Greening the Supply Chain

by H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D.

Recently, a colleague from México City sent me a link to an insightful article published on-line by the Ethical Corporation, a company based in the United Kingdom that provides business intelligence for sustainability.  Posted in early September 2011, the article is entitled, “Eco-marketing: What Price Green Consumerism?”  Its most significant several-fold message comes in the last two paragraphs: green marketing is not all smoke and mirrors; the green buying trend is fickle and tied to consumer worries about an overriding depressed economy; and growth in environmental consumerism is in the business-to-business space, not in selling to consumers.  In other words, greening the supply chain saves money for companies that, in turn, can pass those savings to buyers and to re-investment markets.

First, the smoke and mirrors message.  Finally, companies have now linked profit to saving nature, if only as a way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the herd.  Eco-innovation and corporate responsibility commitments enhance both their brand identity and their bottom-line.  WalMart, GE, and others realize that investments in sustainable production are a way to lower long-range costs significantly.  In other words, greening the supply chain saves money for corporations large and small.

Second, the fickle nature of consumers in a worrying economic climate.  As it turns out, eco-consumerism remains a marginal purchase or a luxury indulgence except for a dedicated few.  For most American adults, for example, a great divide exists between idealism and reality.  One researcher noted sardonically, “While people love to voice their idealism to survey companies, the cold facts are they almost always put their self-interest first.”  Many consumers consider themselves environmentally aware.  Many recycle.  Most, however, will not pay a premium for eco-friendly products unless they’re convinced that the sacrifice signals some measurable value.  Consumers need proof that a green product or service is at least as effective and of the same quality as the non-green products to which they’ve become accustomed.

Finally, the green business-to-business space.  Building a sustainable system of extraction, production, purchase, and disposal may rest more adroitly in the business world – not in the world of consumers.  Money saved by manufacturers, for instance, can be savings passed to buyers and re-invested for creative research and development.  But the environmental “cents” have to make economic “sense” to companies.  For an ironic example, consider Vanity Fair’s annual glossy “Go Green” issue that was ditched within its first several years because, ostensibly, “the environment has become so integral to the news agenda that there is no longer a need for a dedicated issue,” (according to Condé Nast, the publisher).  Muckraked.com estimated that that issue, printed on non-recycled paper, used more than 2000 tons of trees and produced a mountain of waste: 4 million pounds of greenhouse gases, 13 million gallons of wastewater, and nearly 2 million pounds of solid waste.  What tragic corporate ambiguity!  With that revelation, Vanity Fair hastily dumped its glossy “green” issue in 2009.  For a real greening of the business-to-business space, industry must proceed strategically with a compelling mission-related impetus to “green” itself from bottom to top to protect and promote its profitability.  It boils down to a sustainable bottom line.  The reasons for stewarding Earth’s resources don’t have to be saintly and ethereal.  To ensure the longevity of a light bulb and to maximize money in the bank is it prudent to keep the bulb glowing while a room is vacant?  It makes sense and cents not to squander the resources of the planet, and corporate profits can be linked easily to saving nature with just a little creative drive and a little understanding of ecology.

In one way of thinking, corporate America is like a huge animal.  It feeds and poops and generates just like all faunal species on the planet.  So why can’t we view companies across the nation as members of a complex web of interconnected businesses – whereby one company’s output  equals another company’s input – that evolve over time toward efficiency and sustainability?

Of course, inherent in all the arguments to “green” or not to “green” is an ages-old message.  The genuine solution to our wastefulness is simply to buy and consume less.  Nearly every orthodox spiritual practice – from the Buddha to Christ – has advocated the same approach to materialism.  As Henry David Thoreau admonished back in the 1880’s, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”  Many of the world’s environmental woes can be turned around, not with the fabrication of new technologies and new corporate strategies, but with a simple decision by individuals to be responsible consumers.