All of us who want to see the world changed for the better struggle with whether it is better to fight for that change from the inside or the outside.

But you can’t fight for change from inside an organization dedicated to stopping change, like, say, the scandal-ridden front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy.  You know that a coal-industry-funded group is beyond redemption when one of the largest coal utilities in the country abandons them (see “Breaking: Duke Energy quits coal front group over climate bill — GE and Caterpillar should do the same“).  Duke explained in a statement:

“We believe ACCCE is constrained by influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010.”

Duh.

The Center for Public Integrity’s excellent staff writer Marianne Lavelle managed to get GE on record with a truly laughable defense for their refusal to join Duke (and Alcoa):

But some companies that support climate legislation remain in the ACCCE fold — the largest and most diverse being General Electric. GE spokesman Daniel Nelson said in an email that ACCCE does not reflect GE’s views on climate change legislation, which is that cap and trade would help “drive American technological innovation and competitive leadership… We advocate that view within ACCCE and have and will work to make it the majority view in that organization.”

I feel those monkeys trying to fly out of my butt again….

Seriously, GE?   Even aluminum giant Alcoa, who quit more quietly, wouldn’t offer up such nonsense:

After the Duke story broke, the blog EnviroKnow confirmed that aluminum maker Alcoa had earlier quit the group.

The aluminum maker decided to quit paying dues to the coal advocacy group about a month ago as part of its company-wide effort to reduce costs. “You may have heard of a little thing called the economic downturn,” Alcoa spokesman Kevin Lowery said in an interview with The Center for Public Integrity. So it was an economic, rather than a philosophical decision? “Any kind of economic decision has to have a business case — whether you invest money and make money at the end of the day,” Lowery said.

C’mon GE.  Do you really want to tarnish the EcoMagination brand?  Do you really want to be seen as a have-it-both ways greenwasher? It’s bad enough that one of the members of the uber-disinformer American Petroleum Institute is GE Inspection Services — with a broken link that takes us to GE Energy!

Let’s remember:

General Electric has about as much chance of getting ACCCE to change their position on the climate bill as they do of getting Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) to change his.

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Local food, local goods, local everything is in, as you’ve no doubt heard. Local is fresher. Local burns less shipping fuel. Local keeps the wealth nearby.

Naturally, there’s money to be made off local, so big businesses are muscling into the game. The emerging term is localwashing—a variation on greenwashing wherein businesses claim to be local when actually ... you get it.

“The ingenuity of the food manufacturers and marketers never ceases to amaze me,” said author Michael Pollan, who’s done more to articulate the need for local in the food realm than maybe anyone else. “They can turn any critique into a new way to sell food. You’ve got to hand it to them.”

Here’s a look at some prime examples of that ingenuity/absurdity/deception.

Courtesy NEAFP.comCitgo: “Local. Loyal. Like it should be.” The crop of new billboards from the petroleum company owned by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan government makes sense only if the rather undemocratic president lives around the corner from you. Which he doesn’t.

Maybe you’ve heard of this cute little bookstore around the corner. It’s got a DIY-looking video blog with the tagline, “All bookselling is local.” Except when it isn’t.

“Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, a U.S.-based subsidiary of European processed-food behemoth Unilever, has seen fit to subject Canada (Canada?) to an eat-local campaign,” reports Grist Food Editor Tom Philpott. He’s dumbfounded. Here are those locally sourced ingredients of which Hellmann’s is so proud:

WATER, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SOYBEAN OIL, VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, EGG WHITES, SALT, SUGAR, XANTHAN GUM, LEMON AND LIME PEEL FIBERS, COLORS ADDED, LACTIC ACID, (SODIUM BENZOATE, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA) USED TO PROTECT QUALITY, PHOSPHORIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS.

The Hellmann’s campaign also asks Canadians to take a hard look at the food-kilometers of the non-mayonnaise portion of their diet.

Potato farmers pitch chips fresh from the field in a series of ads from Frito-Lay North America, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. The five regional ads reportedly feature farmers who really do grow potatoes in those areas. “By this logic, all of us here in Iowa can begin referring to high fructose corn syrup as a local food as well,” writes Kurt Michael Friese.

Courtesy PSFK.comThese green “local” signs in a New York Whole Foods might point to brands that are local. But the coffee they’re selling wasn’t grown anywhere near Union Square. Blatant deception? No. But one blogger asks for a little clarity please.

In a bit of un-branding that caught the attention of its hometown, Starbucks stripped its name and logo from a Seattle coffee shop and reopened as the “rustic” 15th Ave Coffee and Tea.

Courtesy The Stranger.Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood greeted indie-Starbucks with mockery.

The “We buy local” website of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce includes such mom-and-pop establishments as Wal-Mart. Stacy Mitchell’s superb reporting on localwashing exposes how regional booster groups, through campaigns like this, enable multinational companies to brand themselves as local.

Photo: Whyibuylocal.comIn central California, the Economic Development Corporation of Fresno County launched its Buy Local campaign at the Fashion Fair Mall, with Macy’s in the background. Nearby chains Anthropologie and The Cheesecake Factory added to the confusing message, Mitchell reports.

Banners saying simply “Local” hang above the produce sections at some Wal-Marts. Don’t ask questions. Writes Mitchell: “The chain's local food offerings are usually limited to a few of the main commodity crops of that particular state—peaches in Georgia or potatoes in Maine—and sit amid a sea of industrial food and other goods shipped from the far side of the planet.”

