In Women We Trust

Six Reasons Women will Love the SMaRT Sustainability Standard

Let's get SMaRT(er), shall we? (Sustainable Materials Rating Technology)

If women have to buy the right stuff for their homes and specify the right stuff for their companies and clients, then it's time we all knew about how to go about that process.

I've been told that the subject of Sustainability is just too hard for we mere consumers and citizens of the planet to understand. Oh paLEEEZE. How about we give it a shot. Women are not only the dominate consumer, but the dominate gender in marketing. If we're greenwashing products it's out of ignorance, not stupidity.

First a quickie class in the issues. Have you seen Story of Stuff yet? (kudos to Annie Leonard). It now has over 2 millions views. It's a great example of what is part of a product's Life Cycle Assessment. LCA's pull the documentation of the carbon emissions, energy and waste pollution generated in the production process of goods together. It tallies the "stuff" that goes into other "stuff". When you know the bottom line of where the energy and pollution is being saved/used/abused that's when you can start to improve it.

SMaRT is a standard that quantifies and puts the info into a balanced rule per se. You can't be certified as sustainable if the you're saving energy, but polluting the water, or using safe processes, but destroying forests. It also factors in social equity like child labor, a company must be transparent with its working conditions worldwide. SMaRT is like playing baseball, once you have the rules, you can play on a T-ball level or major league, but the rules and tools are the same.

To keep everyone above board, SMaRT has third party global certification & auditing through Ernst & Young. It's a label you can trust.

The SMaRT scorecard/matrix categories:

1. Safe for Public Health & Environment (pollution footprints)

• SMaRT requires documentation of Feedstock Inventory.
• SMaRT requires input and output of Stockholm Protocol Chemicals. These are the pervasive baddies which greatly affect our food chain: Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Diedrin, Dioxins, Endrin, Furans, Heptachlor, Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) Mirex, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), Toxaphene. You may know them as insecticides, fire retardants or the plastic in product packaging or the backing of carpet. Input covers chemicals going into the product and output is what happens during the making of the product. SMaRT documents over 1200 Stockholm Protocol chemicals across air, water and earth impacting 3600 touch points. (can you imagine how long it would Congress to pass a bill covering that subject?)
• SMaRT gives points for  minimizing air carcinogens and VOCs, green cleaning using clean greening procedures,   
• SMaRT gives points for minimizing indoor formaldehyde emissions.

Still with me? Moms Rising wants fire retardants out of fabric, form and carpet because of what it's doing to kids, pets and breast milk. In Story of Stuff, Annie notes that breast milk is the #1 Toxic food source, "toxins in - toxins out."  The Center for Environmental Health and Justice wants PVCs out of the system and NOT recycled. They don't want a second chance of putting them into our air, soil or water.

The only way to get these things out of the system is not put them into the system by A) following a standard or B) creating a law to ban it after the fact.

2. Renewable Energy & Energy Reduction (carbon footprint issues)

• An energy inventory is required of current usage and renewable usage.
• Points are awarded on an increasing scale for Cleaner and Greener Certification, Certifications for Climate Change Emission reductions.
• More points are given if the supply chain's energy is also renewable. This covers those who provide materials for the manufacturing of the products even if they are located in China.

3. Biobased or Recycled Materials (more carbon footprint and pollution footprints)

• Once again, an inventory of all materials is required. If a company is using PVCs(plastic) to back a carpet, then this is where it shows up.
• SMaRT gives the most credit to organic bio-based meeting EPA best management practices because these products have no toxic constituents including endocrine disruptors.
• The highest points go to products made with NEW bio-based material vs. recycled material. Why would SMaRT do that? Because it's trying to encourage new products that start green to stay green vs. recycling what got us into this mess and a lot of that came from plastics and that comes from oil - that we're running out of and is getting more expensive.

4. Facility or Company Based Manufacturing (more footprints)

• This is where SMaRT looks at the operational side of manufacturing, is the company walking the walk? Required is an EMS Environmental Policy & Targets, Social Indicator Reporting and that LCA Process. 
• Social Indicator Reporting for Suppliers. It covers the working conditions for the supply chain that may not be in the US. The SMaRT audit happens globally and sweat shop conditions aren't rewarded. 
• Transparent Primary and Secondary Materials Reclamation System (no dumping)
• Environmental Management System Certification
• Sustainable/EPP Product Transaction Disclosures

5. Reclamation, Sustainable Reuse & End of Life Management (keeping the footprint light)

• Points are given for durability. How long will the product last before it needs to be recycled?
• Once that product is ready for recycling, what programs are in place to take it back?
• How much can be reused?

