The June 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article called “Growing Green,” by Gregory Unruh (”a thought leader dedicated to helping businesses innovate and profit sustainably”), and Richard Ettenson. It made me totally furious and then made me kind of optimistic. I’m not really sure why I was reading the HBR in the first place, but there it is.

There’s a detailed analysis of a successful “case study”—Brita’s re-marketing/re-positioning of itself, after “sales were siphoned opff by the rising popularity of bottled water, which exploded into a billion-dollar business… [Brita] managers pursued an integrated cross-media communications strategy to tout Brita’s green attributes, educate consumers about bottle waste, and encourage a switch to greener alternatives… within a year the company’s water pitcher sales jumped a robust 23%…”

It then goes on to ask things like “How can we exploit our competitors’ green weaknesses?” “Will our green claims be credible—or are we vulnerable to accusations of “greenwashing”?”

My initial response is to roll my eyes and call it bullshit—to say that this is only one more instance of business jumping on a bandwagon that will make them some money for right now. That they’ll do this because it’s “good money,” not because it’s the right thing to do.

But my friend Eric made a great point: “That’s what the environmental movement needs—is for the Harvard Business Review to say “this is good business sense.””

And I guess I do see it that way. Until executives get behind real, substantive green/sustainable solutions, no big change is going to happen. And executives will only do it if they think it will make them money. Government can’t make them do it, at least not in the US. Government simply does not have the power, because there just is not the political will for it.

So I’m willing to concede that the little voice in the back of my head that’s always saying things like “everything a corporation does is fundamentally immoral” might not be the most helpful. And that “corporate competitive strategies” might just be one of the most promising sites for real change to happen, in this era where deficit-hawking and tax cuts have basically robbed government of its ability to protect and provide for its people…

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Organizing and Resistance, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.