 It is without a doubt that over the last few years, Green has been the new ‘in’ colour in the corporate world. The colour was made even more prominent in recent times thanks to a whole host of media text in the form of articles on green issues as well as the famous documentaries i.e. The 11th Hour, the American ex Vice President Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, Artic Tale and Empty Oceans, Empty Nets. Green was also one of the main agendas in Barack Obama’s campaign for the American presidency with his pledge to spend USD15 million annually for the development of cleaner energy sources! With all the attention surrounding the Green issue, many organizations realised that Green was the way to go, a strategic direction that needed to be pursued to make their products and services popular to the public. A popularity contest in the public eye with a whole host of phrases such as Green products, Eco Marketing and Eco-Responsibility, organizations were compelled to ensure that their products should be environmentally safe through a broad range of activities that included product modification, changes in the production process, packaging changes and modified advertising. These actual definitions for what constituted a product as being deemed Green, however, were never clearly defined. This led to many organizations to take the upper hand, leading eventually to ethical issues such as Green Washing and Green Sheen. Green on the Face of Things Green Washing is a term coined by the American environmentalist Jay Westerveld in describing the practice by organizations in insincerely labeling their products and policies as being environmentally friendly for profit purposes but in truth, their products fall short of the label. Taking Westerveld’s term a step further, TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm released a study called “The Six Sins of Green Washing” in December 2007 which highlighted six areas in which organizations would commit the crime of Green Washing. The study identified that organizations got away with Green Washing through placing green and energy efficiency labels without proof, being vague about its contents and even lying about their product’s environment certification standard. Making Green Simple Being Green in all aspects of an organisation’s operations in terms of the products created, its manufacturing processes and procurement needs, the communities in which it works in as well as the behavior and working practices of its employees is no easy task. However, at Philips, we have managed to find a balance in developing products that are meaningful and Green at the same time. The secret to this balance has been in the ‘How’ we have achieved this. In 1994, Philips developed the EcoVision program which covers both the production and the development of all our products. The EcoVision program not only pays attention to the reduction of energy, waste, water and emissions throughout the production of the product but also encompasses EcoDesign, the main philosophy behind its product development. An integral part of the EcoDesign philosophy is The Philips Green Focal Areas, a product assessment process where an investigation of additional environmental improvement options is carried out with targets and objectives set. The Philips Green Focal Areas concentrates on the areas Energy Efficiency, Packaging, Hazardous Substances, Weight, Recycling and Disposal and Lifetime Reliability. We also use the Life Cycle approach to determine a product’s overall environmental improvement. The Life Cycle Assessment calculates the environmental impact of a product over its total life cycle (raw materials, manufacturing, product use and disposal). The result of such a calculation is an Eco-Indicator rendering the product green status if the score is 10% better in one or more of the Green Focal Areas compared to the reference product, which can be a competitor, predecessor or other product in the particular product family. Revising the EcoVision program in 2007, we aimed to generate 30% of our total revenue from Green Products, increase the energy efficiency of our operations by 25% and double our investment in Green innovations to Euro 1 Billion. Last year alone, sales from Philips green products increased by 12.5% to 22.6% from 19.8% in overall sales in 2007. Overall, the organisation introduced 91 new Green products in the market with an investment of approximately EUR 282million. After all, sustainability is at the heart of our business model and this model makes perfect business sense because in the long term we have saved costs in our manufacturing and we have utilised less resources, energy as well as produced less waste in which we have to dispose of. This act alone has given us a competitive edge as we are saving our customers money with products that consume less energy. Green inspiration in Research & Development and product design has also created not only new products but even new markets. The result – good business opportunities. And in this challenging economic times, we firmly believe that sustainability offers exciting opportunities for innovation and growth, exactly what a company needs to safeguard itself through the economic crisis, making sure that we will be in an even stronger position to reap the benefits of the economic upturn, whenever that will arrive. Energy efficiency is a potential industry to get us all out of downturn, creating millions of new jobs by delivering meaningful innovations. We continue to turn global challenges into business opportunities by enabling efficient energy use and in making healthcare available and affordable. The threat of climate change has not abated and governments for instance continue to take action, also in our own country with a portion of stimulus going to green initiatives in our economic plans. Finally, sustainability is also a cost driver for our company, helping to reduce energy use and thereby costs for instance. |