Getting Green Done

Rachel Salaman: What about people who say that the earth's temperature has fluctuated over the years? We've had Ice Ages and we've had the opposite and that now we're just in one of those cycles, is that not right?

Auden Schendler: Well, it's true that the earth goes through cycles, but it's stunningly ignorant to say, "Well, we've had cycles before, and we're going to have them again." We're talking about the top 2,000 scientists, climatologists in the world, and they haven't forgotten that there are such things as Ice Ages and that the sun's temperature changes and so forth. All that is included in these models, and what they're finding is that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is overriding any natural cycles on the earth, so people who say that just haven't read the science; it's very, very straightforward.

Rachel Salaman: And what's your definition of sustainable, in a business context?

Auden Schendler: We've thought about this a lot and one of my frustrations over the years has been that you go to a green business conference and someone wrings their hands, the keynote speaker wrings their hands and tries to define sustainability as if it were a big problem, and they always use the Brundtland Commission's definition that we should meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, but we think it's a lot simpler than that. We define it simply as staying in business forever, and if you have that perspective, whatever your business is, you have to take into account a host of different things, so if you're a ski resort, you have to think about climate; you even have to think about population; you have to think about war. If you're a parent, you have to think about the whole range of issues if you want to stay in the business of parenting forever. Even if you're a weapons manufacturer, you know, if you're making bombs or landmines, you have to think, well, how can this be sustainable? And hopefully in an ideal world maybe make the transition away from making bombs and landmines.

Rachel Salaman: So your approach to sustainability encompasses a lot more than just looking at green issues. It's about the sustainability of the business as a whole?

Auden Schendler: Yeah, and I think that's because climate change is simply not an environmental issue. It's an everything issue. It's a business issue; it's a religious issue; it's a government and politics issue, and it's a – it just spans the spectrum, so really if you said, "Well, we want to stay in business forever," that includes environment, but environment is just a small subset of all the other components of what you have to address.

Rachel Salaman: Well, for the purposes of this interview, and in the context of your book, we'll stick to the green issues because I know that you're an expert on this and solutions around climate change, what difference can businesses make to climate change?

Auden Schendler: Well, I think historically, businesses are focused on their own impact, so, you know, how can a DuPont or a Wal-Mart or an Aspen Skiing Company reduce its own emissions and attack our climate that way, and I think our realization is that the scope and scale of the climate problem is so huge, the scientific community tells us to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at much higher than pre Industrial Revolution conditions – we have to cut emissions 80% by 2050 – so the scale is so huge, the challenge is so huge, and the timeframe in which we have to do it is so short – the Bush-appointed Head of a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said, "We have to act in three years," and that's because the decisions we're making today on things like buildings and power plants and policy are long term durable decisions. So we've realized that, you know, if you just focus on your own carbon footprint as an individual or as a business, you're really not going to get anywhere because the number of entities, individuals or businesses that are doing that are too small, so you have to look for bigger levers and think about how you can make huge influence, profound change, and that often gets you into the realm of Federal Government policies, and how a corporation can influence those.

Rachel Salaman: How can businesses influence Government policy?

Auden Schendler: Well, the first thing is to take that perspective switch, make that change, which is, hey, what really matters is how we change these broad policies that influence the world. So for example, how do you help pass the carbon tax? How do you make the legislation for cap and trade possible? The cool thing for businesses is that Governments listen to corporations, much more, I think, much more so than they listen to the non-profit sector, 'cause we are driving the economy. We're, sort of, at least in the US, business is seen as almost like a holy talisman, the great thing, the greatest thing in the country, so politicians listen to us, so we've been involved in Supreme Court rulings, testifying to Congress at the highest level and then at lower levels working on changing our own utility board and state policies, so when you stand up as a business and say, "Climate change is a concern to us, we're business people, let's get on it," people will listen and you can have a disproportionate influence.

Rachel Salaman: Now what about these activities that a lot of businesses do and they think they're making a difference, like recycling paper, cups and so forth, is it just not worth doing that?

Auden Schendler: No, my take is that we should do that, but that obvious baseline little rinky-dink actions like recycle paper in the office, that should be business as usual, in the same way that no-one's saying, "Hey, you know, we send our trash to the dump, that's how we're being environmental, and we do that instead of throwing it in the street." Well, that's business as usual; it's not a proactive environmental move. Recycling should be business as usual, buying, you know, recycled paper should be a business as usual move. All those things we should do and they're important, but we shouldn't be deluded into thinking that that's going to do anything on this big climate problem, or that that's an action that's appropriate to the scale of the challenge. That should just be the very beginning and then we should focus on much, much bigger scale action.

