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Sustainability is the next driver of business innovation driven by changing customer pressure as well as evolving federal and global regulation. Making sense of imminent federally regulated sustainability mandates is an overwhelming challenge for many companies, whether big or small. It’s equally challenging to track and measure the effectiveness of your sustainability initiatives on your products and customers. Sakaa Solutions understands this challenge and provides support to companies wishing to understand the environmental impact of their product and customers, using proven processes and analytics. We leverage our experience in Customer Experience Research and Business Analytics to support companies structure their Sustainability goals and insights into tangible plans with the end goal of measurability and improved decision-making. Sakaa provides a unique service in helping businesses understand their unit impact on key elements of the Sustainability through Life Cycle Product Analysis. What happens to your product in market place will dictate the success or failure of your brand as a good global citizen.
Sakaa is a sustainability solutions and service provider for businesses in the mobile, services, technology and consumer goods sectors. Rooted in the field of User Experience Design and Business Analytics, we provide product sustainability consultancy solutions, to better align your sustainability initiatives to your business goals. Sustainability – ‘driver of business innovations’
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The growing green consciousness of consumers has created a market for environmentally-friendly products. Walk along the aisle of any major supermarket or store and you’ll see shelves and shelves of green-approved/environmentally stamped products.
Consumers assume that these official certificates of approval actually mean the products are held to some standard.
They would shocked to know that green products, often priced at a premium, are not really that environmentally friendly and that the green slogans and official looking “seal of approval” prominently displayed on the products come from the marketing department and not the R&D group.
This phenomena is called “greenwashing” and is used by some companies to bolster the bottom line by riding the green movement
The problem of greenwashing, according to TerraChoice, an environmental marketing company that monitors this phenomena, is pervasive and endemic. According to them, 95% of consumer products do not adhere to their environmental claims:
“The study examined more than 5,000 consumer products in 34 stores in the U.S. and Canada and found 12,061 “green” claims among them. Among the infractions found: fibbing about or having no proof of environmental claims, vague or poorly defined marketing language, such as “all-natural,” and the use of fake labels designed to imply a product has third-party certification or endorsement of its claims”
The most common complaints include claims about Bisphenol A, a compound used in plastics such as baby bottles and other consumer products, and phthalates, which are used to give plastics like pacifiers flexibility and durability.
In response to greenwashing, consumer advocate groups, NGOs and environmental firms have expanded their mandates to draw attention to this problem. They include,among others:
TerraChoice and its Six Greenwashing Sins guide.
Greenwashing Index which is an online interactive forum that allows people to evaluate ads making environmental claims.
Good Guide which rates over 65,000 products for non-toxicity and environmental soundness.
The Environmental Working Group is an NGO that provides environmental educational resources while advocating for conservation and sustainable development on Capitol Hill.
In the public policy arena the US Federal Trade Commission is retooling its guidelines to guide marketers away from vague, deceptive or unfair marketing practices.
Same action was either taken, or is currently underway, in the U.K by the Advertising Standards Agency.
Plainsboro, New Jersey, is a bedroom community of transient, mostly foreign technology workers, living in clinical condos, with perfect gardens and well-trimmed lawns. The town is located next to Highway 1 across from the envied Ivy League university town of Princeton and just a stone’s throw from the state capital of Trenton. Plainsboro itself has the feel of a quickly assembled community built for the benefit of housing workers to help feed the surrounding companies with a labour force. In short it’s a bedroom community.
While visiting Plainsboro, I discovered the phenomenon of the disappearing sidewalk: sidewalks that lead out of residential developments and end suddenly at the entrances of these developments. These sidewalks, with their inviting flowers and gardens, give the impression that you could walk out of your housing development and safely make it to the supermarket just half a mile away. But I came to realize very shortly this was not so. In fact I would soon end up in a frightening competition for space with cars and trucks. As a house guest with nothing of interest to do and eager to explore I decided to take to the road (by feet). With no sidewalks in sight, I walked on the shoulders of the road and without fail, every time I did so, cars would pull up beside me, windows would roll down and I would hear:
“Ma’am, do you need a ride?”
The Good Samaritans would look at me perplexedly when I replied that I was only “going for a walk.” Windows would roll back up and I soon began to feel a bit weird for responding the way I did. The lack of pavements, combined with the “weirdness” of being the only pedestrian suddenly dawned on me. I eventually stopped taking these daily walks and instead began to drive to a local park – about 10 minutes away. Here the only peering eyes were the deer nestled in the dense forest of the Garden State.
***
A few years later, I moved to Princeton for a four-month work contract. Arriving from the pedestrian-friendly Canadian city of Ottawa, my friend and I began to notice and discuss the major difference in the design of the town; here we felt locked in – with no where to go, at least if we did we had to take the car. Even the nearby city of Princeton, with its sidewalks and pristine streets were a kind of prison. There was a sense of being locked in if you did not have a car. What was clear was that you could not survive without the use of an automobile; here, human mobility needed the daily supplement of wheels and gasoline.
Given that, the multinational firm that had hired me included a rental car for use as part of my compensation package, without considering that I had no particularly interest cars; my ideal would have been a 15 minute walk to the office, while holding a coffee in one hand and a paper under my arms. Plus, I wasn’t comfortable driving on Route 1 with its hectic jug handles and no way to easily recover from missing my turn. So in a short time, l became a modern day hobo – my car became my second home. At the same time I gained 15 pounds and kept gaining.