Finally, HSBC calls itself “the world's local bank.” It’s a very large bank--one of the world's largest. This sign is from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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American retail is riddled with cheap, fall-apart merchandise. We know this. Sales are a ploy to get a shopper to spend, as opposed to a boon for penny pinchers. Right. And how much mileage do we get from that old, overused adage, "You get what you pay for"? More than we'd like to admit.

So why is Ellen Ruppel Shell's new book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, so shocking?

Shell deftly weaves a compelling, cautionary tale out of disparate strands: the psychology of manipulating shoppers, the environmental costs of our lust for inexpensive things, the deskilling of the retail industry, and the loss of appreciation for "quality." Tracing the history of discount culture from the yesteryear excitement over brown paper packages to today's ambivalence about crammed plastic bags, Shell shows us why we feel we've been ripped off if we pay "full price."

She pushes readers to ponder the strange circumstances that make an item shipped from thousands of miles away less expensive than something homegrown. And how a major furniture retailer can convince a customer to get attached to a piece just enough to buy it, but not enough to keep it long. And, most disturbingly, just how expensive our bargain hunting is turning out to be.

_____

Ellen Ruppel Shell

Q. What audience did you have in mind when you wrote Cheap?

A. This grew out of my own curiosity about my own behavior. Since I have a science background, and I try to be a very rational person, I was startled by my own shopping behavior. So if that was happening to me, I figured it was happening to an awful lot of people. As someone who is socially conscious, I was making purchasing decisions that didn't reflect that social consciousness sometimes. I wondered what was behind that.

I'm trying to reach a thoughtful audience, and I'm particularly interested in reaching younger people because I think they have the spirit and the opportunity to change. Interestingly, it seems to resonate with young people quite a bit.

Q. Why do you think your message is resonating with young people, especially considering how inclined they are to move around and not get attached to their property?

A. I don't want to speak for all young people, but there are all sorts of ways to get value without playing into this con game of cheap.

You go to a place we have in my town [Boston], called the Garment District, which is second-hand, third-hand kind of clothes, and you can get really good stuff there for very little money. You can be creative with it -- dress it up or dress it down, do what you want with it. It's not a cookie-cutter piece out of H&M that everybody's wearing that week. You're the boss of that thing, it's not the boss of you. It's style rather than fashion.

The idea that you can go to IKEA and get good deals -- it's really not a good deal. You can't ever get rid of it, it's not something you can resell. You don't really own it; you're kind of renting it. So that's something that young people who are thinking about moving can think about. What you want to do is to be able to put it on craigslist, or maybe get your friends to help you move your stuff. You want your stuff to [have] resale value if you really want to save money. You're not being cheap, you're being smart. They're two different things.

Q. How does the psychology of marketing inhibit the ability of consumers to see an item in terms of its entire lifespan?

A. IKEA names all its products to make stuff seem cute, but then they're telling you, "You're not really attached to this, are you crazy?" They're getting you to laugh at and make a mockery out of the idea of durability. They make durability seem like an old-fashioned, passé idea. And it works. I think it's really juvenilizing: "Oh, come on, you want a new toy. You always want a new toy."

Particularly in the marketing of cell phones. You have a cell phone that works really well for you, and then you have a friend who has a cooler one, and you want it. That's kind of 4-year-old behavior. When you have 3- or 4-year-olds, they want the new shiny thing. But as you get older and a little more mature--and I don't mean 50, I mean 16 or 17--you learn that that's not what it's about. It's about what works for me. Marketers obviously don't want you to think that. In the case of the cell phone, they assume you're going to use it for a year or less, and it's not durable. Even if it is, they assume you're going to junk it. I say, "Screw them!" If it works for you, hang on to it. Don't buy into that, because basically, it's all about them making a profit. It's not about you and what you really want.

Come hither -- cheap goods for sale!Q. Do you see similarities between the psychology of marketing cheap goods and of greenwashing?

A. Yes, I do. There's a mnemonic device that's used by marketers in terms of discounting. The mental shortcut is, "Lower price, good deal." And those two things don't necessarily follow. Something that's low price triggers the impulsive side of our brains and causes us to make decisions without much thought. The same thing is true for some of this green marketing. We're told that something is green, or it has the aura of green, and that makes it OK to buy it.

That's actually why I [focused on] IKEA instead of Wal-Mart. Most of us think, "IKEA's the good guy." IKEA has taken some tiny, baby steps towards environmentalism. For example, they started charging for their plastic bags. When you charge for plastic bags, it's reasonable to question if it's really a green step or just a way to make profit. They use low-wattage bulbs in their stores. But those are cost-cutting measures. There's nothing wrong with cost-cutting measures, but they don't take environmental steps that cause them to reduce their profits. People think, "Oh, it's a green store." But the whole story that they tell of clean living and the outdoors is a mnemonic to get you to buy. When you look under the hood, and you look at something that is essentially being sold as a non-durable product, something that won't last and isn't necessarily marketed to last, that's not an environmentally sound product.

Q. What do you say to those who believe the way discounters do business is essential to the American spirit of capitalism?

A. If you reconsider Adam Smith's arguments, in light of today's realities, he would not say what a lot of people think he was saying. He was concerned about greed and morality. He was a moral philosopher. When we talk about a free market, Adam Smith could have never anticipated the free market that we have today, which is a global market of supply chain that depends on instant messaging across the globe and transportation costs being so low that they're essentially negligible.

