Meat + Poultry - August 2009 - 22

SUSTAINABILITY

True
green
Joel Makower
on surviving
in the new
sustainabilitydriven
marketplace
By Steve Bjerklie
meatpoultry@sosland.com

W

hen Wal-Mart says the word,
companies listen - and the
word right now is "sustainability." The retail giant announced this
past month that all of its suppliers, including meat and poultry companies,
must develop comprehensive programs
to promote sustainability and transparency - or else contemplate a future
without Wal-Mart as a customer. Yet as
meat, poultry and other kinds of companies feel their way toward the sustainable future, the big issue, according
to green-guru Joel Makower, is that few
companies and their leading executives
have any sort of encompassing strategy
for approaching sustainability.
Makower, who will keynote the
MEAT&POULTRY-sponsored Sustainability Summit at the Worldwide Food Expo
in October, says too many companies do
"random acts of greenness," as he calls
them. What often is missing is an understanding of how practicing increased
environmental sensitivity, reducing the
carbon footprint, and improving corporate as well as social functions ensure a
long-term future. These are the key in22

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gredients of corporate sustainability that
work together to create a better business.
"One of the challenges is that companies are still trying to figure out just
what's going on out there," he says. "We
don't yet have an answer yet for the
question, 'How good is good enough for
a business to be perceived as green?' "

"Geen achievements
can be hard to market,
in part because so
many things fall into the
category of 'doing less
bad.' That's a hard case
to make to the public."
His 1990 book, "The Green Consumer," was one of the first to identify a
new kind of attitude among consumers
that would influence buying and lifestyle
choices. Since then, Makower has consulted with hundreds of companies, offering advice on how to put green words

www.MEATPOULTRY.com

into green action and become, potentially, more profitable in the process. He is
the co-founder and executive editor of
Greener World Media Inc., publisher of
GreenBiz.com and the related sites ClimateBiz.com, GreenerBuildings.com,
GreenerDesign.com, and GreenerComputing.com. Makower's newest book,
"Strategies for a Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World
of Business," published last December,
describes how companies can succeed
in the marketplace and at the same time
keep with customer, societal and political demands to reduce environmental
impact - and do so in a way that aligns
with core business goals.

Greening the top line
He categorizes the history of corporate
sustainability efforts into three periods.
First came the era of compliance in the
1970s and '80s, after federal and state
agencies began implementing broad and
powerful environmental laws, such as the
Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Then followed, in the 1990s, a time of "doing well
by doing good," as Makower describes -
http://www.GreenBiz.com http://www.mateBiz.com http://www.GreenerBuildings.com http://www.GreenerDesign.com http://www.puting.com http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com
Meat + Poultry - August 2009

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