But I quickly adapted as “when in Rome…”
In the end this tale of bad urban design and the creation of unintentional prison that resulted in forcing residences to make unhealthy mobility decisions. The design of such living infrastructures are also problematic because they do not consider the notion of longevity and sustainable communities – one founded of the principle that for communities to flourish they cannot themselves be built around ‘the office building’ and makeshift plazas that exist only for serving a worker population. Because as some of these companies vanish – so do the people and eventually the plazas that once serviced the people who worked in the offices. And what remains as can be seen in many towns across America are ghost towns. Today some of these companies have been part of the economic melt down – they have vanished or shrank from the landscape leaving some residences with no connection to a place that they once called home. In the theme of this blog, it underscores the significance of what it means to consider the basic tenets of sustainability as a framework for design, with a strong focus on the people, the place as well as economic longevity that will not only support the community but allow it to thrive into perpetuity.
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Good Reads:
The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander
Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Green Giant
In our random ramblings, the most re-visited topic my pal Rahwa I always seems to eventually discuss is Customer Perception and the role it plays in colouring users feelings towards a company. Naturally when we talk, as we love to, over weekend brunch or lounging in her local Starbucks, we automatically digress to the controversial tale of Wal-Mart: the new Green Giant? Granted we don’t always agree but this post is a sum of our Wal-Mart ramblings.
About 7 years ago I ventured into one of Wal -Mart’s new Jersey, locations for the very first time – partly out of curiosity and partly to see more after reading about the rigid Supply Chain Management and cut-throat pricing that had forced some of its suppliers out business.
The image conjured up for many was that of the little man being trampled upon by a huge merciless giant. Companies like Vlasic simply could not keep up with the giant spinning wheels of the commercial Goliath and would eventually get crushed. But this was only one of many tales about Wal-Mart wielding its spears at smaller companies and the descent of Wal-Mart into the abyss of bad customer perception. And with the advent of the growing Internet these stories simply could not be contained. Myths and tales of Wal-Mart became viral, also becoming case study material for number of business schools looking at ethics in economics. My loathing for Wal-Mart, the Goliath of industries – the anti-fair trade devil – killer of the small business venture, grew by leaps and bounds over the years. In short I made it my business to lament the evils of the company to anyone who mentioned they had bought something there. And X-mas presents sometimes came with the footnote: “not from Wal-Mart!” Not only Wal-Mart’s business practices were killing customer perception but Wal-Mart, too, would come to realize that its business model was simply not sustainable.
Around 2005 the Wal-Mart brand took a massive beating and its reputation as the anti- Green, in conjunction with its other predatory business practices brought the company to its knees. Customer Perception had taken a beating and executives were scrambling to repair the image as fast as it could. The company was suffering from an economic downturn combined with continuous lows of bad press and never ending image problem. It was also touted as the largest
Before the colour Green became synonymous with eco-friendly, many folks like my family, saw a future where we could live off the land and take what we wanted from it – while giving back. It was a symbiosis that was multifaceted and multi-layered and in my eyes Wal-Mart had violated this many times over. In its tracks was a soiled footprint that needed immediate clean up.
What followed was a company wide initiative to lower Wal-Mart’s carbon footprint and environmental impact. The company began by installing solar panels on about 20 stores as well as the installation of more efficient lighting. Efforts were also made to reduce packaging. That change eliminated the need for roughly 215 shipping containers. Worth noting here is that Wal-Mart utlilised two of the key dimensions of Sustainable Design Thinking to begin the process of changing Customer Perception. The dimensions of Good and Sustainable Design thinking became here the driver which remade the Wal-Mart image – one that is growing more towards the positive as the company embraces more green practices. Granted what Wal-Mart has done is to approach its problem from a business stand point. But as Lee Scott remarked:
“If we as a company focus on waste, we can make Wal-Mart a better company and at the same time, become a better citizen.”
Today there is a growing number of people willing to pay a large premiums for “green” products and many more are concerned with health and the environment. Further some are following trends. But what we have, in essence, is a wave of change sweeping industry on levels that are only pebbles of the boulder to follow. The idea that a company is able to change its image to meet this growing trend speaks to the Wal-Mart story.
Lest we forget that Wal-Mart is still a venture driven by pure economics.
As my co-blogger Kem has mentioned below, we’ve been engaged in offline activities that reduced time spend on this blog. We’re back however, and will resume our ongoing discovery and engagement with issues relating to design and the different components of sustainable human experience.
I came across an article in NY Times T magazine that discussed design critic’s Alice Rawsthorn’s evaluation of nine products viewed through the lens of basic design functions (function, innovation and aesthetics) and sustainable ecology. What I liked about the piece was the emphasis on both functionality and sustainability as non-negotiable components of good design, whereas in the past only functionality was considered absolutely pertinent.
This following passage encapsulates the shift towards a more sustainable-oriented view of design and, in my view, encapsulates the entire product development life cycle:
Whether a product was designed, developed, manufactured, shipped and sold responsibly now matters as much as whether it works efficiently, as does the possibility of repairing and eventually disposing of it with impunity. Unless we feel confident about its ethical and environmental credentials, we will no longer see that product as desirable.
I repeat again, I do believe that responsibility in product design has expanded to include the the entire lifecyle of product development, from sourcing materials and transporting goods all the way to disposing of it as the passage above mentions.
Going back to the article, Rawsthorn dismisses the Artek 10-unit system, the Phillips Master LED light bulb and the Nissan Leaf as sustainable but not appealing and gives kudos to the Modec Zero-emissions truck, the Nike Trash Talk and the Southwest Windpower Air Breeze Generator as combining both appeal and sustainability.
Her reasoning is valid although I do take issue with her dismissal of the design of the Nissan Leaf.
Yes, it does have a hatchback body but at least it’s does enable seating for 4 to 5 adults and it isn’t banned from major streets and highways. Furthermore, it’s inside has been reviewed as “attractive and subtly high tech, with digital gauges and touch screen navigation.” It’s a great leap forward for sustainable and functional (and kinda cute) cars.