That's why the invention of [shipping containers], which has severely lowered transportation costs, is so important in the story. In [Smith's] days, if you shipped something from Japan or China, it was costly. Now, it really isn't. It completely changes the argument about what works and what doesn't. And when you're talking about a global economy and you have workers who are completely out of our sight, who we use as a labor source--and the resources in those countries as well--and costs are so low because transportation costs are so low, it's a completely different equation.

Q. Do you foresee a change in our perception of cheap if transportation costs are driven up through climate legislation?

A. There's no question [about] that, if we actually taxed for carbon use around the globe so that we can't just outsource our pollution--which is what we're doing now to the developing world. In terms of pollution, it was pretty shocking to see the levels of particle pollution of areas in China. We're talking huge amounts of carbon being burned, toxins in the air and the water, which is all to keep prices low, because when you put in environmental protection it costs money. If the price of oil went up substantially and environmental restrictions were made globally so that we couldn't outsource our environmental costs, I definitely think this could have a big impact on cheap.

Q. So there are two ways to frame the rejection of cheap: from a personal, psychological standpoint and also an environmental standpoint.

A. And also sociopolitical impact, because as we pursue cheap goods, we also pursue lower wages, less benefits, and worse working conditions because that's what makes things cheaper and cheaper. If wages go up in Mexico, plants close up and go to China, and if wages go up in China, the plants move on to Vietnam. We're basically pursuing the least regulated cultures, where the rule of law is the weakest when it comes to enforcing the kinds of things we in the United States really value.

Q. Do you think the general public is shocked when they make the connection that their cheap habits are supported by deregulation?

A. Some of the critics have said the book is shocking in the sense that it kind of opened their eyes. And it was shocking to me; I didn't know this stuff before I did the book. I think with knowledge comes power and you get to enact change in people.

Q. Is a rejection of cheap goods and food sustainable on a global scale?

A. In the book I quote World Bank economist Michael Morris because I don't want people to think that this is going to be easy or that we're all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. It is a world of many billions of people. In talking about agriculture and small farms, there's this notion of happy peasants--which is a myth. It's true that small farmers can flourish, but it's also true that in many places in the world, the small farmers are the poorest of the poor. We do need to feed this world, which has so many more people than when we had these small farms. We do need to have large agricultural systems.

What I call for in the book is a middle way. I don't think we necessarily need factory meat farms, for example. I think that's actually a very costly system in many different regards. If that's something that the local-food movement and the slow-food movement pushes against, it's probably a good thing. Do we need large fields of gain? I think we do. [Fields of corn] to be fed to livestock is an unfortunate thing, but, as my background is in science, I do see the positives there, and I don't want to sell them short. For people who are starving around the world, they need a source of readily available food.

To feed the world, we're going to have to keep some of that in place, but we're also going to need a lot of local farmers, and we need more diversity in what we subsidize. We subsidize the grain growers, and the corn growers, and the soybean growers--anything that has to do with the meat industry. But we don't subsidize very much fruit and vegetable growers, which, if you're going to have a healthy diet, that's what you need. We need to really rethink our agricultural system, but the way to do it, I believe, isn't just to tell everyone to shop at their local farmers market--it's too expensive for most people, and it's unavailable to most people. I take more of a middle ground than a lot of other folks, people who I very much respect, but who I think are looking through a very narrow lens. I think we have to be careful not to oversell or oversimplify.

Q. In Cheap, you talk about the role that corporations and politics have played in how we've gotten to where we are, but you also place a significant part of that burden on individual consumers. How do we get to a sustainable middle ground in the retail landscape?

A. Consumers need more information. When you go to New York City and you go to a coffee shop, they tell you the calories of what's in the food. You can make better decisions; you change your choices.

I didn't write this in the book and I wish I had, but some kind of labeling so that consumers know the origins of what they're buying, and how it's made, and what it's made of [is important]. And eventually you should be able to go on the web and find out what company made this, where's the supplier, and [if] are they acting responsibly. Suppliers in the developing world are notorious for labor abuses. The way you make these changes is to make the labeling at the point of purchase where the buyer can see, right then and there, what he's buying. And that changes behavior.

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I really like Earth and Sky's podcast, just not the part about it being a mouthpiece for Shell Oil lately. Sad but true. I've been listening to it for half a year on my device, and it seems like nearly once a week, this daily 2 minute podcast, which claims to be heard 100 million times each week, interviews a Shell scientist about how global warming is real and action must be taken.

Earth/Sky never in my experience interviews scientists from any other oil company, and never discloses that Shell is paying them, unless you go to their site, where each Shell interview carries the tagline "This podcast was made possible in part by Shell – encouraging dialog on the energy challenge." Yuck. And they're a 'clear voice for science'? Where's the dialogue in a one way conversation?

In fairness, they interview lots of scientists working on a range of topics, but to only talk to the team of one oil company about climate change, and the most carbon intense one at that, is unseemly:

"(Shell) is on track to become the most carbon intensive international oil company because of its focus on unconventional oil resources like Canadian tar sands...The carbon content of the fuel Shell produced in 2008 was broadly in line with the rest of the industry at 33.8 kilograms of CO2 per barrel of oil equivalent, but its total resource base that will underpin future developments contains almost twice as much CO2..." This from a recent Wall Street Journal piece.

