On March 25th, the Alliance attended the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) 2010 Environmental Sustainability Symposium, which provided attendees with tools, resources, and strategies to help businesses more fully adopt environmental sustainability in their products and corporate operations. Titled The Sustainable Corporation: Solutions from the Innovation Economy, the program featured keynote speakers Aron Cramer, CEO, Business for Social Responsibility; Engelina Jaspers, VP, HP Environmental Sustainability; and Adam Werbach, Global CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Author, “Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.”

Aron Cramer’s talk focused on the role of corporations in achieving sustainability. Demonstrating a positive perspective on the growing interconnectedness between business and sustainability, he told the audience, “this is no longer about the green economy, it’s about the economy.” Listening to his talk, we found his recommended steps for corporate greening to be particularly thoughtful:

1. Shape business strategies to meet global challenges

   Shareholder value should not be the primary target. Rather, the companies that succeed in the 21st century will be those tackling important health/nutrition/environmental/other challenges. One example given by Cramer is Ford, which is working to transition from being a car company to a transportation company.

2. Use sustainability as a driver of innovation
3. Get the incentives right

   a. Change compensation criteria
   b. Change stock valuations to consider long term investment in sustainability

4. Embrace collaboration and transparency

   Bring NGOs into corporations to advise on sustainability and collaborate on product development. Consumer transparency (barcodes, labeling) is also essential.

5. Bring in consumers

   Provide more information on products and product care/operation, to empower consumers to make better choices.

Cramer also discussed how to get board buy-in for corporate greening. His advice? Be clear about expectations of what tomorrow’s economy will look like. Once you agree on this, everyone is working towards the same goal, rather than trying to fit investments for the future into today’s economic framework.

Engelina Jaspers’ lunchtime keynote discussed HP’s Journey to Environmental Sustainability. We found that HP has an interesting perspective on what it means to be a “sustainable corporation”: Since IT is only 2% of Carbon emissions, while HP is interested in greening its own practices, the company sees its real opportunity in using IT to reduce the carbon intensity of the other 98% of Carbon emissions. Examples of HP’s sustainability-related initiatives include developing videoconferencing software, handheld printers for UPS that print directly onto packages without the use of labels, and energy efficient datacenters.

Internally, HP’s goal is to be more efficient energy-wise and economically, and to reinvest savings in targeted growth – “it’s about being smart businesspeople,” said Jaspers. Beyond the pursuit of economic efficiency, drivers for HP’s corporate greening include: market competition, customer demand, and the desire to stay ahead of regulation.

To achieve its sustainability goals, HP believes employee engagement is crucial. To do this, Jaspers emphasized bringing together the right people, and giving them clear direction, as opposed to telling all employees to just “be green”. Jaspers also encourages thorough exploration of how sustainability applies to each group within an organization. For example, what does sustainability mean to HR? To Procurement? With this approach, groups of employees in different parts of the organization will come up with unique sustainability initiatives that reflect their role and leverage points within the organization.

For the final keynote of the day, Adam Werbach spoke on implementing a strategy for sustainability.

Werbach’s speech was more inspirational than specific; however, he did offer a broad definition of sustainability, which he believes is a combination of social, environmental, economic, and cultural sustainability. Werbach emphasized that most people are not strongly motivated by this broad perspective when they make purchasing decisions, and so it is incumbent on corporations to offer products and services that incorporate sustainability yet don’t sacrifice on performance or cost.

Werbach also discussed the importance of a “North Star Goal”, an overarching goal that the entire company works towards over the long term. Such goals are:

1. Actionable by every employee
2. Core to the business
3. Solving a global human challenge
4. Achievable in 5-15 years
5. Inspirational

As an example, Werbach noted Toyota’s goal to make cars that never crash and clean the air as they drive. Despite Toyota’s recent setbacks, the company’s dedication to this North Star goal is undeniably impressive.

These keynote speakers provided attendees with a considerable amount of information on best practices and a unique way of looking at business strategies that include the holistic adoption of environmental sustainability. Stay tuned for part two of this series, in which we’ll discuss some of the best practices we learned about at the panel presentations.