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A few days ago I attended a meeting put on by the National Association of Environmental Managers (NAEM). NAEM offers an important service by enabling mid-level corporate EHS and Sustainability practitioners to network, benchmark, and learn from on another.

The event I attended, hosted by Siemens Healthcare, offered several interesting presentations, including one on the major drivers of sustainability action. One of the presenters mentioned that California and Europe were driving companies to adopt increasingly stringent requirements on their direct and indirect operations. This was not an entirely unexpected observation, as Europe and California have consistently led the United States in their approach to environmental regulation.

But then a member of the audience raised his hand and said that this status quo has changed. Now, it's Wal-Mart, not federal or state regulators that are driving corporate environmental performance.  The environmental manager noted that Wal-Mart’s recently announced Sustainability Index and other corporate goals are trickling down to the supplier level (a big chunk of the US economy) and driving corporate environmental actions more than anything else.

If this thinking is true, it represents a monumental step-change in the way that companies think about environmental regulation and improvements in environmental performance over time.  What do you think?  Is Wal-Mart a bigger driver for environmental innovation than EPA?

This is a guest post from Sharyn Stein via EDF's Climate411 blog

Our colleague Victoria Mills recently said, with exasperation, “There used to be just a handful of sustainability conferences. We could make phone calls to a couple people and know who was doing what where. Now they are everywhere!” And it is true.  Triple Pundit alone lists seven events it is going to in the next two months. In many ways, this is a nice problem to have, as it reflects a burgeoning interest in the topic of business and the environment.

Our small EDF Corporate Partnerships team will attend 40 or more events in the next year (here’s our calendar).  Of course we track our carbon production and buy offsets, but conference costs exceed just their environmental impact. They cost us days of work time, stress on families, plus the financial burdens of registration, room and travel. On the other hand, we think attending face-to-face events is valuable.  Our work depends on partnering and coordinating with other organizations – our small team can’t have the impact we want all by ourselves. Meeting face-to-face is still an excellent way to understand common interests, build trust, and make things happen.

So what is a frugal non-profit to do?  A few of us sat down this week to talk “conference strategy.”  Some of our conclusions were: Read more »

For me, one of the memorable lines at last week's Green Innovation for Business Unconference (aka "GIBU") in Austin was from 3M's Phyllis Cheatum, who announced in her opening remarks, "I'm uncomfortable.  At 3M we don't show up to meetings without agendas (like this one).  But discomfort drives innovation."  

The nearly 100 green business innovators who filled 3M's Innovation Center on that warm September morning also embraced discomfort in the name of innovation.  Not only did they collectively fill in the blank agenda wall and volunteer to lead sessions on the fly, but they spent the next eight, high-energy hours tackling some of the toughest, most uncomfortable business-sustainability issues we face today: 

• How do we shift attitudes and, most importantly, behavior of consumers, employees and executives? 
• How should we engage employees, and support and sustain the champions within our companies? 
• In a tough economic climate, what are the creative ways we can build the business case for sustainability initiatives? 
• What does it take to drive green technology adoption?
• How do we set standards and select metrics?  How should we define what it means to be "green"?
• How can we market "green" so that we are sure we aren't "green-washing"?

The two big "ah-ahs" for this blogger, after participating in all the GIBU events this year (in DC, Boston and Silicon Valley, in addition to Austin), were these: 

First, the right people – with the necessary talent, passion and connections – are behind this movement, both in Austin and the other regions.  In Austin, the participants were sustainability managers, engineers, product developers and operations gurus from nearly all the local heavy-hitting companies (3M, AMD, Austin Energy, Dell, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, National Instruments, etc.).  They were joined by entrepreneurs, government representatives, consultants of all stripes, nonprofits and the leadership of key local networks—such the Austin EcoNetwork and Net Impact Austin.

Second, though the GIBU series was designed to be regional, the big, uncomfortable challenges participants tackled in Austin were very much the same as those debated by their counterparts in DC, Boston and Silicon Valley.  Link up these networks, and we've got some real fire power with which to overcome obstacles and drive green business innovation, nationally and internationally.

For the complete agenda and session notes, visit the Green Innovators wiki.  Or search #GIBU09 in Twitter to get a taste of the immediate reactions and other "ah-ha" moments.

And stay tuned for news on the next iteration of the GIBU series for 2010.  Subscribe to this blog if you'd like to get or stay involved.

Video is worth more than a thousand words, so we'll keep this post short. In a recent blog post, Marc Gunther highlights a new EDF video about our unique approach to working with corporations. The video uses our collaboration with FedEx and other industry leaders to jumpstart the transformation of the hybrid truck market to illustrate how our partnerships galvanize groundbreaking environmental innovation. At EDF, we are laser focused on using market forces to create environmental change that is good for business and the bottom line. Our goal is to work with market leaders to create a green “race to the top” where companies and suppliers compete not only on price and quality but also on the environmental value they can bring to their customers.