But tuning into the Earth and Sky, you'll hear soothing fireside chats like this one with Shell Chief Technology Officer Jan van der Eijk:

"Increase in energy demand and also the need to use all kinds of sources of energy will lead to an increase in C02 emissions, and we all know that the C02 emissions are related to global warming. That’s a major concern and also something that calls for aggressive action.”

After detailing how there are some 'hard truths' around this, including the facts that renewables will have to grow and fossil energy will continue playing a big role, van der Eijk says that technology can help and launches into a spiel on carbon capture and storage (CCS) which Grist readers know to be a vaporware idea.

Sigh. But Earth and Sky is only the most recent megaphone for Shell's greenwashing. I complained here in Grist in 2007 about them paying National Geographic to send 5.4 million DVDs to its subscribers, containing a feel-good movie about how awesome and eco-sensitive their drilling technology is.

Other recent podcasts feature Shell scientists talking about how great renewable energy is, while Shell is doing zippo to help its development, and one this week about how their operations in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in Alaska are manned by Marine Mammal Observers (MMOs) to ensure that no whales are present or harmed by their activities, and whom are empowered to halt any such activity if so.

Hey, that's great, right? Except, as marine bioacoustics expert Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research points out, they're required by law to employ MMOs, who are empowered also by law to halt those activities. You'd never know it to listen to this puff piece.  

While I don't condemn Earth and Sky for this, I hope they'll tighten up their reporting, pursue transparency (that 'clear voice'), and tell both sides of the story on important issues like climate change. They owe it to their listeners. Too much is at stake.

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Not too long ago I was on a panel with GM's VP of Environment, and I was reminded of how very old school most big corporations are when it comes to discussing their environmental programs. In GM's case, listening to this VP, it was as if GM was God's great gift to the environment, and always has been.

In fact, despite admirable efforts to retool the company around the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, GM has been nothing of the sort. Actually, it's been a death star for green, between its crappy, huge vehicles, and its gruesome and nauseating national greenwashing campaign touting, among other non-things, flex fuel vehicles (which have been around for years and are kinda meaningless from a climate standpoint), and "green" SUV's that get 14 mpg, less than a Model T, or the Volt, which you can't buy.  

At the same time, GM has opposed gas taxes, increased fuel economy standards (until recently) and climate legislation. (Now, to the company's credit, it's part of USCAP and supports climate action.)  The company also consistently fought off shareholder resolutions on climate change, and as a result recently earned the title of "climate laggard" by some NGOs.

Here's my question. GM is moving in a good direction. So, instead of defending the company at every turn, why wouldn't the GM VP have said something like this: "Look, GM is a very old, very big company. We have not been admirable on environmental issues. But we're trying to change--and I submit the Chevy Volt and USCAP as two examples. We have a long way to go, and turning this big ship is hard."  

There is absolutely nothing to lose through this position, which represents nothing more than an honest take on things. Instead, GM and many other corporations won't acknowledge any past, or present, transgressions. Instead, in GM's case, the company points to the consumer and says, "We're only supplying what the customer wants."

Uh...noooooooo. As Tom Friedman points out, by opposing gas taxes, GM helped create conditions whereby Americans would lean towards big gas guzzlers. And at every turn, there seems to be stock unwillingness to admit any cracks in the company's green armor. But why not? It doesn't hurt a business to say, "We screwed up." In fact, it radically increases credibility.

Conclusion: businesses have nothing to lose by being brutally honest about their environmental successes and failures. So leave the PR people at home and tell the frickin' truth.

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You know those words you're sick of, the little bits of lexicon used and abused so frequently that they've been drained of meaning: green, natural, eco-friendly? Well, now you can add the word "LEED" to the list.

That's right, the world's most ubiquitous green-building term is becoming a mot de greenwashing. Increasingly, companies and developers are using "LEED" to describe buildings that haven't been certified by the program. Heck, the buildings might not even be that green (or natural or eco-friendly, for that matter).

The Piedmont deck: LEED claims are the least of critics' complaintsUrban Hiking AtlantaTake, for instance, the highly controversial parking garage plopped in the middle of Atlanta's Piedmont Park. Conceived and championed by the Piedmont Park Conservancy and the Atlanta Botanical Garden as a way to raise funds and provide parking space for folks attending the park’s special events (like the upcoming "Green Concert" starring Sir Paul McCartney), this "built to LEED standards" structure has been largely derided by neighborhood groups, including Friends of Piedmont Park (FOPP), as being a decidedly improper use of park space.

"We're upset about the conversion of more public green space to cement and concrete," says Jack White, a FOPP board member. The six-and-a-half story parking deck holds 765 spaces and charges up to $15 per day, and required the creation of new roads bisecting the park. No amount of neighborhood opposition could stop it; in fact, the Conservancy and Garden are suing FOPP's leader, Doug Abramson, for the legal fees accrued in toppling FOPP's objections, some $273,000.

But the pro-parking deck forces point to its green attributes, and even named it "SAGE" -- for Safety Access Greenspace and Expansion. Per the Conservancy’s website, the garage was built to LEED standards, with shaded areas for cars to reduce heat island effect; increased access to the park for visitors; a "virtually invisible" structure within several years, when the potted trees finally blossom; special parking spots for hybrids and such; a top-level bike rack; and rainwater capture to irrigate the gardens. 

