The Age of Corporate Environmentalism

Surprise--big business has learned that it's pretty easy being green.

Katherine Mangu-Ward from the February 2006 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

In the run-up to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Greenpeace threatened a campaign against companies (at the time sponsoring a "green" Olympic village) that failed to invest in new refrigerant technology. Greenpeace advocated propane as an alternative coolant, but "we didn't agree with their solution," says Langert, mostly because propane is "flammable, explosive. And we're not taking any safety risks." McDonald's partnered with Coca-Cola and other suppliers to develop a carbon dioxide�based cooling system. Then it built its prototype in Denmark.

As it turns out, the Denmark store uses a lot less energy--17 percent less--than a regular McDonald's. The hardware costs are higher, since McDonald's had to design many units from scratch, but the energy savings are incentive enough to keep working on the technology because of the long-term savings it provides. "We just had another refrigeration summit meeting," says Langert. He thinks it is important to encourage voluntary cooperation with other players, because "we need others demanding industry standards. We can't do it alone."

Even Greenpeace likes the results. "It's good," it announced in a press release about the EPA's Climate Protection Award, "to see Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Unilever stepping up with solutions. We look forward to continued work with these companies to reduce global warming emissions." Don't get too happy, though: "As always, Greenpeace approaches our relationships with these corporations very deliberately and seriously. While we are proud of our continuing work with Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Unilever on green refrigeration technology, it is obviously not a Greenpeace stamp of approval on the overall environmental and social footprints of these companies."

As that last sentence implies, relations aren't always easy between the two groups. Corporations don't trust the environmentalists because they are forever being undermined by statements like the one above. And environmentalists don't trust corporations because they know that companies are exploiting their relationships with environmental groups for the good P.R., and still really care more about the bottom line than anything else. Both parties are right to be suspicious. In fact, both parties are pretty much correct about their opposites.

Even those green-collar workers who hop back and forth between activism and industry don't get along perfectly with the environmental movement. When activist and corporate types first started to mix, they reported back to their respective HQs that the other guys weren't so bad. "We have met the enemy," they said, "and they are us--almost." Bob Langert works with a mix of business school and environmental science grads at McDonald's. This mix is crucial, says Langert, because "if you're strictly a business person you might not have the vision and the passion to change the world." But if you are only a green you might not be able to work with "partners and suppliers" by "using rational arguments that our business partners believe in." For a man with Bob Langert's history, rational is a key word. It's telling, then, that even while trying to praise his green partners Langert manages to gently suggest they're a bit loony.

On the flip side, Environmental Defense's Tom Murray is eager to sing the praises of his corporate partners--up to a point. "My impression of the people that I have worked with is that they are very passionate about the environment," he says. "But I am an advocate for the environment. They have to answer to shareholders." Don't get him wrong, he pleads, generously offering that corporate environmental officers are "in many ways just as passionate about the environment" as he is (emphasis added).

"We Deserve a Break Today!"

Langert, who is 49, says he knows he predates Murray's generation, which takes corporate cooperation on environmental initiatives for granted. He's sanguine about the future of the alliance, even as he looks with a jaundiced eye at some of his greener colleagues. He notes that he has had a career trajectory that they could do worse than to imitate. He says he has "managed to do the right thing, somehow, fairly often." He pauses, then sums up corporate environmentalism in a single tidy sentence: "We were willing to invest money into something, but if is really going to be sustainable, it has to be economical as well."

Home Depot's Jarvis conveys the same sentiment in another way. He recounts a warm and fuzzy tale of an encounter with an official from the U.S. Forestry Service, who said the service's conservationists had been trying to "get things going in Cameroon or Brazil," mostly to no avail. But once Home Depot "used the power of the purchase order," Jarvis say, suddenly "those forestry ministers started coming to us, [saying], 'How can we make our forests more sustainable? We cannot afford to lose the dollars of commerce that came from the Home Depot into our forest.' "

McDonald's executive Mats Lederhausen puts it more colorfully. Lederhausen was instrumental in instituting green-friendly policies when he ran McDonald's Sweden. Swedish McDonald's, not to be outdone by its Danish neighbors and their fancy HFC-free prototype, buys all of its energy from renewable sources and serves organic food. Lederhausen has long argued that "doing good is good business" and apparently can get quite upset at the environmental movement's residual anti-corporatism. When he was asked, by author Marc Gunther, to respond to the criticism that McDonald's could be truly socially responsible only by shutting down, he fired out this reply: "That really pisses me off, quite frankly. You don't attract 46 million customers daily by happenstance. You do it because you fill a need that is pretty strong and because your products are pretty damn good. I'm not saying there aren't a lot of things we can do better. But, I mean, give us a break. We deserve a break today!"

It's nice to get back a little bit of that mean old corporate bogeyman that we used to love to hate, isn't it?�

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…offered by the impostors. They have to displace the corrupt conservationists as the voice of American environmentalism, fast. Lastly, as a counterpoint to Hari’s piece, here is an old article on corporate environmentalism, whether corporations can also be reformed from within. Another article also discusses about going green is good business. PDRTJS_settings_741091_post_720 = { "id" : "741091",…

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