Rachel Salaman: You talked earlier about businesses finding the levers that they need, and you have some examples in your book about how that's been done effectively. Can you share one of those examples, about how businesses can use a big lever to make a difference?

Auden Schendler: Well, one example is, okay, the old school would say, "Buy a post-consumer paper, buy a recycled paper." And the new school would say, "Do that, but do it and try – and use it as a way to influence the entire paper industry to change their forestry practices." So as an example, we started – we joined a boycott of a Kimberley-Clark product called 'Kleenex' that has no – it's a tissue paper that has no post-consumer waste in it. And because we're Aspen, because we have high name recognition, even though we didn't spend much money on Kleenex, our boycott got the ear of the CEO of this 32 billion dollar company, and so now we were in a room engaging at the highest level a massive corporation that's bigger than most countries in the world, and helping drive change on their forestry practices, or at least beginning that discussion, so you can go from the very mundane recycled paper to taking that concept of using a big lever to another level and actually having broader influence.

Rachel Salaman: So people need to think bigger and they need to think beyond their own office?

Auden Schendler: Yeah, and in a sense that would result from a short course of study in climate science, so that you understand how it works and the enormous scale of it.

Rachel Salaman: Now how does all this fit into the current economic climate? Globally, the world is in a downturn, does that make any difference to any of this?

Auden Schendler: It does, you know, I think in the old paradigm when environmental programs meant paying a little more for green products, all these programs would have been cut, but that's all, kind of, old news; that's old school approaches. The new business approach to sustainability is exactly what businesses are looking for in this global depression, which is, how do we get more efficient? How do we squeeze every bit of productivity out of our materials? How do we make people and machines more energy efficient? So the sustainability programs, my sense is that these are not only getting all the support of the past, but I think people and CEOs are saying, "What other opportunities do we have?" It used to mean, you know, saving 5% on your energy budget used to not be a big deal. Well now it's a big deal 'cause you're trying to find money wherever you can.

Rachel Salaman: Do you have any tips for that, how businesses can save money while they're trying to be green?

Auden Schendler: Well, there's a whole field of energy efficiency that, you know, there's opportunity left and right throughout the world in doing things more efficiently, like lighting, like pumps and motors and fans. The Empire State Building in New York, for example, is undergoing an efficiency retrofit of its heating and ventilation equipment and lighting, and they're going to save four million dollars a year in energy. It's astounding. So the physicist, Amory Lovins, describes this as finding 10,000 dollar bills on the floor, and that's true in all industries, so that's just one example, and you can use these very, very high return energy efficiency retrofits, like lighting retrofits, which are very profitable, to help support less high return projects like replacing boilers or fans and pumps. So there's just tons of opportunity, but a lot of businesses historically, because energy has been so cheap, they've ignored these and they've said, "Well we can make more money by selling product," and they were right, but as energy prices go up, this is going to be more and more of an opportunity.

Rachel Salaman: Now you include a chapter on green buildings in your book, and most people listening won't be in a position to consider building new premises, but some may be interested in improving the green credentials of their old offices. What are the telltale signs that green action needs to be taken in your building?

Auden Schendler: If you are in a building, that's a sign that you need to take action, because we have never built buildings efficiently. We've always built them cheaply and, you know, with the minimal amount of insulation and virtually every building, including a lot of 'green' buildings, are poorly built. So without question, any structure can be improved, the question is, how much is it going to cost and is there any return on it? And, you know, the approach to dealing with buildings, and buildings are crucial, they account for about a third of total greenhouse gas emissions, in terms of the fuels they use. And so, you know, they're – you start with the very, very cost effective things like lighting, and then you move into the more expensive things like insulation and windows, and heating systems. And by the way I'd add, you don't worry about things like flooring and wallpaper and so forth, but you can do those, you know, eco-products, but that's not the bulk of what we should focus on. Energy is what we should focus on.

Rachel Salaman: There's a growing trend of working from home and telecommuting, how does that fit into a sustainability framework?