Hm. Other than the last two ingredients, pretty much none of its touted green factors are particularly green, nor are they part of the LEED system. In fact, the U.S. Green Building Council has no record of the SAGE parking facility—it was neither registered (the first step toward certification) nor certified. And a parking garage isn't eligible for LEED certification—a building, says Scot Horst, senior vice president of LEED, must have at least one resident to even be considered.

Foes of the parking deck weren't mollified by the LEED claims—"Putting trees in pots on a concrete monstrosity didn't transform the essential nature of the beast," says White—but the even more troubling thing, at least to the folks who oversee LEED, is the misuse of their carefully crafted system. LEED has endured a lot of criticism in its 13-year history—for being too complex, not accounting for regional differences, costing too much to achieve, etc.—and has responded with a user-friendlier version, dubbed LEED 3.0, this year. But, says Horst, if a project isn’t officially certified, “you have no idea what [developers] mean” when they use the term. (The Piedmont conservancy did not return email requests for comment.)

The Atlanta garage is not the only example of such LEEDwashing; take the new KFC/Taco Bell in super-crunchy Northampton, Mass. The USGBC also says it has no record of such a building being certified*, though a press release detailed its LEED elements: 30 percent energy and water use reduction, rainwater capture, solar panels. Harvested rainwater or not, the building's function as a purveyor of industrial food does plenty of climate harm, not to mention its drive-thru window. Who knew LEED would grow to be a tool of architectural irony?

Still, says Horst, even a falsely claimed LEED building might be an improvement over business as usual; surely the Northampton KFC bests its non LEED-inspired counterparts. "At what point is being better good enough?" he asks. Horst can't say for sure, but he does know this: "Saying I'm an Olympic athlete doesn't make me one if I'm not in the Olympics. And no building is LEED unless we say it is."

*CORRECTION: The USGBC contacted the reporter after publication to report that its records had not been updated when an interview for this story occurred earlier in the week, and that the Northampton KFC in fact achieved gold certification.

UPDATE: The USGBC has written to tell us that they made a mistake, and the KFC/Taco Bell is indeed certified gold. But there are plenty of projects throwing the term around incorrectly -- like this Chicago high-rise, which advertised itself as LEED-certified before it was even built; here are even more examples of companies including Best Western and Chrysler jumping the LEED gun. "Overzealous marketing teams sometime claim that projects are certified when they've only just registered with LEED," Horst says. "USGBC publishes detailed guidelines to help projects make the right decisions about their marketing, and we follow up on each and every report of misuse."

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Entrepreneur Jeffrey Hollender launched a mail-order catalog business 20 years ago and nursed it for more than a decade before it became profitable. That company is now Seventh Generation, and there's no more catalog, but there certainly is a ton of recycled toilet paper -- and all-natural cleaning supplies and non-toxic personal-care products.

It's a product category that has seen massive growth in the last few years as environmental issues have risen to front-page news status. In fact, Seventh Generation saw its biggest numbers recently -- posting about 50 percent growth last year. Which is exactly why Hollender has decided it's time to step down from his role as CEO.

Sound like odd timing? Not for Hollender. "I realized that I lacked most of the experience that would be required to manage that growth to its fruition," he says. Hollender was also growing increasingly torn between other projects like writing -- his next book, In Our Every Deliberation, comes out next month -- and speaking gigs, and a TV program called Big Green Lies. "As I wandered around the offices, I began to wonder what all the people in different rooms were doing."

So as of last week, there was at least one more new face in the Seventh Generation offices: Chuck Maniscalco. He comes to the company from PepsiCo, where he was CEO of the $10 billion Quaker, Tropicana, and Gatorade division, which he calls "very purpose-driven businesses." Maniscalco, who actually came out of retirement to take on this job, says he's determined to manage Seventh Generation's growth in a way that remains true to the company's commitment to sustainability.

As for Hollender, he'll be continuing in the role of "Chief Inspired Protagonist," focusing more on corporate responsibility and sustainability advocacy work rather than being involved the company's day-to-day operations.

I spoke to the two of them in a three-way conference call just days after Maniscalco took over his new office. Here's what they had to say:

Q. One of the reasons you're leaving, Jeffrey, is because of the massive growth Seventh Generation has seen recently. What do you attribute that success to?

A. Hollender: I think that we live in a world where there is a tremendous sort of search for purpose and meaning. In some respects, who Seventh Generation is and what we aspire to helps people be the people they want to be and live the lives they want to live and that is a stark contrast to what they often experience from [other] companies and businesses ... [It] builds a strong and deep connection to people that I think is more important than it has perhaps ever been. Now, that's not enough; you have to also get your products on the shelves of stores at the right price and the products have to work the way people expect them to work.

Q. Speaking of getting your products on the shelves at the right price, are you still refusing to sell them in Wal-Mart?

A. Hollender: Historically, that was true; up until a year ago while we were in a very close dialogue with Wal-Mart and working to help them become a more sustainable and responsible business, we were not comfortable selling to them. But the progress that Wal-Mart has made in the past three to four years is astounding and absolutely an incredible inspiration for what's possible of a large company. Does that mean they're perfect today? No, but they have made more progress than just about any company that I can think of and that progress has led us to experiment with them in a small group of stores. ... So it's really a question for Chuck in terms of when is the right time and what is the right way, but there is no philosophic issue that restrains us from doing business with them.

