Show me the money! Making sustainability affordable (Seminar F- session 3)This is a featured page


  • Tom from TS Designs agrees that his sustainable products are more expensive, but he knows where his inputs come from versus a producer in Honduras who may use environmentally un-friendly dies
  • cost comoonent sheet - buyers demanding this from suppliers
  • leads to benchmarking
  • instittutional buyer can almost be more important then targeting a consumer. Consumers are already overwhelmed by decisions, suppliers can focus more on this
  • Green still isn't a motivator to pay more
  • How do you leverage suppliers to
    • Do you fund their investments in efficiency
    • do you pull business if they don't
  • Need to change ways to look at costs
  • WMT - what are they worried about
  • pure procurement, not a supply-chain org, know there is a ton of efficiency to be had
  • no retailer in histrory has transitioned from one generation to another and they are worried about the consumer
    • some buyers are transitioning to value based purchases
  • want to deliver value at the low end of the economic spectrum
  • big question is how do you get something to scale without having the price coming down in the first place
    • hidden costs need to come out, hidden subsidies (corn, fuel)
  • Successful green products that have are priced right
    • gardening vs. Whole Foods
    • mitigate volume of purchases to offset prices
    • in the case of food, is healthier
    • same w/ energy consumption
  • Certificaiton system
    • USGBC
  • Is there a need for a loss leader that results in these things scaling?
  • Need to take into account soft costs (employee productivity) but can't guarantee something like this
  • Need borad case studies of success and gov'tal support
  • Can design and build a LEED silver building with no additional cost
  • Labeling may be the answer for food/consumer products but there are a proliferation of these
  • USGBC set up LEED, went through a consolidation phase but have landed on LEED
  • Is there an innovation opportunity around a certain sector
  • Sustainability index, scorecard for transparency of products
  • this will help consumer products
  • We are all going to be naked, we might as well be buff
    • transparency will help, in the information age
  • Better world shopping guide - rates retailers and product manufacturers
  • environmental working group has a similar thing for health & beauty - Skin Deep
  • Good guide - does this for consumer products
    • goal of this is to have an application on Iphone, when you are in a grocery store can use
  • example of Burt's Bees, had to create own standard, conflict of interest
  • transparency in the process of labeling (or rating process) as well as transparency in the labeling
  • cradle to cradle protocol from will mcdonough is not transparent and people have problems with it
· How do we define these terms like sustainability?
· Compare energy efficient vs sustainability
o Adaptive mgmt
· Transparency in project and process!
· USGB ex showing that people can change things and use adaptive management, rather than govt making strict policy that cannot change and adapt
· Social justice, economic prosperity
· Efficiency can lead to dangerous places – link local economies to global scale

· Main points from discussion:
o Openness, transparency
o How to establish standards for other products (like LEED)
oHow do you bring to scale to get over cost hurdles



ekspear
ekspear 		Latest page update: made by ekspear , Jan 28 2010, 4:18 PM EST (about this update About This Update ekspear Edited by ekspear

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