Green Tech

Kevin Wilhelm

(Credit: Sustainable Business Consulting)

Sustainability may be all the rage but, as the song says, it's not easy being green.

Without widespread standards, companies are struggling with how to properly calculate and disclose their carbon footprint to the public. And many don't have the financial resources to address environmental resource concerns.

Kevin Wilhelm is the chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce Sustainability Committee and CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting. His new book, "Return on Sustainability," which got endorsements from environmentalists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Laurie David, takes a shot at deciphering the ins and outs of corporate sustainability given the current economic downturn.

The environmental capitalist talked with CNET News about the recession, the next Y2K event, outsourcing, wasteful surprises most companies find, and why comparing carbon footprints can be like comparing apples to oranges.

Q: Are sustainability efforts taking a bad hit with this recession?
Wilhelm: Yes. It's just like so many other initiatives big companies are doing, whether it's IT infrastructure or energy upgrades. Traditionally, sustainability and green efforts are seen as additionals. Because the marketplace hasn't gotten to where it's fully required, it's definitely been hurt by budget cuts. Some current clients have asked to hold work for 2009 because there's no more budget. All that being said, I think everyone was in this panic over the economy. Now that the bottom is somewhat stabilized, I think the fear is gone and people realize sustainability is part of a long-term strategy. And even though they may have to slow down their efforts, they still have to go through with them.

Explain what you mean in your book by "waste equals money."
Wilhelm: Anything that you're throwing out or not using to its full effect becomes waste. People's time when they're not producing is wasted time and wasted money. Materials are a big component. When a company throws out something, they're not only throwing out scrap. They paid for that in the cost of whatever they bought. The most famous example is Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Ben & Jerry's was used to disposing of slop through traditional sanitation methods. They found they could take their waste from dairy production and sell it to pig farmers.

Cascade Designs makes thermal things for backpackers that have this foam (in them). With their cuts there was always left-over foam and they were throwing it out. They turned it into camping pillows, and what was this expensive thing they paid to be hauled to a landfill was turned into a profit center.

How does outsourcing come in to this? I've talked to people from major companies who wonder if competitors could be fudging carbon footprint numbers by eliminating their manufacturing from the U.S. and outsourcing it to China. While our local U.S. air may get cleaner as a result, that company is still contributing to pollution that's going to affect us long-term.
Wilhelm: You're right. It's just like any time when anyone tries to externalize their costs. You look right now at any company polluting the air. Companies pay to recycle or take out garbage, to have wastewater treated, but air goes up and what happens to it? Nothing. We all pay the price. In terms of the carbon footprint, you're dead-on. With companies right now--because they're just now understanding what you have to measure--you may find you're comparing apples to oranges sometimes. What you try to do with companies is get them to say what the boundaries of the company are for the footprint. They can say they're only doing U.S. operations and exclude anything manufactured in China. In terms of what the standard is, companies can include operational control, economical control, or subsidiary control.

Look at all the products being made and shipped from China. Some of the factories are giant and make (products) for four or five brands at a time. You look and say 20 percent (of their production is going) toward our product, so 20 percent of their energy needs to be part of our carbon footprint. There are standards, but people can define it in different ways. Starbucks only looks at energy use and transportation. They don't count their cups, and everyone walks out with at least one of those. But they're very transparent about it. They say it's complicated and they haven't gotten to it yet. It's new for a company and they usually say, "We want to do a carbon footprint for everything." Then they realize, "Oh, I have to go to China to figure this out?"

In your book you say that whether you believe in global warming is beside the point.
Wilhelm: It is. If you're a businessman who doesn't think climate change is manmade, well, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has said it is and they're coming out with climate regulations. The Kyoto Protocol is coming up and they'll have a new treaty in Copenhagen. So whether you believe or not, you're going to have to respond. The trend with consumers is huge and from a global perspective, climate change is like the Y2K event. The Y2K prep is nothing compared to what's coming this December, January, and February in terms of regulation.

You mention in your book how REI was shocked to find that 26 percent of its carbon emissions came from its Adventure Travel division, while it had assumed it would all be from shipping and distribution. Depending on the type of business, what's the likeliest culprit between energy, travel, waste, paper, and freight?
Wilhelm: If you're a manufacturer, energy is your biggest. If you're service-based, electricity is a part but employee travel is a big, big deal. That's the one that always shocks people. I biked an entire year to work, then I took one trip to China and wiped it all out. I could have driven a Hummer to work, used plastic bottles, used virgin paper, and it wouldn't have been as much.

OK, but videoconferencing is not going to replace business travel. There are still those people who believe that you have to meet face-to-face and sometimes a situation does require it.
Wilhelm: When a company looks at the cost of travel, they may only look at the cost of the ticket and hotel, and don't take in the effect of a person's time away from the office, their loss of production, or flight delays. But you're right, the video tech is not going to replace 100 percent the face-to-face because, let's face it, people do business with people. But instead of making four trips you make two: the first impression, then do videoconferencing, then when you need to make that final report or finalize that deal you can shake hands in person.