Q. Do you feel like it's possible for a big company like Wal-Mart or PepsiCo to commit to the same standards of sustainability that Seventh Generation has?

Chuck Maniscalco (left) and Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation.Photo: Chrystie HeimertA. Maniscalco: I think it would be difficult for any company to ever reach up to the standards that Seventh Generation has set. I've never seen it before, and I probably will never see it again and that's why I'm here. Having said that, Wal-Mart, for example, was a very big customer for PepsiCo and Quaker Oats, and Wal-Mart over the course of the last several years has been the single biggest force in getting companies in the consumer packaged-goods world to take waste out of their products, out of their packages, and out of the supply-chain stream. So I think they can be a force for good.

Hollender: And they can move quicker than government or any regulatory agency. Now, they don't all use that power in ways that are beneficial, in fact we wouldn't be in the situation we are if they did. But I don't believe that we can solve the urgent problems that face us -- whether it's global warming, or whether it's a crisis of fresh water or species disappearance -- without aggressive leadership from the business community. Part of the role that Seventh Generation wants to play is showing business that being responsible is good business and being sustainable is good business, and that we can't afford to have business stand in the way of the progress we need to make to become more sustainable.

Q. In the same vein, is it possible for a company like Seventh Generation to scale up? You've said your goal was to take the company from $150 million annually to $1 billion. How do you plan to do this while maintaining a commitment to sustainability?

A. Maniscalco: It's a question of how to get big and be authentic at the same time ... Even with all of the growth this business has had over many, many years, we have still tapped into a minority of the consumers out there who care about what we offer in our products and who care about what the company stands for ... so there's still distribution opportunities. And from a consumer standpoint, this group of people is already big and it's growing by the day, because all of the issues that we all know the world is facing are becoming much more apparent to more people. So I absolutely think it's doable, but you have to do it with real care and real discipline. And that's our charge.

Hollender: It helps to be a private company so that we don't have to answer to shareholders who've purchased stock in the company who might not share our vision or our values. We choose our investors as carefully if not more carefully than our employees, because the alignment of those investors is absolutely critical. I also think that what I've experienced is that a company with the mission we have is a magnet for the best talent in the marketplace ... that's one of the ways in which we will scale, because we can get the best and brightest people to come and join what we're doing.

Q. When you started Seventh Generation, you were a big fish in a little pond. That pond is more crowded now; is there enough room in the pool for everyone? How do you feel about the competitors like Method who are on the shelves with you at Target or other stores?

A. Maniscalco: People always say they love competition and they rarely mean it. I would say, in this case, we love competition and we do mean it. In my view, the more people who come into this space -- and do so legitimately -- the greater good we're serving. And as Jeffrey pointed out before, we don't succeed against our mission if we do it all by ourselves. Secondly, the more people that come into this space and do it right, the more awareness and understanding consumers will have about how to behave responsibly. The challenge for us, I think, is to ensure that we keep driving standards higher and higher and higher, so that as other people come along, we still have a significant edge over them.

Hollender: One of the biggest gaps that exists today is a green product does not make a green company. And what we need to do -- and what we need our customers, consumers, and partners to do -- is to push businesses beyond greening a teeny part of their business, to embrace sustainability across everything they do. When you look at the competitive landscape today, it's mostly large companies taking a small part of their portfolio and making it greener than it was before. I think that consumers will increasingly look for sustainable companies, not just sustainable products.

Q. You're touching on a major problem for consumers: greenwashing -- companies putting out products that have green labels on them, but aren't really following that up within the actual product or their company as a whole. What can consumers do to make sure they're buying a legitimate product?

A. Hollender: Well, I'll just mention two things. One is we have a great application that you can download to your phone or your computer or your PDA. As you're walking down the aisles of a grocery store, you can use this application to help make better choices. Secondly, we are big advocates of what the Good Guide is doing, and we think that the service that a third party like the Good Guide provides in making independent evaluations of the products on the shelf is a very valuable service to consumers.

Q. What is the biggest challenge for a business wanting to be truly sustainable?

A. Hollender: I think we face a couple of challenges. Clearly, education is a huge challenge, so it is critical that we help consumers make conscious and responsible choices. We need greater transparency so that they can make informed decisions. Secondly, we live in a regulatory environment that often encourages us to do the wrong thing because companies are allowed to externalize so much of their costs that dangerous, environmentally irresponsible products often cost less than sustainable, responsible products. If consumers are shown the full cost of the products and services that they're buying, there's no question that they will increasingly choose responsible, sustainable products.

Q. How can we show them that cost?

A. Hollender: There are hundreds and hundreds of examples, and some of them directly affect our business. We're in the business of selling recycled tissue paper, and the government -- for the last year in which a calculation was made -- spent a billion dollars subsidizing the virgin timber industry by building roads and allowing that timber to be cut at below-market prices. What that does is it artificially makes recycled fiber more expensive. All of these things send the wrong message to the consumer, and we need to actively make sure that the government and the regulatory agencies are reflecting decisions that are in the best interest of future generations, not the shareholders of some of America's largest companies.

Q. So, it's got to be a political-activism sort of thing?

A. Hollender: It does, and Chuck's going to allow me more time to do that, which I'm looking forward to.

Maniscalco: The great news is we've now got Jeffrey playing a much bigger role in that big external environment, and I can get really focused on driving [the company] from the inside, and I think that's a really good one-two punch.

