Green strategy vs. "greenwash"

Is your business full with intellegent green strategy or is it full of green(hog)wash? According to Pam Gordon, president of Technology Forecasters Inc., a research and consultng company in Alameda, Calif., many companies are more interested in putting out press releases that tout their green initiatives rather than actually rolling up their sleaves and creating sustainable green strategies. She calls the fluffy pr-based green efforts nothing but “greenwash.”

In a recent blog at the Technology Forecasters site, Gordon notes that lean processes and green processes should go hand in hand. She also explains the two criteria she uses to judge lean and green efforts versus greenwash:

1)Having a well thought out system for measuring increased envirinmental efficiencies and resulintg ROI metrics, since one is to become more profitable through green. Companies that either have such metrics or are clear in their intentions to develop such metrics are not just greenwashing.

2)Having a strategy to rethink business models and product lines. Going green is a creative act, as creative as the product and manufacturing process innovation. Without the top leadership’s intention to pursue a creative approach to rethinking the business from a lean and green prespective, there’s not much hope they’ll get beyond greenwash.

Original text is here