6. Innovation in Manufacturing (preventing footprints from the get-go)

• Cool new products get extra credit for paving the way for others to follow.
• Are they doing more with less material? The get credit for that as well.

Who decided all of the above - a balanced board of of people and interests from trade associations, financial institutes, government, Non-governmental groups, environmental groups, citizens-at-large over eight years of discussions.

Before you say, "Wait a minute, that's not democracy. I didn't vote for any of that," look around you. Everything you sit on, live in, work in, eat or drive were made via standards that you never voted on. Standards help trade groups work together. They are the "laws"of the free market. The SMaRT Standard simply pulled all the multitudes of standards for sustainability together, eliminated the redundancy and provided one, balanced standard that rewards entry level or superior performance.

What SMaRT doesn't reward is greenwash. In fact, it eliminates it. SMaRT is fully transparent and in that transparency peer pressure happens and competition begins. If corporations do one thing really well, it's knowing how to compete. SMaRT just gives them the rules to play by that we all can live with and cheer.    

Adding their Best to Best Buy

In 2006, I interviewed Julie Gilbert of Best Buy. At that time they had 120,000 employees, today they top 140,000. Then, Julie was a Vice President of WOLF (Women's Leadership Forum) and Entrepreneurial Initiatives; now she's a Senior Vice President of Retail Training, Learning and Innovation, Winning With Women, and WOLF. On top of all that, she also has taken on Sustainability issues, turning Best Buy into a woman-friendly, earth-friendly corporation. My kind of woman.

According to a recent profile, "Through her leadership in WOLF, Best Buy increased female market share by more than $3.6 billion, increased the number of female job applicants by 37 percent, and reduced female employee turnover by 5.7 percent." Hummm.... Best Buy has 20,000 women employees, that means 1140 stayed at Best Buy because of the WOLF program. Cool.

Apparently Julie wants to do better than 5.7%. On Wednesday this week, she was in town (Anaheim, CA) with about 1000 other "blue-shirters" and WOLF Omegas (women who are not part of Best Buy). The Blue Shirts and the Omegas formed one, big brainstorm to continue exploring why employees and customers stayed with Best Buy and why others left.

Fortunately, the conference was only about 5 minutes from my place, so I was able to join Julie and other manager and Omega types for happy hour at the Hilton. Since this conference was all about making women happy, I took with me a request from Eco-Mom, Kimberly Pinkson. She wanted Best Buy to, Take back the e-waste [recycle] and show her what they are doing with it. "I don't want my old computer to end up over in Africa polluting the landscape for the kids over there," Kimberly told me.

Kimberly will be happy to know that Best Buy is working on the beginning of that wish list. According to Julie, they are doing a test in three stores located in Minneapolis, Baltimore and San Francisco. People can take any kind of e-waste to the store regardless of where they bought it. Currently at all Best Buy stores you can recycle print cartridges, batteries and cell phones. They are also greening up the buildings as well adding solar panels.

When it comes to the "show me" part. Kimberly isn't alone e-waste disposal, over at Envio Mom they addressed the same concern. Trust, but verify! No one wants to recycle only to find out that we messed up some other country's back yard. I have two old computers sitting under my desk for that very reason. I don't trust where they'll end up if I take them to a recycling center. That picture in the National Geographic of E-waste in third world countries is too vivid. I'll be the first one to champion Best Buy's program when they are able to show and tell the full story.

I also visited with Omega consumer, mom and small business owner Taiha Wagner. She was there, traveling with her incognito sister to answer questions from Best Buy employees. Taiha was encouraged by Best Buy not to hold back (she didn't) and wasn't given any advice on what to say before she came. (Taiha's the one with the white shirt)

So why would you love a company as an employee and customer?

Over on Best of Mother Earth, Karen Hanrahan explores why she stays with her company. It started with products that she could trust as a consumer of eco-safe cleaners. Years ago she had to switch to a chemical-free lifestyle as cleaning agents bothered her health. When she found products that allowed her a way to not only live safely, but also make a living she was hooked and never left. "They just fit who I am as a person," Karen told me. "I've always been told I'm a mother earth sort, and these products let me live that life."