Hollender: Absolutely. We're subtly sending a message to all these large companies that they better, to a certain extent, watch out because this is a game-changing event for our business and for our industry. The addition of Chuck to Seventh Generation will dramatically accelerate the need for everyone to rise to a higher standard and move more quickly in a sustainable direction.

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Sunday's episode of the Simpsons begins with a wickedly good greenwashing story: Krusty learns from one of his lawyers that "studies show your Krustyburger is the unhealthiest fast-food item in the world."

"Worse than a double Krustyburger?"

"Somehow, yes."

Krusty introduces a green campaign centered on the vegetarian Mother Nature Burger, made of "100-percent wheat-fed barley." So brilliant.

Also featured: Norwegian humor, immigration humor, monkey-smoking-a-cigarette humor.

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Grist hates Earth Day because it thinks every day should be Earth Day. Don’t let us have the luxury to pick up some litter one day a year and forget the 300 unnecessary trips to Home Depot the rest of the year. Fine, but kind of cranky. As an aging Italian male, I am working on cranky.

I’ve got a different grievance, however. There’s no @#$&ing enforcement with Earth Day. Anyone can claim anything on Earth Day.

Sure, there are other, similarly co-opted holidays. Thanksgiving marks the day before the country’s biggest shopping day. But hell, the Pilgrims never had any real power anyway, plus weird shoes and a boxy boat. How about President’s Day, with those stupid ads of Abe Lincoln selling Chevys? Those Presidents are dead, so we can’t expect them to enforce anything.

Think about it: On Christmas, Jews and Muslims don’t try to drive an agenda that the Christians picked the wrong guy. Nah, they let it slide. Leave the day alone. On Yom Kippur, non Jews don’t walk around claiming the whole “Ten Days of Repentance” is a waste of time. No way, non Jews give them their space. How about Muslims? Nobody makes fun of Ramadan, not even Jon Stewart.

Which brings me back to Earth Day. It could have been the day we get all mushy and reverent about our Earth Mother, she who gives us our very breath. But no, it’s the perfect time for a libertarian think tank to press its campaign against the scientific consensus that has proven global warming is happening and that human activities are causing it. That’s right, the Cato Institute has been led by climate skeptic (that means somebody who thinks the Earth is flat) Dr. Patrick Michaels into questioning every conclusion about global warming. Oh yeah, and taking a little backsheesh from the fossil fuel industry at the same time.

Pat Michaels has long used out-of-context data to try and confuse the public about global warming. He said global warming wasn’t happening, then he said it was good for us, then he said it was minimal. Now he is using his perch at the Cato Institute, founded on free-market principles, to question the consensus on global warming in newspaper ads. In the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times, CATO is running a full-page ad that starts with this line from President Obama -- "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear." -- and then screams in large font, "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true."

A long list of Ph.D. scientists have signed on to the ad, supposedly to add heft to the contrary opinion. Unfortunately for Cato, the list is wrought with professional global-warming naysayers and discredited academics.

Between the signer who espouses the view that chlorofluorocarbons are the cause of any warming trends, and the ones who dabble in known pseudoscience, to the one who attacks evolution, drawing frequent connections between evolution and Nazism, these so-called scientists are fringe, to say the least. In fact, Greenpeace research director Kert Davies -- an expert on following the money of the fossil fuel industry to paid global warming skeptics -- says that of the scientists listed in the ad, 29 of them show up in his database as discredited, perennial naysayers.

Michaels has pushed Cato to interpret libertarianism as inclusive of crackpot science. This I said in a letter to Ed Crane, founder and president of Cato.

It’s no wonder some of us have gotten sick of Earth Day.

So I found a way to deal. Earth Day is the day I litter. Throw the McDonald's wrappers right out the window. Take unnecessary trips in my car, leave lights on, pretend that nuclear power is safe and that the waste magically goes away, that coal is clean and the tops of mountains are not blown off to mine it. I let the water run while I shave -- ahhh, that stream of pure, hot water ... endless.

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Corporate sustainability guru Auden Schendler lays out the problem with corporate sustainability gurus in his recent Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution. In doing so, he pretty much dares the nation's copy editors to title their reviews with the decade's most played-out headline: "It's Not Easy Being Green." Can they resist?

The book argues that environmental overhauls of corporations are not easy, nor are they necessarily profitable. And environmentalists who want corporations to green-up anyway would do well to talk straight with them about the difficulties.

Schendler finds that sort of honesty lacking in the proliferation of green-business cheerleading.

"Dig beneath the surface of one of the many green 'success stories' you read about in the news and you'll frequently find something more like Apocalypse Now than a finely tuned operation," writes Schendler, who has written for Grist. "This doesn't mean we give up. But we need to recognize that it's one thing to watch a PowerPoint presentation on corporate sustainability, and another thing to make it real."

He draws examples from his day job, executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company. In his early days there, he approached the manager of the company's Little Nell Hotel with the idea of using compact florescent bulbs in the guest rooms. Schendler promised the move would save on energy costs, replacement bulbs, and staff time, paying for the cost of switching in less than a year (a win-win-win, if you will). The manager, with a five-star reputation to preserve, promptly shot him down.

"When you go to Las Vegas and stay in a Motel 6, they have compact fluorescent bulbs," he told Schendler. "This isn't a Motel 6."

