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Vaccines for Development
| Environmental stewardship is good for profits |
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| Written by Alex Singleton | |
| Monday, 02 October 2006 | |
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Greenpeace is running a campaign to get Apple to remove certain chemicals in its computers. Greenpeace believes Dell scores better, although the way Greenpeace ranked companies has come under fire. Nevertheless, because the Apple brand is a key part of its ability to make profits, you can be sure the company will take the pressure seriously. We will increasingly see the major brands competing based on how good they are for the environment, and that is a good thing. In fact, it seems that Apple has already recognised that environmental leadership is good for profits. For example, the industry standard practice when selling software is to provide a big, pretty much empty box containing a CD and lots of air. The big boxes are used to make consumers feel they are getting something for the £200. But such packaging adds to shipping costs and pollution. So the company has recently switched to selling rather cute small boxes. They've also been cutting down packaging on computers: the current iMac apparently uses 59% less plastic and 20% less paper than the previous flat panel iMac. Brands can be powerful agents of change. Delivering value for shareholders does not have to be mutually exclusive with delivering for the environment. In 2004, I met John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, a supermarket group (it owns Fresh & Wild in the UK) that famously puts environmental stewardship at the heart of what it does. This has created huge goodwill and strong brand and ethos, and it's a key part of why his company wins business. It does not surprise me that Whole Foods is apparently the most profitable supermarket group in the US. |