GREEN BUSINESS VIEWS

Posts Tagged ‘green certification’

There is one statement that tends to evoke a knee-jerk reaction, and that occurs when I say that the reputable Green business programs have had less than a 3-5% penetration into the marketplace.  This does include such good programs as LEED, ISO, and Green Business League that perform live audits instead of some token programs that use self-assessment or Internet forms.  The honest programs always prove their value by requiring a live audit and benchmark for achievement.  The rest are simply not credible.

As for the statement of 3-5% penetration into the business, the 2009 U.S. census showed that there were over 27 million business in the United States.  So, we have a fair starting point for the further facts that will be related.

According to an April 2009 report by the U.S. Green Building Council, they state that there are 2,476 LEED certified projects and 19,524 registered projects, distributed in over 90 countries.  ISO reported in 2002 that the of ISO 9000 total stood at 510,616 in 161 countries.  While both of these numbers are impressive in the progress being made, it seems obvious that the penetration of the Green business program is a small percentage of the U.S. or world marketplace.

Look at the major cities.  Another LEED provided statistic relates the extent of LEED buildings in major metropolitan areas:

1 – Chicago, IL — 88
2 – Portland, OR — 73
3 – Seattle, WA — 63
4 – Washington, D.C. — 57
5 – Atlanta, GA — 53
6 – San Francisco, CA — 50
7 – New York City, NY– 46
8 – Grand Rapids, MI — 44
9 – Los Angeles, CA — 40
10 – Boston, MA — 38

So, while these numbers are not critical of LEED or ISO, the concern for the real impact of our efforts are real.  Businesses are slow to the process, at best.  There seems to be a pressure to make progress combined with an inability to accomplish the task in a meaningful way.

Making the program accessible to whole cities, chambers of commerce, or business organizations allows communities to install a powerful Green business program at literally no cost to the community or the customer.  Fees apply only for requested training, auditing, or certification programs.

There are different approaches to the environmental issues we face today.  We see some organizations that are addressing buildings, homes, and their owners.  But what about the rest of the business and homes that would like to become green certified?  Do they have to build, renovate, or add expense changes to improve their carbon footprint?  The answer is No; we can start by understanding that going Green is about individual behavior of every one on this planet.

In many cases, people are relatively ignorant of the many opportunities they have to Go Green.  Or maybe our busy lifestyles do not afford us the time to study endless areas of environmental sustainability issues.  Even some of the terms can be intimidating. We here words like Bioaccumulation, Remediation, Out gassing, Sick Building Syndrome, Building Related Illness, Volatile Organic Compounds, and Indoor Air Quality just to mention a few.  The list goes on and on, so should we research all of the different terms described above, do you even have the time?

But should we ignore the fact that every business and home is going to be subject to some kind of environmental risk.

Your probably thinking what is he talking about my business just sells widgets.

In fact this company may sell  Green widgets, so I am all ready doing something to help change my environmental footprint.

Recently I attended a green fair.  All of the venders at the show had some kind of green product or service their company was providing. I took the time to visit most of the Green booths, and I learned that many were good at what they knew but not so good about the whole environmental topic.  After listening to their description of the product and service I asked them this question.

One question was, “Is your business green certified?”  And all of them answered no, but they immediately proceeded to tell me how long they have been providing a green service or product.  I had to think to myself, this is” talking the talk and not walking the walk.” It was plain to see that most businesses selling a green product and service have not finished their homework.

This is another answer I heard from one of the business owners. “Why do we need someone to certify us?  We have been around for years providing a green service.  We all ready have our own green program in house.”

It is common to hear some firms making this clam, they more than likely are already meeting some or most of the requirements to be green certified.  But isn’t it obvious that if Going Green is a matter of declaration, then anyone can claim to be a green business.  This goes back to changing the behavior of each individual. Earning and not “Give it to me, I deserve it” is an attitude that needs to be changed.

If your business is not certified and someone is not paying attention to the environmental risk your company could be facing a law suit and a bad reputation that could take years to overcome.

Why not ask yourself a few questions about identifying your environmental risk.  For example, what resources are we most dependent on (energy, water, materials), and how much do we use?   How do we dispose of waste?   Have others in our industry had problems?  Do our suppliers pollute?  Do they meet all applicable laws and legal requirements? These are just a few questions to keep in mind when trying to identify environmental risk.

Here’s a quote by Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston.  From there book Green to Gold.

Business Consequences:

“Climate change is a highly contentious issue because the costs both addressing the problem and of not addressing it could be very high. Green house gases are linked to the burning of fossil fuels, so successfully controlling emissions will require action on the part of not only every business on the planet but every individual.”

