With a huge trend in LEED certification and environmental performance in facilities management and building projects, developing strategies pre-occupancy is essential to encourage tenant participation in meeting performance goals. Because building occupants vouch for up to 50% of “plug use,” or use that cannot be dictated by Building Automation Systems (BAS), it’s essential to engage them from the beginning. No matter how eco-savvy a project may be, without occupant observation of energy expectations, meeting stated goals is impossible.

In Ashley’s article, she interviewed a forward-thinking environmental performance software company and LEED experts to compile five ways to boost occupant compliance. These five strategies include:

Engaging occupants before they move in
Taking a holistic approach
Measure with new technology
Provoke competition
Create transparency

To visit each strategy in detail, read the full article here.

“The notion that addressing environmental and social challenges will give a boost to sales or stock prices may be putting the cart a bit before the horse.”

In today’s Bulldog Reporter, sustainability communications strategist Tim Woodall notes that CSR initiatives aren’t a silver bullet for fast ROI in terms of sales revenue or share price.

Building a reputation usually takes a little more than that.

Which is not to say that there isn’t serious money to be made from a commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR).  See Patagonia; Trader Joes.  See Interface. These are not stories about branding or marketing. These are case studies in how a business can profit when social responsibility becomes part of the business DNA.

Think of it in terms of losing weight. (I don’t want to think about it either, but stay with me on this.) A crash diet nets fast results.   Attempting CSR solely through branding and public relations activities is like dieting.  It will work for a while and companies will benefit from being affiliated with good causes.

But if the rest of the company isn’t changing its behavior, those pounds, er, credibility issues will come back stronger and fiercer. And will be harder to remove. See BP and its millions of branding dollars lost.

To carry the dieting analogy even further (do we have to?), keeping the pounds off requires a lifestyle change. That lifestyle change includes a level of accountability documented by measureable metrics, also known as “the bathroom scale.”

In business, this lifestyle change to a new corporate DNA is measured in a CSR report.  Like the bathroom scale, we may recoil from what the truth says about us at first.  But the measurable progress is exciting. Not to mention extremely credible, and increasingly influential in consumer purchase behavior.  See Gen Y.

Read more from Woodall about building reputation–and ultimately profits–in this Bulldog Reporter piece.

Marc Gunther – A blog about business and sustainability.

Nearly five years after a massive tornado leveled 95% of Greensburg, KS,  the town has become a living laboratory and a proving ground for emerging environmental technologies.

The non-profit  Greensburg GreenTown has been the educational resource for the community,  working side-by-side with city and county officials, business owners and local residents to incorporate sustainable principles into their rebuilding process, while also serving as a conduit through which donations can be distributed.

GreenTown was founded by Daniel Wallach and his wife, Catherine Hart, who live about a half hour away from Greensburg. They were moved to take action after witnessing the tornado’s aftermath. They realized that out of great sorrow, they could do more than just help the town rebuild. They could help the town to rebuild better and smarter, while advancing awareness of high-performance, healthy homes and buildings.

Now GreenTown is now taking its award-winning blueprint for natural disaster rebuilding to help an even larger city, Joplin Missouri, which suffered a similarly hideous EF5 tornado this past May.  The Green Earth PR Network has made a contribution to help  GreenTown Joplin in its efforts to:

• construct a series of eco-demonstration homes,
• establish eco-lodging for people that want to visit Joplin, and
• author a handbook to help guide future victims of natural disasters embrace a sustainable approach to recovery.

GreenTown Joplin needs YOUR help, too.  Here’s how:

1. Make an individual donation (via PayPal) and become a member here.

2. Join as a corporate member here.

3. For product donations and more, call Daniel and the GreenTown team at 620-723-2790.

4. Spread the word!

Andrew Winston – Finding the Gold in Green.

In my eyes green has become a melting pot of people and organizations around the globe with different priorities purporting to serve planet survival for future generations. Some are authentic; some are inserting “green” into existing sales materials. As communicators and consumers, knowledge brings responsibility to ensure holistic approaches and transparency at all levels.

Each week, I meet green marketers and eco-strategies with newly minted credentials. I do not question their passion. Whether they are checking a box on LinkedIn or calling attention to actual experience, it’s thrilling that we are now explaining “how” more often than “why” green matters.

Green Earth PR consultant Lisa Lilienthal observes, “As consumers become savvier, their expectations are higher in terms of value proposition, and that includes how you source, manufacture, distribute and recycle. Green is becoming shorthand for a more ethical approach to business in general.” She offered the Patagonia Don’t Buy This Jacket ad as an example.

Our colleague Louise Mulherin agrees that Patagonia has been perceptive with its communications strategies and posted on this particular ad. She notes, “The challenge becomes when consumers aren’t savvy and companies talk to them as if they were. Companies need to recognize there is a broad spectrum of understanding. Information should be formatted to suit the audience.”

Companies need to take into account that a green building audience or a facility manager would have different requirements than someone in the food industry.

Companies that are successfully using green marketing are transparent, relevant and clever to grab and hold attention. Patagonia included a call to action and mutual responsibility with a goal of 50,000 signatures to support The Common Threads Initiative. Results are tracked online.

We can follow the results and the example. Please add your thoughts on what you’ve observed and what you expect for green communications in the coming year.