What are the biggest obstacles for a company in calculating an accurate carbon footprint?
Wilhelm: Getting the data is the first one because a lot of people aren't used to it and have never had to get this data before. Second, they don't know where to go or who's got it, and it may not be in the format they need. If they lease, which most service-based businesses do, they have to get it from the building manager, who may not know or not want to know how to do it. The first time through you get most data but have to make some assumptions. It then helps companies realize they should be tracking things or are overpaying for some things.

Your book has a lot of case studies. The quirkiest one may be how General Mills was able to reduce Hamburger Helper packaging size by changing the shape of their noodles, which not only reduced packaging costs by 10 percent, but resulted in a fuel savings equating to 500 fewer distribution trucks on the road each year. What's an example that surprised even you?
Wilhelm: One of the reasons I threw that out there is because people say, "Oh my God, really?" One that is really obvious was that it used to be, even a year ago, that you could buy those big plastic bins of laundry detergent, and now you see the same brands sold in concentrate. Procter & Gamble originally said, "Sell it in concentrate?! We need the big one for shelf-space advertising, and people think big is more." But Wal-Mart said, "It's too much shelf-space, too pricey to ship." So then Wal-Mart wouldn't have the big ones from them. And soon, you didn't see them at Target and other stores, and now hardly anybody sells them.

Not every company has the resources of a Sun Microsystems, DuPont, or Verizon, which all made some sustainability changes that resulted in savings. Companies are finding it hard right now just to get their usual revolving credit to operate. What's something a small or mid-size company can do to implement sustainability for little or no money?
Wilhelm: With small clients we suggest using our ROS (return on sustainability) chapter, where people can figure out cost savings, brand value, and environmental impact. Then sit down and have a brainstorming session on ways to save money as a company with the potential to be environmentally sustainable but really focus on saving money. Things start popping up where there's inefficiency. A nonprofit did a drawer clean-out day. People could keep what they wanted, and if they had, like, three staplers, they put two back in the supply room. When they were done, they realized they didn't need to order supplies for the next six months and saved $8,000. The other thing I would say is do the carbon footprint assessment. There's a lot of tools out there to do that. Even a small business will find a surprise of "Gee, didn't realize we were spending that on paper."

Usually the problem is there's a resistance to change in an organization--especially if you have a powerful office manager who likes to do things how they've always done them. If you can say you're trying to reduce the carbon footprint and achieve sustainability goals, it's a way to get people to look at it through a new lens. Maybe a small business will only find a couple hundred dollars' worth of savings, but they can report to customers and clients that they did a carbon footprint and are trying to be as green as they possibly can.

Your book is filled with quick charts, tables, and statistics on things like physical water scarcity regions in the U.S., weather-related insurance losses, carbon metrics, and consumer surveys on sustainability. Do you think all this freely available information is empowering or overwhelming?
Wilhelm: It's definitely overwhelming and can be discouraging. You don't even want to think about water scarcity. If we think there was a war over oil, what's going to happen over water? You look for sustainability and a million sites pop up. There's too much info. And whose ideas are political motivated?

OK, but what are some of the tools or standards you would recommend?
Wilhelm: If you're in the U.S., there's no one way on how you have to do the carbon footprint. It's voluntary. Look at carbon offsets. There's no agreement. Sustainability is now where organic food was 10 years ago. People liked it, but there was no certified label. Then there was, but then people thought well, what about if it's local and all these things? Right now, it's the Wild West because for CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting, there's a lack of standardization. And it's funny because I find that people rather be told, "Do it this way." They're always asking which one is the best to go with? What are the pros and cons? I tell them go with the de facto standard, the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), but until it becomes the standard, companies can report it any way they want.

This chart describes the percentage of greenhouse gas emissions associated with each component of spam energy use.

(Credit: ICF/McAfee)

Not only is spam a nuisance and sometimes criminally deceptive, it's got a carbon footprint.

The mere act of people around the world deleting spam and searching for legitimate e-mail falsely labeled as junk creates the annual energy consumption equivalent in the U.S. of 2.4 million homes using electricity and the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gas.

That's according to "The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report" conducted by climate-change consultants ICF and commissioned by security vendor McAfee.

The average greenhouse gas emission associated with one spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2, about the same as driving three feet in equivalent emissions. When multiplied by the 62 trillion spam e-mails sent globally, that is like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times.

Eighty percent of the energy consumption associated with spam messages come from people having to do spam maintenance, the report found. Spam filtering accounts for only 16 percent of the energy use and saves the electrical equivalent of taking 13 million cars off the road per year.

If spam filters were used universally, the energy saved would be equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road, the report said.

When major spam-hosting provider McColo was taken offline last November, global spam volume dropped by 70 percent overnight. That was the equivalent of taking 2.2 million cars off the road. Unfortunately, spam levels are back up as the spammers found other places to host their spam command-and-control servers.

