloitte, provides a picture of chemical logistics trends likely to occur in the coming decade and is derived from input received from logistics directors of key industry players combined with sector experience from Deloitte.

Among the many findings, measures to reduce transport carbon emissions and improved safety and security are predicted to lead to more regulations and drive the introduction of new supply chain models. Cefic Transport & Logistics Head Jos Verlinden said: “It’s clear that efficient, competitive and sustainable logistics are essential for the industry’s future. Complex supply chains, capacity constraints and infrastructure congestion will present important challenges.”

The BPS advantage is that through extensive collaboration, coordinated and facilitated, organizations discover innovative ways to integrate their operations that cut pollution, and reduce material costs, improve internal processes and improve the bottom line. By taking “wastes” from one company and using them as raw materials for another, industry can turn a negative into a positive – for the environment and shareholders.

There are three keys to a successful by-product synergy process. They are diversity, communication and partnerships. Participants come together in projects representing a wide range of industries and organizations, which in turn broaden the markets in which participants find business opportunities. For example, a cement manufacturer uses the slag from a neighboring steel mill in its production process, resulting in a 10% increase in production output and a 30-40% decrease in nitrogen oxide emissions.

The first time the steel and cement companies got together was awkward. They were not accustomed to thinking about — much less working with — managers from another industry. But as the talks continued, the awkwardness passed and they began to consider several interesting questions: The benefits of the synergy approach go far beyond the steel industry. The Business Council for Sustainable Development for the Gulf of Mexico (BCSD-GM) is promoting the idea worldwide. The Gulf council is playing matchmaker marrying 21 major companies in the Mexican seaport of Tampico.

This is how it works. The BPS process breaks down the barriers to cross-industry communication, as well as the barriers between government and industry and between small and large companies, by fostering dialogue and working across groups to identify supply chain localization and waste minimization opportunities. Recognizing these advantages, and building on the success of BPS projects in other areas, the US BCSD has initiated a BPS project in the greater Houston region for 2009. The Greater Houston BPS involves establishing a forum where companies, regulators and local governments explore reuse, recovery, remanufacturing, and recycling opportunities through collected information and facilitated interactions.

Sustainable development makes good business sense because it creates competitive advantages and new opportunities.

Senior Columnist Carl Frankel

Sustainable business consultants will tell you there are big profits to be made by adopting sustainability-oriented strategies. Their arguments have been well-received—up to a point. “It’s all very nice in theory,” is the stock response, “but you’re going to have to do better than that. You’re going to have to show me proof!” This observation is followed, typically, by lots of lollygagging near the starting line.

So what’s going on here? In a word: fear. Corporations aren’t wired for courage. Scan the business book section in your local Barnes & Noble and you’ll see endless titles praising “innovation,” ditto “excellence.” You’ll also get lots of softer stuff about “soul in business” and such. But you won’t find books about courage, not many anyway. Courage isn’t part of the lexicon or curriculum.

It’s not just that corporations are blind to courage, they actually drain it. “We’ll have to run it by legal.” Or “We’ll have to run it by marketing.” Were two sentences ever more certain to strike fear into the heart?

Business executives also have other reasons to lay low, starting with the relentless pressure to meet their performance targets. Managers live in a “do or get fired” world. That’s not a climate in which courage blooms.

The watchdogs who are forever nipping at the heels of corporations inspire caution, too. For executives, they often come across like hypercritical parents who can never be satisfied. And executives react predictably: If they can’t be right, they’ll be the next best thing—invisible. In other words, not bold.

So we have a corporate culture of fear, and to make matters worse we have a—let’s call it—cultural culture of fear, too. Our consumer culture, especially in the U.S., is built around the denial of death. It elevates youth because youth, as a life-stage, is forever young. It peddles stuff by the boatload because people believe, somewhere deep in their unconscious, that if they can somehow manage to pile enough stuff high around themselves, maybe, just maybe, the Grim Reaper will pass them by.

None of this makes us safe, though. Instead it leaves us addicted to anxiety. Just take a gander at MSNBC and you’ll see what I mean. There it is, emblazoned on the screen 24/7: Terror Alert: High. What a rush! It’s life as a Fright Night movie, Friday the 13th every day of the year.

