At the Table – Greening the Executives

So to finish last week’s column – as sustainability and “green” are taken more seriously by corporate America, a new position “Chief Sustainability Officer” (or a similar title) has been created at several mega-corporations like DuPont, Dow Chemical and Home Depot. And as the New York Times stated in their July 3 article “Companies Giving Green an Office“, “The new environmental chiefs are helping companies profit from the push to go green.”

Most of these positions were created in the past two years, and the executives in them have a lot of power within their company. They’ve been tasked with finding ways to make green products and to cut down on greenhouse emissions, oh, and to also make a profit for the company.

So the question for this week is – is this good or bad?

I can’t seem to make up my mind. I think it’s great that major corporations are looking into cutting greenhouse gases and are doing things like creating a machine that Owens Corning has developed that makes insulating attics easier. (Apparently, drafty attics contribute quite a bit to greenhouse emissions.) So, sealing up attics will keep more heat and cool air in a house, which is a good thing – this will not only cut down on emissions, it will save homeowners money. And if a major chemical company like DuPont or Dow can come out with a cleaning product that cleans well and is nontoxic and truly safe, that would be a huge benefit to many people.

Why does this concern me? Part of my fear comes from my mistrust of large corporations – remember when DDT was good for us? (And if you don’t know, it’s still sold to other countries, who produce products that are shipped back to this country, so we could still be exposed to the harmful chemicals whose use is banned in this country – this is an issue currently with green tea from some other countries. It’s another reason to support Country of Origin Labeling!) And did you know that almost all of us now have Teflon in our bodies?

I guess I worry that companies will use the green movement as a way to, well, greenwash us into believing that they’re really saving the planet and doing all these great things when in actuality what they’re doing is making a big profit by charging us all a lot more money for safer products. Shouldn’t they have done that all along? Or that once the products go on the market and we think they’re safe, effective, and are helping to save the planet, the companies will start taking shortcuts and changing ingredients to create bigger profit, not caring anymore about how green it is.

And, to me, sustainability also involves the local movement, so producing soap in China, whether green or not, and shipping it to North Carolina isn’t sustainable in my opinion, when you can find soap being made somewhere on the East Coast of the US. For these large companies to truly become sustainable, I think they have to seriously look at all the emissions and waste from shipping goods around the world, goods that could be produced nearby. Obviously, not everything can be made locally (coffee, for example), but we should all be looking to purchase products produced as locally as possible.

But then there’s the other side to the issue. If a major corporation is taking us seriously and is actually listening to our demands for greener, safer products – whether their intentions are profit driven or not – that’s a great sign. That means we’ve had an impact and that things can change, even in large, bureaucratic corporations.

This tells me we’ve arrived, and the whole sustainability issue has gone mainstream – which was the goal in the first place. So, once again, I’m going to stay positive and see the creation of another layer in a corporation as something we all can benefit from.

And you’ll probably hear me say this over and over as a word of caution. The reason these companies are doing this is because we’re demanding action be taken against global warming, pollution, and the environmental and social problems we face. They realize they can make money being green because we’ll buy the products and will look for the green services. So we have to keep it up – we have to continue to know what’s going on, to speak up for what’s right, and to continue to ask for safe goods and services that help not only us but also the community around us.

That’s how we’ll change the world. Or should I say – that’s how we’ve changed the world. Congratulations – let’s keep it up!