Green intelligence: towards true ecological transparency

O’Rourke has found himself invited to speak at a succession of business and industry meetings to explain the new ecological transparency systems. “My message to them is: ‘This is coming. Wal-Mart’s involvement is the biggest proof this is going mainstream,’” O’Rourke told me. “In the last two months we’ve been getting more and more calls from big retailers wanting us to let them put our ratings on their products - especially house brands,” which typically have double the profit margin of other products.

Such eco-rating systems exemplify a coming wave of radical transparency that could culminate in products’ competing not just on price and quality, but on their total ecological impact as assessed in life-cycle-assessment ratings. This could finally bring ecological impacts into the value equation for products.

Perhaps the most surprising development is the turnabout in businesses’ embrace of transparency about ecological impacts (or at least some businesses - there also remains widespread scepticism, if not outright fear, of transparency). “Wal-Mart was considered the most secretive retailer,” O’Rourke says, “but now they’re saying the only way forward is the path of openness”.

Historically there has always been a vast information asymmetry, with consumers knowing next to nothing about the true ecological impacts of what they buy. Ecological transparency hands that once-hidden information to shoppers. The information systems fostering marketplace ecological transparency are disruptive technologies, promising to be a game-changer both for business and for environmental, public health, and social activists of many stripes.

One scenario: As the cost of compiling and indexing this previously hidden information drops to zero, the ratings will sway the shopping decisions of substantial numbers of consumers - as well as business-to-business and institutional buyers - shifting market share towards ecologically superior products, thus making winners of brands that compete best on the ecological merits, along with price and quality.

This, in turn, could trigger a virtuous cycle where this crucial information at the point-of-purchase impels companies to upgrade the impacts of their business practices in an ongoing process of improvement. And this game change for business could resolve the longstanding debate within companies about sustainability, where some voices argue for social responsibility and others counter that there is just no business case to justify changing. While there are exceptional, progressive companies, the best most businesses have done is to pursue sustainability only to the extent it immediately helps their bottom line - for example, by finding cost savings from energy efficiencies.

The big switch will come as executives see that the top line now benefits with more sales for ecologically superior products. Then the smart business strategy will include a perpetual upgrade, where companies actively search for points in the life-cycle assessment of a product and where an improvement in a supplier or source - or in a chemical or other ingredient, industrial platform, or process - could give their product a better ecological impact score.

All this promises to accelerate the demand for innovations across the entire range of ecological impacts from industry, transportation, and retailing. Andy Ruben, formerly the head of Wal-Mart’s sustainability initiative and now head of its house brands division, has called such entrepreneurial inventiveness the “biggest business opportunity of the next 50 years,” one that could potentially go way beyond the current boost to green energy from federal stimulus money.

For environmental groups, this sea change can make allies of businesses that were once seen as adversaries, creating a common agenda. Already the Nature Conservancy has consulted with a global oil company on how to manage a huge holding in Wyoming in ways that leave crucial ecosystems in optimal shape. Coca-Cola turned to expertise from the World Wildlife Fund to better understand its water footprint, and how to be lighter in the impact of its usage. Such working alliances, where academic and non profit expertise joins with business ventures to lessen ecological impacts, will make increasing sense in a radically transparent future.

Industrial ecologists - who focus on sustainable approaches that integrate environmental, technical and social factors - may find themselves suddenly in the spotlight, as ecological transparency highlights for business the importance of the discipline itself and primes demand for its services. As industrial ecology transitions from offering high-fee, proprietary life-cycle assessments to doing more open-source ones in the service of a virtuous cycle, the field may well take on new cachet and draw a flood of talented people who see it as a way to find work in keeping with their values.

Only time will tell if vehicles like the Sustainability Index or GoodGuide will one day be used by enough shoppers and big buyers to matter in these ways. Wal-Mart executives point to survey data suggesting that younger people - those born from the 1980s on - are far more motivated to shop for a better planet than any past generation. An increasing number of institutional buyers already have mandates for more ecologically sound purchases, so these rating systems could readily be used as lenses on suppliers.

But can information systems really create a new level of buyer awareness that will reach critical marketplace mass? I was at the New York Times as a science journalist when the Internet was launched, and if anyone had said then that one day this new kid on the block would threaten the paper’s very existence, they would have met only scorn. We’ll see.