acrobat JSPD 8 - The Centre for Sustainable Design

INNOVATION
Emma Prentis is a Director of
Conservation Communications. She
was previously European Environmental
Manager with in Nortel’s corporate
environment and sustainability function
with responsibility for developing
strategy and programmes to support
Nortel’s marketing aned strategic
business planning functions. Prior to
joining Nortel, Ms Prentis worked with
BT for seven years. She has a Masters
in Environment Science and is a
Director of the UK Institute of
Environmental Management (IEM).
Hedda Bird joined Conservation
Communications in 1986 and was
appointed Managing Director in
1988. She has developed the
company from a specialist promotor of
recycled paper products to a leading
environmental communications and
research consultancy. Ms Bird has an
MSc in Mathematics and Philosphy
from London University and recently
obtained an MBA from Warwick
University in the UK.
52 THE JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT DESIGN · JANUARY 1999
Customers – the
forgotten stakeholders
Emma Prentis and Hedda Bird|
Director and Managing Director Conservation
Communications, UK
The paper suggests that consideration
of customers is usually
excluded from strategic environmental
thinking. However,
customers hold the key to the
environment team’s strategic
‘added value’ as they drive the
business. The authors give practical
advice on how to ‘green’
marketing, using an example of
work completed with Nortel.
Introduction
Environmental activity in
organisations must demonstrate
market (ie. customer)
value if they are to deliver the
genuine, fundamental change in
business behaviour that is
required by the concepts of
‘Business Sustainability’ and the
‘triple bottom line’. The need to
clearly identify market value
from environmental activities is
well understood; however, it is
often regarded as being too
difficult or just plain impossible.
Indeed the ability to make a
bottom-line case for strategic
environmentalism is fast becoming
the Holy Grail of the environmental
business movement.
A variety of methods are
currently used to show the
financial benefits of improved
environmental performance;
these include:
· supply chain management
· operational cost avoidance
and cost savings
· continuous improvement
and quality management
· stakeholder dialogue
· ‘Design for Environment’
(DfE).
All of these are valid activities
that can deliver environmental
and financial business benefit.
However the authors of the
paper argue that while benefits,
can and do, accrue from these
actions the business value of
these activities are rarely strong
enough on their own to
influence strategic business
thinking and direction. For
example, cost savings rarely
transform overall company
results. Indeed corporate strategy
makers regard continuous
cost improvement as part of
operational performance indicators.
A Board of Directors will
not cost reduce itself into a new
strategic direction! Thus if
‘Environment’ is about cost
cutting, it will not be presumed
to have anything to add to strategy
development.
Similarly stakeholder dialogues
by many organisations do not
include customers in the