If reducing the environmental impact of a high-end ski resort brings unique challenges, it also exposes Schendler to some obvious criticisms. In fact, he suggests a few of them: Aspen can afford solutions that other places can't. Ski resorts are more interested in polishing their image than in achieving global change. And an industry reliant on disposable income, jet travel, and second homes has no right to preach to the rest of us.

Schendler responds, in part, that the world needs test labs -- or canaries in the coal mine. Even wealthy ones. Aspen can help craft a roadmap to sustainability because it can afford to fail in some experiments. Perhaps less convincingly, he argues that the lavish Aspen lifestyle is an advantage here, making the town a good microcosm for the lavish American lifestyle at large.

On the question of image-polishing, Schendler argues that every "green" claim a company makes opens it up to more environmental scrutiny, which in turn encourages more thorough greening. This makes corporate greenwashing a good thing, he says, even though it's deceitful by nature. Scrutiny from customers, employees, watchdog groups, the public, and the press holds the company accountable to its environmental claims, and "painting a business green invariably steers it toward improved practices."

But wouldn't corporate honesty (laugh if you must) be better and more efficient to begin with? And what about false claims that are never exposed? Schendler doesn't have much to say on this, which is why this happily counterintuitive section feels a little thin.

The book fairly brims with Schendler's playfulness, though. You get a sense that the 38-year-old feeds off the unavoidable conflict his job involves -- with both the mechanics in the plow shop and the suits in the board room.

Auden Schendler

Schendler claims blue-collar cred from his time as a "weatherization technician" in a low-income housing program. "It sounds fancy, but it means that I crawled under mobile homes [to install installation] through mud and animal carcasses into spaces so small I couldn't turn my head," he writes. That work convinced him the sustainability movement requires "more grunts, fewer visionaries," and that for innovations such as biodiesel engines to catch on, they need to win over the grunts who actually use them.

As for working in boardrooms and business conferences, Schendler says everybody with "environment" or "sustainability" in their title labors under the disadvantage of being lumped with hippie scolds -- the product of a cultural "70s hangover":

He cringes at the woman at a sustainable business conference who announces "I cry for the earth," knowing she makes it that much easier for skeptical executives to write off his message.

But he also acknowledges that green business leaders must be willing to speak about a moral mandate. Quite a few green business measures, particularly energy efficiency projects, will pay for themselves quickly. But profitability won't justify all of them. Or the payoff will take too long to interest CFOs focused on quarterly reports.

The book more or less delivers on the title's promise of "hard truths." Schendler includes a sober assessment of recent climate science, refuses to take comfort in personal-behavior improvements like reusable shopping bags, and attacks renewable energy credits (RECs), long a darling of corporate greening-up programs. (Read a version of his REC critique on Climate Progress).

Yet another chapter provides a persuasive critique of the LEED building certification program: In short, energy use outweighs every other factor in green building, but LEED doesn't reflect this.

If this all sounds like a wide range of topics, it is. But Schendler's bald enthusiasm for wrestling with such problems holds the book together. Anyone with a passing interest in these issues would likely find it engaging reading. And for corporate sustainability officers, it should be required.

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Just got a press release that begins thusly:

And I'd been so worried!

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At one time, Chicago was a serious contender for America's greenest big city. Now they appear to be mostly contending for biggest greenwasher.

I didn't learn the stunning story about what Chicago is trying to get away with until I was interviewed by a Chicago Tribune reporter. His story "Chicago's 'green' promise fades: Chicago taxpayers on hook for carbon credits that do little to fight global warming," was published yesterday:

So what exactly is the city of Chicago wasting its citizens' money on? Good old-fashioned rip-offsets -- in this case, emphasis on the word "old":

"This is very misleading to the public," said Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has sharply criticized the carbon offset market. "A city with the clout of Chicago should be able to do this right."

Chicago is, after all, quite close to the countries massive Midwestern wind resource. It really has no excuse for this greenwashing. Heck, even the U.S. Congress has gotten wise to rip offsets (see "House abandons rip-offset purchase. Now can it abandon them in a climate bill?"), as the story notes:

This story has Chicago's whole sordid history, which is well worth reading:

Duh.

Ah, yes, the notorious CCX (see CCX sells rip-offsets: "It seemed a little suspicious that we could get money for doing nothing").

See GAO rips rip-offsets: "The use of carbon offsets in a cap-and-trade system can undermine the system's integrity."

Precisely.

Jeers to Chicago -- and here's hoping this news story jolts them into making things right.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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A giant natural-gas operation that Shell Oil is building in Qatar will disrupt birds and rare desert truffles -- but the company plans to make amends by protecting antelopes, turtles, and sea cows elsewhere in the emirate. Such "biodiversity offset" schemes are up-and-coming, as companies seeking to burnish their eco-reputations come together with conservation groups increasingly willing to work within market-style systems. Mining company Rio Tinto is making efforts to attract flora and fauna to land it's no longer using, creating "a biodiversity buffer" that, according to CEO Tom Albanese, "also could be used to create the next generation of green credits." Indeed, some envision companies eventually trading such credits like they trade carbon-emission permits. While some conservationists applaud such schemes, others cry greenwash. "Offsets are actually a zero-sum game," says environmental-policy professor Richard Steiner. "Eventually, there will be nothing left with which to offset anything -- what then?"

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