The more I read blogs and pay attention to what women want, it always comes down the same thing, give them something they can believe in - oh, and prove it.

Hank&Cheef - what goes around comes around

I'm one of those people who carry a blue bandana in her purse. It's a leftover habit from my Girl Scout Camp director days when the "AP" (All Purpose) cloth used to hang from my belt loop. I had to smile when I saw this return of the Hanky. It's stepped up to meet eco-expectations, and definately not what my grandmother would carry. I don't know if it will catch on in this germy world, but I applaud the effort and the designs.

Can Wall Street Help Your Street?

What does Wall Street have to do with women's green groups? Let's connect some dots, but first let's hear from someone who makes a living managing funds, Mindy Lubber. She is the President of Ceres an organization of investment fund managers.

"Climate change is the mother of all sustainability issues and will have an impact on every economic sector, whether from new regulations, physical impacts of growing demand for climate-friendly technologies. Thus, climate risk is embedded in every business and investment portfolio, which is why more Wall Street analysts are beginning to factor corporate response to climate risk into their evaluations of the companies they cover."

Ceres collectively oversees over $4 Trillion (that's with a T) in investments, Mindy flagged the issue that is quickly becoming THE issue. How do you measure and react to climate risk when it comes to investvestments?

At the same time, women's groups are gathering to manage the effects of their own climate change risk. My thanks to Diane for making me wish I lived in Washington DC. for Creating a Climate of Change: Women, Nuclear Energy and Justice in a Warming World an event on May 6.

"Women often lead the way in their communities in conserving precious natural resources, adapting their food crops to changing soil and climatic conditions, and rebuilding following floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters...Women's experiences, creativity and leadership must be part of the solution if we, whether from North or South, are serious about addressing global warming."

Creating a Climate of Change is hosted by the Nobel Women's Initiative , in partnership with the Green Belt Movement, Friends of the Earth, Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), Oil Change International , Action Aid , Feminist Majority Foundation , The International Forum on Globalization , U.S. Climate Action Network / and Heinrick Böll Foundation. I'll be the first to admit that I hadn't heard of many of these groups until Diane's email and yet they are all firmly entrenched and helping women around the world deal with their lack of natural resources.

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On the home front we have womens' groups forming to pro-actively change the world before they have to react to a world without water or food like those do in the above groups need to - Big Green Purse, Eco Mom Alliance, HolisticMoms, eco-chick... thankfully everyday more pop up.

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Can Wall Street fix your street? No, it can't, not by itself. In a twist of irony, it's the women on your street supporting the right kind of big business that will help turn things around. Wall Street depends on the the confidence and attitudes of the general public to keep their portfolios growing.

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Investors need guidelines, consumers need guidelines and that starts with education on both sides. If we don't have guidelines, we will get more websites selling more unsustainable stuff to women and furthering the problem that out of control consumerism has given the world. Begin here Download smart_sustainable_standards_101_5208.pdf. Learn what can keep consumerism in line with our eco concerns.

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Under bloggy disclosure, I'm the editor for www.sustainbleproductsblog.com. (a non-profit in DC)  Along with that I do a lot of volunteer work on bringing Sustainable Standards to women. If your group would like a free webinar, please contact me at Mary@inwomenwetrust.com.

ORGANIC STYLE no longer an Oxymoron

In the 60s organic style meant wrapping myself in hemp and not wearing makeup. Today I can actually say the word "style" along with organic and have a different vision.

Check out the new magazine called Organic Style. Get your free copy here. It covers women's green issues but with an even split of men and women contributing ideas. That's the 50/50 I've been waiting for, along with topics that can we can all live with. 

This issue features Julie Butterfly Hill who spent 2 years living on top of a tree to keep it from being cut down. That's walking the walk!  Thank goodness we don't have to do that anymore to make a point. It also covers Denis Hayes, the first Earth Day coordinator. He compares Earth Day 1969 with Earth Day now, offering us all perspective and hope. (I'm with him on carbon credits.)

Let me know what you think of it.

Ode to Women and Green Marketing

Have you seen this month's Ode Magazine? It arrived the same day I said to four women, "I know 8 women who own a Prius. One of the women raised her hand and said, "Make that nine." Then the others raised their hands as well. Four out of five of us owned a Prius. I was the fifth who didn't and that's only because they weren't available the day I HAD to buy a new car. (I have a 40 mpg Civic, however.)