Auden Schendler: Well, I think that, you know, as a huge piece of the solution which is, how do you address transportation? So the extent to which corporations and Government can let employees work at home, even one day a week, you're going to see huge savings in fuel use. That flexibility is already, you know, eliminating trips to Europe, for example, videoconferencing and so forth, so that's seen as, in some ways, a holy grail as a piece of the solution.

Rachel Salaman: Now, in your book, you share a few stories about businesses getting it slightly wrong, can you share one of those now, perhaps the story you tell about the low energy light bulbs in the five star hotel?

Auden Schendler: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the stories from my book are my own personal failures at doing things, and we have a hotel where I tried to apply this idea that, hey, if you swap out lights, there's a huge return on investment, often a 100% return on your investment just through energy savings. And we ran into a host of different problems that I hadn't anticipated and the problems ranged from the esthetics of the lights which are, in a five star hotel, esthetics are everything, and energy efficiency doesn't matter if you don't have guests coming, and then another issue was availability of capital. If you're a five star hotel and you've got 20,000, 50,000 dollars available, you're not going to do a lighting retrofit, you're probably going to improve the quality of the service and get better wine and buy better sheets and increase the, you know, the collection of diverse wines you have, so that was another barrier, and we hit – well, we had all these obstacles that were unanticipated, including some managers who didn't believe the bulbs would save energy, and so for me, this was a wakeup call, kind of, coming idealistically out of the non-profit sector, thinking this would be easy. Like anything in business, sustainability's hard and if it were easy, we would have done it already, so just having that awareness has been helpful so that when you go into these projects, you don't think it's just going to be a slam dunk and then you get very disappointed and discouraged. And we ended up getting those lighting retrofits done; it just took a while.

Rachel Salaman: What's the answer then, just to make sure you're framing things properly when you're trying to influence decision makers?

Auden Schendler: Yeah, the sell in the old days for, say, an efficiency project was, "This is green both ways, it makes money and it's good for the environment, why wouldn't you do it?" And our sell, for example is, "Hey, this is going to be difficult to do. It may cost a lot of money, and in the end though, there are a lot of good reasons to do it, and it does have a return on investment, so let's do these things, but let's not be deluded that it's going to be pretty easy; it's going to be difficult."

Rachel Salaman: And I suppose if you're on the side of trying to persuade people to, for example, put in low energy light bulbs, you also need to be aware that it might spoil the environment in the room and be sensitive around your reasoning in that area?

Auden Schendler: Right, I think one of the, you know, again, the old paradigm was, if someone in the business community didn't want to take an environmental action, then they were stupid. They were ignorant. They didn't care about our planet. They didn't care about our children. None of that's true. These people invariably are in the positions of power they're in because they're very good at what they do and they're very smart, and the reality is that business as usual has been very effective and people follow it because it works. So you have to be – you have to drop the old, kind of, environmentalist higher moral ground, superiority complex and say, "Look, these are good people who are doing good work, and we have to understand their challenges and work with them, and try to meet their needs as well."

Rachel Salaman: Now you provide some advice for people who may want to develop a sustainability program or update their own sustainability program in their business, and you outline it in five steps in your book. The first one is called "Do a sexy project," can you explain what you mean and why that's important?

Auden Schendler: Yeah, well, my prescription for implementing sustainability is a little different than most, and when we – when I talk about some of my failures, I have had consultants criticize me and say, "Well, you didn't establish the framework; you didn't create the cultural willingness to change and advance." And my response is, "You can't do that in a corporation if you're the environmental person and you're creating cultural willingness to change, first off, I don't even know what that means, and second, people are going to start asking what you're actually doing in your office, and they already suspect that the environmental guy isn't doing anything." So my approach has been, just do something, no matter what it takes, do something that's really exciting and sexy, like a lighting retrofit in a garage that saves, you know, costs 20,000 dollars and saves 10,000 dollars a year. Then bring that to management and say, "Hey, did you like that?" "Yeah, we liked it. The light's better; we're saving energy; the bulbs last longer." Then you say, "Well, I'm going to do something that's a little less high return in terms of return on investment, but I think you'll like it," so you get your foot in the door, and then that is the development of a cultural change in the company. You, you know, by doing something exciting, you get the attention of management, and even employees, and then you can work on broader change.

Rachel Salaman: And the second step you recommend is, "Make the economic pitch." What's behind that?