It’s a double whammy, having this corporate culture of fear housed inside a society that’s chronically a-tremble. But here’s the funny thing: it doesn’t have to be this way. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and for every desire there is an equal and opposite desire. Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to breathe free. Precisely because there is so much fear in the world, people yearn for courageous leadership now more than ever. And not Texas machismo-style courage, but something else entirely—a courage that straightforwardly addresses the roots of our discontent. Such as, for obvious example, the accelerating and, yes, frightening collapse of our natural and social capital.

Could global corporations supply this courageous leadership? Yes—assuming they could justify it. Could it deliver a competitive advantage? Again, yes—and that’s the justification! The yearning for courage—for heroes, really—is, after all, a need, a deep need, and that’s how companies gain market share—by meeting human needs.

There’s a market opportunity here, and a big one. People need heroes, and with the right leadership corporations actually could behave heroically—for instance, by making a bold commitment to sustainability. Heroism isn’t about waiting to find out what the other guy will do. Nor is it about going slow. It’s about racing beyond fear and anxiety.

Heroism gallops.

Reposted from green@work magazine edition Mar/Apr 2003

The world needs innovation; the kind of innovation that creates great products; the kind of innovation that creates a better world – the world we all want to live in. Few cities in the world can compete with New York for diversity. 520 miles of shoreline – more than Chicago, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle combined. The city is embraced by two powerful tidal rivers the Hudson and the East River. It has two major bays, Long Island Sound and the Atlantic.

But as the mayor, Michael Bloomberg once said: “At some point in our history, we literally and figuratively turned our back on the waterfront.” He is determined that New York reconnect with its water. New York faces daunting days ahead.

“The water is the connective tissue of this place – we see it as our sixth borough,” said Amanda Burden, the city’s chief planner. “The ambition is to make New York City once again one of the world’s great harbor cities and to reclaim the water as a part of New Yorkers everyday lives.”

Dockside Green is a continent away, on the Pacific Ocean in Victoria British Columbia in an entirely different world. A LEED® ND Platinum project, it is created around the principles of smart growth, green building and sustainable community design in harmony with nature. It is the heart stopping eco community the world is talking about. A showpiece of sustainable design and technology, Dockside Green is a mixed use harbourfront community based on shared values and innovative amenities that help create a true sense of community, of belonging.

Just how different is Dockside Green? Dockside’s vision is for a socially vibrant, ecologically restorative, economically sound and just community. In the first place, it tied for the world record for the most points ever achieved under the LEED® Platinum rating system in the new building category. This award winning development includes residential, live/work, retail, office, light industrial uses and extensive public play areas and cultural centres.

Eventually, it will include 26 buildings totalling 1.3 million square feet, and be home to about 2,500 people in three neighbourhoods – Dockside Wharf to start, followed by Dockside Commons and Dockside Village. “We believe in the building and growth of communities,” said Kelly O’Brian, Operations and Marketing manager with developer Vancity. “With that comes a responsibility to ensure all aspects of a holistic approach to development are considered and given equal billing. Dockside Green is a triple bottom line development with shared focus on economic, environmental and social goals.”

Dockside was the first development in North America to attempt a master-planned community to this scale with such a strong focus on sustainability. Anytime you are a leader in an industry you will run into roadblocks and learn lessons along the way…you’re cutting the path. For example in our first phase Synergy we opted to include motion sensor lighting in common areas, bathrooms and closets. While this worked well in the common areas an issue arose with this lighting in the bathrooms and closets with the lights turning off while the room is occupied or turning on repeatedly if the sensor was activated by a pet.

Due to the constant overuse and unsuitable ballast installation the lights often failed. We remedied this situation with replacing all the sensors with standard light switches in each suite. It was costly, but because it was an issue related to design we therefore felt it was our responsibility to bear the entire cost of the remediation. And yet, O’Brian said, “Keeping with the Triple Bottom Line theme having some or all of the below factors in the mix makes for a profitable, community-supported sustainable development… We strongly believe in placing equal value on each of the triple bottom line principles – each initiative (environmental, social, economic) balance/boost the other. Having a social, environmental and economic ‘conscience’ has been, in our experience, a proven recipe for success.”