Just align our self’s with nature and not defy it could work wonders to get on the right path.

I doesn’t matter if you offer a Green product or service.  Every business needs to change at the operational level regardless of whether the building is owned, rented, or leased.  The best method to integrate Green practices into a company is to train and install a Certified Sustainability Officer in the company.

While popular in Europe, the International Standards Organization (ISO) is lesser known in the United States.  One of the common questions encountered is how does ISO work and isn’t the ISO 14000 a Green certification.  ISO certainly is an impressive organization, and it may be best understood as having an emphasis on quality control and risk management.    An ISO review is designed to examine and test every part of the company’s process to assure that the company’s program is “transparent” and “reliable.”

When companies are doing business across borders and must rely on the ability of a supportive company to perform, the ISO certification allows the transparency of process to be demonstrated.  The chances of a failure by the company is also part of the system.  This is why the layman might look at the ISO program as a quality control program more than a guide for the basic operation.  With the myriad of companies in existence and the infinite variations of their process, ISO is not a conformity initiative as much as it is a reliability examination of the system.

ISO certification is exhaustive and expensive.  The apparent goal is to review and evaluate every step of the company’s process and suggest improvements that will insure efficiency, reliability, and smart operation.  This is something of value for inter-related systems that would be adversely affected by the faults, delays, and failures of supporting companies.  Consider it like an audit of a bank to make sure that the bank is operating properly and the money in trust is handled well.  We depend upon bank, and the regulatory systems are to assure that banks do not fail because of poor management.  The same could be said of the airline industry.   We count on everyone doing their job and doing their job at a superior level of performance.  The constant audit and inspection of the airline system is in our best interest.

ISO is not designed to provide the systems to run the company but to measure the reliability and efficiency of the operation.  Therefore, with the introduction of ISO 14000, questions arise as to whether this is the new standard for a Green or sustainable company?  Not really, but the ISO 14000 is certainly a very tough review (or test) or whether your company is stepping up to sustainable standards.  In other words, a test is different from the preparation for the test.

In a very practical manner, the any Green business program should require what is now known as the “Sustainability Plan.”  This is the first step in developing a Green or sustainable company.  It is also more practical and much more affordable than the ISO program.  However, if and when a company chooses to move on to the ISO certification, there is now a program in place that can be measured and even improved by examining the quality of the program along with the general operation of the company.

ISO will not provide a business plan for your company, but it will measure its effectiveness.  ISO will not provide a marketing or financial plan for the company, but will test whether what is in place it credible enough for other companies to trust.  While  I am sure that ISO would explain the comparison more profoundly than I would, there is a need to simplify and illustrate the value of each system.  Both have merit, and yet the process seems to need a little bit of “layman’s logic” to help American businesses understand how to make these new applications work for their unique business applications.

On more than a few occasions, my office gets questions about whether the Green of Sustainability business issue is serious or a fad.  It is not a fad!  Businesses in the near future will face constant pressure to Go Green.  In several instances, our office received a panic call from a business competing for a contract that had a “Green Certification” requirement in it.  There was no need to legislate the action, the company or agency simple put the requirement into the new RFP or contract requirements.  Suddenly, the urgency of Going Green got very real, and everyone sought a Green certification that put them into the contract opportunity.

Let me point out that you should avoid at all costs the scam online certifications.  You know the ones that charge you a fee to sign up; but never, ever see your business.  While deceitfully claiming that their online self-assessments are actually “audits,” they actually suggest that businesses be complicit in their Green fraud that is fully intended to deceive the public served by their greenwashed business hoax.  There are always knockoffs of the real thing, but without an actual audit, no Green certification is credible.

Well, getting back to the original thought, I just saw an article on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) that is described as: “The annual review of the DJSI family is based on a thorough analysis of corporate economic, environmental and social performance, assessing issues such as corporate governance, risk management, branding, climate change mitigation, supply chain standards and labor practices.”  Goldman Sachs has invested strongly in the Green energy sector, including the carbon credit exchanges.  These, and many other high-level companies certainly send a resounding message about the reality of Green business compliance in the future.

The newest and most impressive Green jobs is “Certified Sustainability Officer,” and it appears that this is the next necessary part to the Green business program.  The sustainability officer is the in-house Green officer that maps out the company’s Green program by developing a “Sustainability Plan” for the company.  Businesses finally understand that Going Green is not a one-time effort by a transition process that will take 3-5 years to complete.  The sustainability officer provides the constant support and input to make the sustainable practices ingrained into the daily fabric of the business.