Auden Schendler: Well, you have to, unfortunately, make this case that what you're doing saves or makes money and the reality is that not every environmental program saves money and a lot of them cost money and even a lot of efficiency work costs money and doesn't have good payback. But there are you know there are about a dozen reasons to do sustainability work and some of it is if they save – the actions save energy and money. But some of it is public relations and that, you know, that's valuable and you get free coverage in the press; you get free marketing by the press; you get – employees are happier to be working for you and you attract and retain employees better, and there are many, many different reasons, all that eventually come back to economics. So you have to make that case so you don't appear to be a, you know, just a, kind of, a loony tune enviro who just wants to do things 'cause it feels good. That's a piece of it, ethics are a piece of it, but they're probably the last thing in a list of a dozen reasons.

Rachel Salaman: So step three is, "Cement the program." Can you talk us through that?

Auden Schendler: Once you've had some success, I think you need to make sure that the program is durable in people's minds, and that could be through corporate statements of sustainability. You need, you know, often to help change the mission of the company, and if you can do that, you can often make the program durable into the future. But there's always a danger of an environmental department being cut when economic times, you know, are bad, and one of the approaches we've used is we've said, "Well, our division has to start making money for the company, through consulting, and one day we may be a profit center, and then we'll really be sustainable because this department will never get cut."

Rachel Salaman: How many businesses are doing that kind of thing?

Auden Schendler: More and more. Some of the most progressive corporations on sustainability like Interface, a carpeting company in Atlanta, they have started – they actually started a consulting division around the same time we did, and it just makes tons of sense because not only does it do what I described, but it's providing expertise to the rest of the business world, from the people who really know how to do it, really know how to drive change 'cause they've done it.

Rachel Salaman: So it's good for the world as well as good for the business?

Auden Schendler: Right.

Rachel Salaman: Your fourth step is, "Establish partnerships," so partnerships with whom?

Auden Schendler: Well, one of the things I point out is that not every environmental action is profitable and therefore you may not be able to convince your CFO to do it, so there are lots of entities that are interested in seeing this work happen, and they are Governments and non-profits, primarily. So you can partner with these groups, and get financial support or tax credits and share the press, and that could help make a project, like, say, a solar farm that has a very low return on investment, but you could find incentives to make it happen. We've actually found cash from the Government and non-profit sector to do projects. It's well worth it to them 'cause we're helping to reduce emissions and generating PR for them and it's an exciting partnership.

Rachel Salaman: And the fifth and final step is, "Hype your success," and you go into this in some detail in your book. Why is this important?

Auden Schendler: Well, historically, corporations have said, "Well if we did something good, we're not going to call the press and say, "Wow, look how great we are,"" because they're scared of being accused of green washing, which is basically taking a token measure of, like, giving a $1,000 to an environmental group and then touting it as your environmental program. But our attitude has been you've got to hype this, one, because you want the PR benefits, two, because everyone knows about business as usual, and this is new and different and people need to hear about it, and if you did something good, you shouldn't be ashamed to talk about it. The difference for us is the message isn't, look how great we are, it's, we did this one little thing and we think it's newsworthy, but we have huge problems to address, and this is just the tip of the iceberg and we're not saying that we're a green company based on this action, this is just a piece of it. So that brutal honesty is a major theme of my book. We have to, you know, get away from the idea that doing three or four little environmental projects makes you a green company.

Rachel Salaman: So how should you go about hyping your success? What kind of practical actions can you take?

Auden Schendler: Well, you know, it's just a question of calling the press and doing press releases and hosting events, and combining that with a brutal honesty. We'll sometimes couple good news with bad news, you know, we'll say, "We did this good project by the way, we spilt some oil the other day," or something along those lines, you know, "Our carbon footprint's increasing." We want to share good and bad so it's clear that we're not trying to spin ourselves. We're just trying to move along a continuum and get better every day.

Rachel Salaman: So what three things could a listener do tomorrow, to help his or her organization become more sustainable?

Auden Schendler: Well, the first thing is sit back and make sure that what that organization is doing or plans to do is appropriate to the scale of the problem and that will probably result in being more politically involved. And the second thing would be to take actions within the company that are profitable and sexy, but also that inspire people, so something that people can feel good about and understand. A lighting retrofit, for example, might have a value more in terms of getting people fired up and understanding what we're talking about, than the actual energy it saves.

Rachel Salaman: Auden Schendler, thank you very much for joining me.

Auden Schendler: Thanks for having me; my pleasure.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Auden's book again is Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution. And there's a website where you can find out more about these ideas. It's www.gettinggreendone.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.