Be green BUT mustn’t be seen to be green?
A conversation the other day with the head of a media agency raises a subject that was touched upon at the beginning of the year and is now becoming more of an issue with the incoming CSR clauses in the Companies Act 2006. This is namely the disjoin between doing the right thing(s) and publicising the fact that you are doing the right thing(s).
I have dealt with a number of companies who are doing lots of the right things (we can’t hope to see everyone doing all the right things and we should encourage any company who is moving in the right direction, at whatever pace).
Yet, when it comes to the issue of asking if we might mention them in despatches (since peer recognition and 3rd party evidence is a great motivator to others to dip a toe into the sustainability waters), I often meet resistance.
The media agency I was chatting with is having the exact same issue. They are talking to a number of companies who are engaged in the green technology sector, a sector which is crucial to the long term viability of the business community in its endeavours to introduce mainstream clean energy generation and energy consumption reduction technology.
So the ‘solutionists’ (I know, sorry for the consultancy speak!) are hiding their light under a bushel and the potential beneficiaries, those organisations who already ‘get it’, are also keeping mum about their sustainability credentials… why?
Well, most of the problem lies, as is so often the case, with government.
In the case of the organisations that are doing ‘stuff’ that is reducing their carbon dependency and making better use of the limited natural resources that are available to us, the veiled and not-so-veiled threat of legislative punishment in the event that their good works are even a smidgeon off the mark, mean that it is better just to plough on out of the glare of the spotlight.
It is not helped by not-for-profits like London Remade who will go in and (as Biz4Green has experienced recently) bad-mouth the efforts that a company is already making in order to secure business for themselves for self-aggrandisement purposes.
In the case of the companies that are developing green-tech, the various organs of government actively prevent them, if they have developed their ‘stuff’ with grant money, from shouting from the rooftops.
A constant bugbear of mine with the Centre for Remanufacture and Reuse, for example, is that they work with dozens of these sorts of companies.
However, since they are state funded, it is against the rules for them to promote any of the enterprises that are making leaps in green-tech; and many of these companies are at mainstream delivery stage.
If the government maintains this stance so that it alone can grab the glory, then it is even more short-sighted and deserving of a trouncing in the next election than ever.
In the case of those companies walking the talk but not talking about it (!) because the government is using the bulk of its green legislation to derive additional income through fines and levies, then it is so far removed from understanding the problem that it needs to be removed itself without delay.
We are dealing with the future of this country’s ability to remain an economic entity on the world stage. Self serving, party politics should form no part of this issue.