Investors received another tool Monday designed to track green themes and greenbacks.

Standard & Poor's launched on Monday its S&P U.S. Carbon Efficient Index, designed to measure the performance of large-cap U.S. companies operating with a low carbon emissions footprint.

The index, which currently has 362 companies gleaned from the S&P 500, are selected using calculations from Trucost, an environmental data gathering organization.

David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor's Index Services index committee, said in a statement, "Organizations around the world are paying greater attention to the impact of greenhouse gases on our climate, as increasingly more investors consider carbon efficiency as an important investment theme."

The U.S. Carbon Efficient Index is part of S&P's global thematic index series, which also covers such green themes as water, forestry, and carbon efficiency.

Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, and Google are among the tech companies included in the U.S. Carbon Efficient Index.

A report in The Times of London on Sunday generated a firestorm of controversy when a Harvard physicist was identified as saying a typical Google Web search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide, making two searches comparable to bringing a tea kettle to boil.

"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," Alex Wissner-Gross was quoted as telling the newspaper.

Problem is, Wissner-Gross tells TechNewsWorld, his study never singles out or even mentions Google.

"For some reason, in their story on the study, The Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross said. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."

So where did The Times get the kettle stat?

"I have no idea where they got those statistics," said Wissner-Gross, who acknowledged and defended making the statements about Google. "Everything online has a definite environmental impact. I think everybody can agree on that, including Google."

Google, which the newspaper described as "secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint," was swift to respond to the reported statistics in a blog late Sunday:

We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast--a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

As my report noted Sunday, Google has become a de facto leader in the effort to reduce energy consumption not only in IT but in the general population.

Google is a board member of a new coalition called the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to reduce computing power-consumption by half by 2010. And the search giant's Google.org philanthropy has made policy recommendations on how the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption by 2030.

However, while Wissner-Gross criticized The Times for finding a "really easy way to sell papers," the physicist is riding a tsunami of press inquiries to highlight CO2stats.com, a site he manages to help educate people about energy efficiencies on the Internet.

Worried about the carbon footprint of your Google searches?

A Harvard University physicist says a typical search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide. Thus, performing two searches is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil, according to a report Sunday in The Times of London. While that may not sound like a lot, the report notes that Google handles about 200 million searches daily.

"Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power," Alex Wissner-Gross told the newspaper. "A Google search has a definite environmental impact."

The global IT industry generates about 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, or about as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines, according to a recent Gartner study cited by the newspaper.

Google disputed that report late Sunday evening, saying in a blog that the "time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query." The blog also noted:

Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

The search giant has actively campaigned to reduce the amount of energy consumed by the IT industry.

Google is a board member of a new coalition called the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to reduce computing power-consumption by half by 2010. It will do that largely by encouraging member companies like Google to turn off computers when they're not in use. The coalition says that reaching that goal would be the equivalent of taking 11 million cars off the road.

The search giant's Google.org philanthropy released numbers and policy recommendations in November regarding how the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption by 2030.

Google first introduced its 2030 energy road map in the fall. And CEO Eric Schmidt, an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, called on the federal government to show more leadership on climate change by fostering clean-technology businesses.

Schmidt told the Corporate EcoForum last year that the company's plan is to reduce global demand for oil and to help generate new white- and blue-collar jobs by investing in solar, wind, and geothermal energy projects.

Who knew tackling global warming could be so fun?

A Boston-area entrepreneur has launched a Web site called Carbonrally that aims to marry online games and social networks with consumers' desire to shrink their carbon footprint.

Carbon reduction mashup--see how is your team doing.

(Credit: Carbonrally)

Here's how it works. The company behind Carbonrally, Carbon Challenge, regularly posts a "challenge" that translates into a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Choosing filtered tap water over bottled water, for example, translates into reducing 3 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a week. (No plastic bottles involved.)

Individuals or teams can take up the challenge. Typically, it's the "dark green" consumers who take on the challenges, says founder Jason Karas, who studied environmental management but took a detour into Internet management for 10 years.

But ganging up to take on other teams, in a friendly competition kind of way, is what gets people really fired up.

A group of 17 "tweenagers" from New Jersey just passed Google's Pittsburgh office in carbon reductions. Google Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is duking it out with Google's Cambridge crew. "We're taking Cambridge down!" the Steel Town Googlers say.

There are already several carbon calculators out there available from carbon offset companies and other sources. Make Me Sustainable is another Web site for managing your carbon diet. Carbon Rally wants to keep it quick and light, while tapping into people's tribal competitive spirit.

"We don't have to get people worked up and bummed out about climate change," Karas said. "We've giving them a place where they have an opportunity to act on that emotion."

The company expects to make revenue by having its challenges sponsored by corporations that offer environmentally oriented products or are looking to green up their image.

Another planned feature is to have "carbon ralliers" themselves offer challenges to others.