July 18th, 2008

FTC Guidelines & Green DNA

I just made some rounds on leading green marketing and business blogs and came across two items I consider related. One was David Widger’s excellent post on the green marketing guidelines that the FTC is in the process of revamping after 10 years. The other was a Harvard Business – Leading Green post asking what is the DNA of a green corporation?

The relation was in the need, regardless of government or other oversight, for businesses with green in their DNA to continue to break new ground and educate the rest of us on solutions to the most pressing problems of our time. “Green” has been thrown around a lot without definition, but is often meant in a broader sense to encompass not only environmental responsibility, but social responsibility as well. This was implicit in the Harvard post when it stated that boardrooms are going to discover that the principles of management necessary to make companies green are “democratization, openness, transparency [and] love…”

Widger describes three challenges the FTC faces in promulgating new guidelines, including the fact that it can’t really enforce those guidelines. Another of those challenges was that it is increasingly difficult for consumers to discern from current guidelines what the less-direct environmental impacts are of products. He uses the example of biofuels as arguably reducing arable land used for food, and leading to possibly more deforestation. Pull at one part of the web of interconnectedness and another will be affected.

These issues are too big for the FTC alone, or the federal government as a whole for that matter. I do agree with Widger that it’s important for the FTC to engage in the effort and that it will help reduce greenwashing. I also feel that it’s even more critical for us to keep a free flow of communication on the Web. That way, consumer advocacy groups, independent press (including bloggers), and consumers themselves can sort through the green marketing deluge most effectively and punish greenwashers accordingly.

Truly green businesses and business leaders — those with green in their DNA, like Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Seventh Generation, and Stonyfield Farms — have also been critical to educating us for decades, and I hope they are not stifled in that process. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I heard/read recently that Monsanto was lobbying to prevent food companies that specifically keep genetically modified ingredients out of their products from continuing to explain that on their packaging.