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There were hints during the panel discussion about ways that publishers might lower their impact in real - and even elegant - ways. The Bali-based Jewelry maker John Hardy calculated the impact of the advertising he purchases, and began a program to plant native bamboo plantations on a tiny Pacific island in cooperation with indigenous people there. He now can add a selling point to his jewelry, under the brand Sustainable Advertising, that is both attractive to customers and helpful to the environment. “We’re going from a world of conspicuous consumption to conscientious consumption,” Hardy said.Additional Resources:

The Institute for Sustainable Communication
http://www.sustaincom.org/

The Sustainable Advertising Partnership
http://www.sustainableadvertisingpartnership.org/

The American Institute of Graphic Arts’
Sustainable Design Center:
http://www.sustainability.aiga.org/sustainability_home

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A Watershed Moment For Sustainable PublishingBy Dan Shapley
News EditorFor eight years, Don Carli has been trying to get advertisers and the magazines that print their ads to adopt more sustainable practices.”For seven years, I felt a little like a guy blowing a dog whistle on a planet full of cats,” the senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communications said. “Not a lot answering the call.”

They answered the call Thursday when Carli filled a room in New York City to capacity (and then some) for a discussion about improving the supply chain that leads from chain saws in a distant forest through advertising to the recycle bin or landfill where a magazine ends up.

It was a watershed moment for a movement that, despite being below the radar of even many environmental advocates, has enormous implications for a low-carbon economy of the future.

The pulp and paper making industry is the fourth highest user of electricity, accounting for 6 percent of the nation’s total demand. The environmental footprint of many other segments of the supply chain have yet to be adequately quantified — but with 250,000 pages of advertising produced annually by the “enormous and complex industry,” there is a lot of paper, ink, distribution and waste to be addressed. Carli framed the effort as “singularly challenging.”

Speakers emphasized the need for publishers to get out in front of the sustainability issue before it bites them. They can save on energy and other costs now, and avoid customer backlash or potentially huge costs in the future, should Congress enact a carbon tax or other fee on greenhouse gas emissions. With public interest in climate change issues high, companies have a chance to win customer approval if they take meaningful action.

“There’s nothing we’re better at in the U.S. than creating demand,” said Andrew Winston, an author of “Green To Gold.” “We can create demand for sustainable products.”

Financial institutions are increasingly committing huge sums of money toward sustainability efforts, giving companies a chance to win the capital they might need to improve their supply chains. Bruce Kahn, 2nd vice president of Citi Smith Barney, which hosted the forum, said investors should consider sustainability a key factor in their portfolio choices, if not for ethical reasons, then for purely economic reasons, given the enormity of the impacts that the changing climate promises to cause to the business and regulatory landscape.

“Aligning investments and values is not just ethical. It’s good business … and it’s mainstream,” he said. “It’s not a niche-type investment anymore.”

There were hints during the panel discussion about ways that publishers might lower their impact in real — and even elegant — ways. The Bali-based Jewelry maker John Hardy calculated the impact of the advertising he purchases, and began a program to plant native bamboo plantations on a tiny Pacific island in cooperation with indigenous people there. He now can add a selling point to his jewelry, under the brand sustainableadvertising.org, that is both attractive to customers and helpful to the environment.

“We’re going from a world of conspicuous consumption to conscientious consumption,” Hardy said.

Publishers, speakers said, need to follow a similar path: First quantify their impact, then identify ways to reduce it, and finally mitigate the impact through local or global projects that have real results. Only then can they successfully market their efforts.

While the focus was on print advertising and print publications, speakers noted that the perception that the Web has little or no environmental impact is wrong.

“What is the carbon footprint of a banner ad? What is the carbon footprint of an e-mail? What is the carbon footprint of a Web site?” Carli said. “Questions for another day.”

Until then, Carli and his colleagues can take heart that their message is finally breaking through, and that publishers are increasingly discussing — with various degrees of openness and thoroughness — the impact of their business.

“I think we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Laurence Allen, the editor and publisher of ValueNewsNetwork.com. “Eighteen months ago, I don’t think anyone would have shown up.”

The Daily Green

Editors Desk

Eye on The Markets

by Laurance Allen

A joint partnership between IT service providers, hardware and software manufacturers, the U.N.’s Environment Programme and the International Telecommunication Union, GESI aims to foster sustainable development and improve environmental sustainability in the industry.

The group’s mission is to share knowledge and experience to manage operations sustainably, raise awareness of how IT can contribute to society, and engage in research and benchmarking to help improve overall performance.

Among the many partners in GESI are Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Canada, BT, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Verizon.

Editors Desk

Eye on The Markets

by Francesco Guerrera @ The Financial Times

An unprecedented coalition of large companies, pension funds, and trade unions urged corporate America to scrap quarterly earnings guidance in an attempt to curtail the influence of hedge funds and other short-term investors.

The move, backed by leading corporate figures such as Jeff Kindler, chief executive of Pfizer, and Anne Mulcahy, his counterpart at Xerox, will increase pressure on companies and fund managers to focus on long-term objectives rather than short-term fixes.

The broad-based coalition, whose participants range from the Business Roundtable, which represents 160 leading US chief executives, to the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation, will also call for an overhaul in compensation practices to reward corporate and fund managers for long-term performance.Monday’s publication of the new set of corporate principles – masterminded by the Aspen Institute, an influential not-for-profit group – underlines corporate America’s fear that the focus on quarterly results is hampering US companies’ long-term prospects and the country’s economic competitiveness.

“The signing of the Aspen principles by such a diverse group is a milestone in business history,” said Ms Mulcahy. “What is especially significant is the focus on long-term value and opening lines of communication with shareholders.”

The principles, which were also backed by PepsiCo, the Council of Institutional Investors and the five biggest audit firms, call on companies to “avoid both the provision of, and response to, estimates of quarterly earnings and other overly short-term financial targets”.

Instead, companies should talk to shareholders about their business strategy and their outlook over a number of years, according to the document, which has been seen by the Financial Times.

More than half of US companies offer quarterly earnings guidance and the percentage is higher among larger groups.

In private, many US chief executives say they have to provide their own quarterly earnings forecasts because analysts and investors demand them. Some express the fear that ending the practice would hit their companies’ share prices or that analysts would put out inaccurate forecasts.

Hedge funds and other short-term investors tend to like guidance because the discrepancies between actual and forecast earnings offers them lucrative trading opportunities.

However, corporate leaders and academics argue that the pressure to meet quarterly forecasts prompts companies to forgo long-term investments such as capital expenditure and research and development.

The principles say companies should look at a five-year horizon and urge both executives and fund managers to tie their compensation to long-term performance targets.

Editors Desk

Eye on The Markets

by PBS | 6.18.07

NOW on PBS is devoting an entire beat to covering people who use business strategies for humanitarian purposes - also known as social entrepreneurs. The NOW broadcast will investigate more than a dozen social entrepreneurs, the website features news, inspiration and tools.
PBS with the Skoll Foundation are also sponsoring the Project Enterprise Contest — a contest where users nominate a promising social innovator and they follow the winner’s trials and tribulations.