A similar post appears in the Green Communications Blog for Environmental Design + Construction  http://www.edcmag.com/blogs/14/post/reflections-on-green-trends and Sustainable Facility http://www.sustainablefacility.com/blogs/14/post/87569-sustainable-facility-blog-2011-12-13-reflections-on-green-trends-.

In the midst of all the store flyers advertising Black Friday deals, I saw this ad in the New York Times from Patagonia. I loved the message, what a refreshing approach to the mass consumerism of the day.

With the catchy headline, Patagonia aimed to draw attention to the deeper message – the impact that manufacturing has on our environment. But what struck me more was their approach. The ad outlined the harm that the making of just one jacket has, and in specific terms that don’t take an engineering degree to understand. For example, the jacket requires 135 liters of water in the manufacturing process, that’s enough water, in their estimate, for 45 people for one day.

What’s unusual about this approach, in my experience, is the transparency about one specific product and its impact. It seems many more companies communicate their environmental successes by talking about what they have left out of the process, or what was theoretically saved by using less-intrusive raw materials or methods. That approach might give some consumers a false sense of environmental security – this product uses less material or less energy to produce, therefore it’s better. Which may not always be the case.

Some consumers might read the Patagonia ad in a negative way. Sure, there’s a bit of a guilt trip there, especially compared to the feeding-frenzy mentality of Black Friday sales. Full disclosure, my household was not immune to Black Friday either, my husband did take advantage of a one-day sale on my Christmas gift (purchased online). I didn’t go anywhere near a shopping center, not to make a statement, it’s just not my thing to line up with hundreds of other people to save a few bucks.

Patagonia included a call to action in the ad, asking people to take the Common Threads Initiative pledge. The pledge asks for action on both sides, for example they pledge to make useful gear that lasts a long time, and to repair gear or find a new home for it when a consumer no longer needs it. Consumers pledge to only buy what they need, to fix what’s broken, and to keep items out of the landfill. Their goal is to get 50,000 people to sign the pledge, and they are tracking results online. It will be interesting to follow this Initiative to see if it gains traction. Kudos to Patagonia for asking for mutual responsibility in the effort.

In today’s environmental, and economic, climate, I hope their message was as impactful to others as it was to me.

First posted on Nice To Be Seen.

Do you know where your community finds information and do your stakeholders know where to seek more details? Is the representation accurate? Do the messages generate sales or achieve other business goals?

GEPR’s Nancy Rogers shares more about how to be sure your messaging is consistent to ensure your green communications objectives are achieved via ED+C Magazine’s blog.

Twitpic is free and easy to use. If you have a Twitter account, you can log into Twitpic by using your Twitter username and password. Twitpic lets you upload images via your computer or smartphone. Twitpic also provides a unique email address for each account (it is in the Twitpic account settings) so that you can upload an image via email with your corresponding tweet in the subject line. No matter which uploading method you choose, your image is then pushed out on Twitter.

In the weeks leading up to a trade show, I typically research which hashtags are emerging. For example, the NeoCon World’s Trade Fair changes each year: #NeoCon11, #NeoCon12, etc. Greenbuld, however, uses a combination of #Greenbuild and a hashtag that is specific to the show theme, such as #GBNEXT. Sometimes organizers will publish an “official” Twitter hashtag on the event website.

Next, I upload a product image via Twitpic with a tweet along the lines of:

#Greenbuild preview:  Product Name by @Manufacturer, booth number 123 #GBNEXT

The link for the Twitpic image will appear in the tweet. Then, I post the tweet inviting others to post to the gallery. For example:

#Greenbuild exhibitors upload product images to the @Twitpic gallery. Use hashtags #Greenbuild or #GBNEXT http://ow.ly/6qm8i or http://ow.ly/6qKfz

I’ve even posted invitations to events such as cocktails in a tradeshow booth – just save that invitation artwork as a jpeg and post! It’s a great tool for getting everyone on the same page, literally, well ahead of a tradeshow.

Written for Environmental Design + Construction: http://www.edcmag.com/blogs/14/post/a-twitpic-diy-to-boost-trade-show-visibility-

So when work and my fascination with twitter come together, it’s complete fun for me. I was asked to host a #kbtribechat twitter chat for kitchen and bath professionals next Wednesday, September 15^th from 2:00 – 3:00 pm EST.   Since a large portion of my work deals with kitchens only, I asked Green Earth PR colleague and bath product expert Nora DePalma, to co-host with me.  The chat is a gathering of industry professionals with common knowledge and professions, sharing ideas, advice and experience all within 140 characters.  It’s fast paced and entertaining and it’s a personal challenge to keep up with the idea stream as well as contribute.

Nora and I are formulating five questions to pose to the group within the hour about green communications and claims in the kitchen and bath industry.   Once the questions are tweeted, we watch, learn and comment as the responses flow in.  Our topic is entitled, “Shades of Green: Determining what IS and ISN’T”.  Even if you’re not involved in the kitchen and bath industry we will be talking about manufacturer claims, materials, responsible practices and general green principles which apply to business as a whole.

Search the hashtag #kbtribechat on twitter and drop by to say hi. Find me @woodnewman and Nora @noradepalma.