So, all businesses are going to see increased pressure to Go Green through initiatives like Green Supply Chain, EPA’s Environmentally Preferred Purchasing, Triple Bottom Line, and Corporate Social Responsibility.  These various efforts are a call to integrity and follow through as a Green business.  We have spent a decade piecemealing our way to a Green operation, and it simply doesn’t work.  If your company plans to compete in the Green marketplace of tomorrow, it must become an authentically Green business.

There is actually only one sure method to eliminate greenwashing, and that is a certification process that comes from an independent third-party.  The difficulty to field hundreds of Certified Green Auditors is a task that only a few dedicated companies have accomplished.

The reality of changing our world is more staggering than we can imagine.  That is why most firms settle for some form of greenwashing tactics rather than a quality effort that can be respected in the new and Greener marketplace.  These greenwashing tactics often come in the form of amateurish, piecemeal, and token efforts.  Instead of real change, the accommodation of a “Good Enough” approach seems to be the general approach.  This is more than unfortunate because there is such a seriousness to the challenges that we face that are ugly threats that take on monster proportions.

Token efforts are the popular Green program because there is simply so much to do.  The four key elements of an environmental plan include: Health, Sustainability, Pollution, and Conservation.  Each of these topics cover huge amounts of information and potential applications.   Once the average person encounters this ocean of information and mount of tasks, they reconcile to do a few Green items and call it a serious commitment.

Examples of this kind of greenwashing is the increasing number of online Green certifications that have adopted a “Pay to Play” program whereby the more important criteria is the ability to pay a $400 to $500 fee.  The justification comes in the numerous online self-assessment forms that give the purposeful illusion that the company has gone Green.   Any company with a website-issued Green certification will eventually wipe it from the website once the public finds out that is is actually intended to deceive the public.

Instead, why not consider “The Green Factor“?  This is a quantum leap that starts with one trained and empowered person in the company called a Certified Sustainability Officer.  Like an accountant, lawyer, or engineer; the CSO has a very important role in the company.  The first task is to assess or benchmark the company’s progress and develop a clear picture of the company’s future look.  From this vantage point an action plan is prepared that is called the Sustainability Plan.  This is a yearly implementation plan that has the support of the company decision-makers.  It is now time for The Green Factor.

The Green Factor has two very important multipliers: 1) Growing Participation and 2) Increased Application.  This is not one man’s (or woman’s) job.  The real value of the CSO or Green Officer is to engage others in the project.  This can be done in the community, throughout an industry, in a school or agency, and in the workplace.  The multiplier of having many people in the program is one of the most important tasks that we can accomplish.  Instead of one overworked and marginally effective person trying to drive the company into sustainable practices, the CSO is leading dozens and hundreds of people to get involved in the plan (the sustainability plan) that maps out a direction for everyone to follow.

The second issues is increased application of Green practices.  Honestly, most well-intended people are doing one, three, or five things to be Green.  That is simply not enough because they are also doing dozens upon dozens of things wrong.  There is a gross imbalance in most of our lives, families, and businesses that leaves the door wide open for stepping up our level of participation.  By teaching people to adopt more and more Green and sustainable practices, we are raising the level of play.

Combining more people (participation) and more applications (solutions) the Certified Sustainable Officer is fulfilling the calling of this job in ways that they would never reach by being a zealous promoter of Green demands (sometimes called “The Green Police”).  The CSO is a person who develops a plan that allows everyone to work together to advance to program in enormous strides.  The fact that everyone gets involved and increases their understanding and commitment is the magic that comes from determine and inclusive leadership.

If your company does not have a CSO already in place, it is time to get this done.  Training a Certified Sustainable Officer can be done through a wonderful online course offered online. If you are already acting as a CSO in your company.  Sure, you could hire an $60,000 to $80,000 college graduate to develop an sustainability plan, but you can also have a key person in your company train to be the CSO for your company.

Take note that Fortune 500 companies are racing to install a CSO or CSO team.  Executive Order #13514 demands the installation of a CSO in every government agency.  The new mandates coming from each state and the federal government will require a knowledgeable CSO for every company.  More importantly, the pending requirements to track and account for carbon emissions will be a task that cannot be handled by an amateur.  Of course, when these mandates become pressing, your company can hire an expensive firm to handle these tasks for you, but doesn’t it make sense to train a CSO now who can accomplish this task and keep your company profitable, more efficient, a better environmental citizen, and a credibly Green firm?