I said to them, "See, you're the reason that Detroit changed its ways." (I don't have the research, but I'm betting that the majority of Prius owners are women.) Because women purchased Priuses for the gas mileage, practicality, environmental statement, looks, whatever...Toyota went to the front of the eco-car class and Detroit has been playing catch up ever since.

Now back to Ode. On Page 50 is an ad for the Green Festival in Chicago and topics of what the 350 exhibitors will cover. How many of these areas are women's topics that you'd find in any woman's magazine? Nine out of the 14 topics are traditional women's magazine's story lines. The others are topics that feed or support those nine.

• Green careers/education
• Social Justice
• Eco-fashion
• natural health and body
• green media
• green technology
• natural home and garden
• green business practices
• fair trade
• indigenous goods
• organic food/agriculture
• natural foods
• green kids' zone

And because is was a women's issue, here are a few more items.

Page 18, Rosa Hilda Ramos, she was/is a housewife in Puerto Rico who tried to protect her family from pollution. Rosa founded CUCco (Communities United against Contamination) in 1991. She didn't start it because wanted to run a business. She did it because it was the right thing to do.

Page 33 - The Not-So-Secret Secret to Changing the World - "Women can lead the way from the survival of the fittest to the survival of the connected."  by Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen.

Page 46 - No More Business as Usual - how social investors can help bring about corporate and political change - by Amy Domini, the CEO of  Domini Social Investments and author or several books on ethical investing.

Page 55 - A band of women in pink hats and boots are heading to a store to challenge the management by asking, "How can you be sure this cushion wasn't made by children?" or "What percentage of the sales price of this chocolate bar goes to the cocoa farmer"?

Gary Hirshberg CE Yo of Stonyfield Yogurt said about making an environmental impact:

"I realized I needed to move into capitalism if I wanted to have a bigger influence. Business is the only source powerful enough to manifest the change we need." (amen Gary)

Who buys the Stonyfield Yogurt that helps capitalism work? Women. Who buys the majority of the things listed in the Green Festival Categories? Women.

Therein lies the new world order that's emerging from the co-creation of a Sustainable life. The world of buyers and sellers - the buyers being primarily women. Think about that the next time you see a green consumer study. Be sure to check out the methodology behind it. If the survey was a 50/50 split of men and women being surveyed ask to see just the stats coming from women. I'm betting that you'll see a far more engaged group appear.

The pictures came from Ode. Pick up a copy and read it from cover to cover. You'll feel better afterwards.

 

Why Do Green Women Gather? See Below.

" Ever notice how bloggers talk about the same people over and over? That's because we have relationships with them." Yvonne DiVita, Lipsticking

I laughed out loud when I opened my email this morning. In one of my Feedblitz aggregators, the two new posts offered came from Yvonne DiVita and the other Toby Bloomberg. As I scrolled down to see what they were talking about I ran into myself and the cover shot from WECAI this month. (12,727 readers so far) WE is published by Heidi Richards, who is also another great blog and biz buddy with 35,000 on her mailing list.

What made it particularly poignant was that I just read an email from Emily McKhann from The Motherhood (who I met through BlogHer).(23,000 women bloggers/8 million readers) She asked if I (or Diane MacEachern) (2500 eco women) would be interested in talking to a grad student (another woman) regarding ECO women's green groups.

Why do we gather? For the same reason we blog together - to support one another.

These are crazy times, we need each other to help keep the crazies at bay. Kimberly Danke Pinkson of Eco Mom Alliance (11,000 women) sure knows the answer to that one. It's the same reason we join Weight Watchers or AA. Like any good 12 step program, first you have to acknowledge you have a problem and then, by being accountable to others in your group, you can work to solve it. Why are we accountable? Because we have a build a relationship with the members of the group.

Let's take it a step further, take a look at the banner on this blog, see the woman who is in the black suit (second from the left) that's Terry Gamer. She recently bought the rights to 500 women's small town, local level news sources which account for 36 million readers. Small, local papers who would have thought they have much to do with why women gather? The answer is as simple as to why do they subscribe to a small women's paper - it's all about the relationships that it helps to foster between women.

That's the short list, but these are the nine whom I intersected in the last 4 days. Nine women representing a reach into over 45 million women's lives. Why do green women gather? Because we can!

