We have received a few curious emails, comments and questions over the past few weeks to better define The Green Challenges and its objectives.  The three primary objectives of The Green Challenges are clear; Education, Transparency and Outreach.  However, the clarity in objectives beg the question, “...of what?”.  

The “what” is, “organizational sustainability and the corporate websites that dictate much of what we know about any one company.”  Organizational sustainability is a whole business approach encompassing the seven principles of sustainability including: employee/stakeholder education and involvement, energy consumption and conservation, water consumption and conservation, waste reduction and recycling, transportation alternatives, environmental impact as well as climate goals and carbon footprint.  The perspective from the challenges is that the ‘best’ way to learn about a corporate leader in a way other than advertising or solicitation is through its corporate website.  With that in mind a logical extension can be made in terms of learning about a company’s commitment to the environment.

However, as the results of the challenge indicate there is a large discrepancy between what companies advertise and solicit versus what is present on their corporate website.  We found that less than 40% of the 1,200 companies analyzed had any mention of the environment, sustainability or ‘green’ on their website much less any dedicated section, page or press release.  What to do?

The Green Challenges are designed to survey, analyze and report on quarterly findings using our basic evaluation of corporate websites and organizational sustainability programs as well as provide in-depth insight through information access, the Top Down Ground Up blog, numerous reports and our Leadership Council.  The ultimate challenge is to climb from the 40% of companies providing info on sustainability to 100% of the companies in the challenge providing information within the next 18 months.  To do so we have laid out the three primary objectives of education, transparency and outreach along with programs and tools to accomplish this goal.

It is important to understand each of the objectives and how the challenge provides the tools, frameworks and leadership necessary to accomplish each objective.  Tomorrow, Top Down Ground Up will feature EDUCATION, Our Biggest Challenge, followed by TRANSPARENCY, A Uniform Strategy on Friday and on Monday examine OUTREACH, Websites and Social Media.  If you have any questions or comments moving forward, please consider leaving a comment for the benefit for other readers and members.