Green Gals Make My Earth Day Memorable

Happy Earth Day. How are you spending your day?

I can't think of a better way to celebrate then with new friends working to implement the choices we have to make.  This weekend, the California Chapter of N.O.W. the National Organization of Women met in West Hollywood, CA. I was honored to be asked to speak on Sustainability Standards and how women can bring them forward. With me was Kimberly Danke Pinkson, the founder of Eco Mom's Alliance (left) and Lani Lee, (right) a recent college grad committed to bringing eco-issues to N.O.W. (Lani moderated our panel.)

Kimberly is a single mom with a six year old son. She developed Eco Mom Alliance not as a business platform, but because it was needed. As she explained to the crowd, if anyone knows about making green ends meet, she does. She knows that making adjustments in our lifestyle is hard, but she also knows that with the help and inspiration of others in a peer group, that it can be done and it can be fun.

She was inspired to create the Eco Mom Alliance one day at a picnic table talking with friends about light bulbs and discussing which ones to buy. Since that picnic table day, the Eco Mom Alliance has grown to over 11,000 on their mailing list.

After meeting Kimberly, it's not hard to understand why she has such a strong following, she is gracious, encouraging and inspiring to be around. The Eco Mom Alliance had been quietly working at making their lifestyles greener and then the NY Times wrote about them. Kimberly said that they have since been deluged with requests from business and non-profits alike. Many want to be a part of their group as a sponsor or partner. That's the power of purses and peers at work.

Lani Lee was amazing as well. Besides running the panel, she also brought gift cards and items made of Elephant dung. Don't squirm, they were very cool paper products and they certainly had a wonderful story to tell. There are about 40,000 elephants in Sri Lanka and 4000 were killed last year because they were interfering with agricultural. To save the elephant, they needed to find a way to make them profitable. It turns out that elephants, as mass consumers of vegetation, they are also mass producers of mashed up pulp (per se) ready to be made into paper products. For a closer look check out www.mrelliepooh.com

If they can turn a profit from, well, recycled goods - think what you can do with a little creative thinking. Write me and tell me about your best way to rally the women and create a bit-o-fun in the process and have a great Earth Day.

Project Vulcan puts CO2 Emissions into View for Earth Day

How do can we avoid green fatigue? It helps if we can see what we're fighting. Project Vulcan does that. It makes CO2 emissions tangible and shows how it's a night and day difference. It overlaps the emissions from power plants, traffic and manufacturing. It's pretty amazing and shows how the US impacts the world. Getting us out of the red zone is goal #1. Keep that in mind when picking a president this next time around.  

WECAI Springs into Earth Day

I am honored and humbled to be the cover girl for the spring issue of WE Magazine for Women. The E-issue is packed with great women with green ideas just in time for Earth Day on April 22.

The publisher, Heidi Richards gave the publication it's new "look" and direction. She also makes it FREE. Download you 68 page copy of the E-zine here http://www.wecai.org/wemagspring08.pdf.

My thanks to the ever gracious Heidi, for putting this Women & Green issue together on top of running several companies while launching WECAI into a thriving organization of 1200+ global women. WECAI, (Women's E-Commerce) it's an organization dedicated to teaching small business women how to become better at conducting business online.

I'm joined with many other women on the same green mission to create a more sustainable world. Suzy Miller questions ethical marketing or is it just greenwashing? Bea Kunz, WE's green editor addresses how we can spend our way to a better world. Teresa Morrow provides Green Cleaning tips. Elizabeth Skronski Supports Mother Earth in a whole new way. Linda Pereria takes on "Are we loving it to Death"?, Jeanne Horak-Druiff wonders if green glass is possible, Diane MacEchern looks inside her Big Green Purse, Green Granny Joyce Emery shares her point of view and Carol McCelland gives green career guidance.

The Issue also has a special Women's Green Commerce Survey. Anyone who participates will recieve a list of hundreds of green resources which Heidi has been collecting over the last year. We'll also give you the results, first! Link to it from inside of the Spring issue or here.

Earth Day is only a marker of greater things to come. It's all about Purses, Peers, Posts and the Power to Move Green Markets. Download your free copy of the Spring E-Issue and catch the green buzz plus hear much more from the many bright women who are out to recreate their personal and business life. http://www.wecai.org/wemagspring08.pdf 

In Women We Trust!