Here at EarthPM we promised to provide you with resources for understanding the implications of sustainability and the environment, and “green” on projects, on project managers, and on project management as a discipline.
We found one today that happens to have a story about Chinese brands (and international brands doing business in China) and their environmental problems.
The resource is worth bookmarking (and, as it turns out, watching), because it covers much more than this story. But we thought it was a good story to show you not only the connection between green and business and projects, but to show how such a resource could be helpful to PMs.
The resource is the Going Green TV show. We also found a corresponding CNN web page that covers many of the same stories. That link is here.
So bookmark those links, and set your DVR or TiVO to record the Going Green TV show.
But, as promised, here’s a digest of the lead story that brought you here.
The story opens with coverage of one of China’s well-loved beers, Tsingtao. From the story:
What many do not know is that the Tsingtao Brewery Group was recently accused of violating environmental standards. It is just one of 20 companies named on a “polluters’ blacklist,” including major companies such as Hitachi, Philips and China’s most popular instant noodle maker, Master Kong.
The Green Choice Consumer Action list is backed by 34 different NGOs, including the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Green Earth Volunteers, Friends of Nature and Wild China. They allege the companies either polluted or failed to disclose their emissions.
If you were to go to that list, you would indeed find Tsingtao, other major Chinese brands, and recognizable Western brands like Philips lighting, and Motorola on the list. This is not a list you want to be on. According to the article the Chinese population is increasingly interested in, and willing to spend more for, green products, and is increasingly eschewing brands that have a bad green image.
“I think in China issues of the environment are strong and topical at the moment,” says consumer analyst Ray Ally of Landor Associates.
Landor recently conducted a brand survey that shows consumers in China are actually more concerned about green issues than consumers in the United States or Europe. For example, 45 percent of those surveyed in China said they consider it very important that a company is green when thinking about which brands to purchase, compared to 23 percent in the United States.
So – what does this have to do with project management?
Well, take Tsingtao beer as an example. Watch the video on the CNN page. Another link here for your convenience. Note that Tsingtao invested $18M in the last three years trying to reduce pollutants coming from their plant – and that wasn’t enough. More money will be spent in projects like this – to clean up not only the actual pollutants, but the brand image for these companies. That means projects being launched in terms of marketing communications. In other words, this is part of the green wave we discuss in out upcoming book. It helps to be aware of and riding this wave and not overcome by it and drowning.
The increasing awareness of the Chinese consumer is a piece of the green wave – a potentially huge contributor to it.
As for the resources, we also think that as a PM you’d enjoy this story about Nike. Think about how many projects and project managers were involved in these efforts. Think about the way the company successfully links its environmental management policy with those projects.
Be ready.
“Green Projects” are being implemented at breakneck speed. It is hard to keep up with the sheer volume. That’s exciting news for project managers embracing the “green wave”. One particular project caught our attention, not only because it garnered national attention, Parade Magazine, April 18, 2010, but because it is local to Earthpm and my wife is an alum. The University of New Hampshire (UNH), and Waste Management (WM), are powering the college with garbage. Yes, garbage! According to the recent article, Waste Management, the operators of a landfill a dozen or so miles from the campus of 15,000 students, was dealing with surplus gas containing 50% methane. Most landfill operators are forced to burn the gas because it is a pollutant, but can be used as fuel. WM realized that UNH could use methane, but how to get it there was a problem. $49 million dollars and 12.7 miles of pipeline later, UNH has its methane.
BP Oil Spill – One Year Later
The reason we are focusing on this aspect is because, when we look at the benefits of Green Project Management, we see that green thinking should be a part of all the project’s processes, including the procurement process (just one of the processes outlined in our book). In this case, if the questions were not asked, we would have asked about the greenality of BP’s “vendors”. There would have been questions like: What did Transocean consider for their environmental impact? What safe guards were in place in case of an issue like a spill or blowout preventer failure? Were those scenarios even considered? Driving back into their processes, we could have asked to see the invitation to bid, to examine whether Transocean considered the greenality of their vendors. This is just a sampling of questions to ask. On a project this large like this, with the potential for devastation it has, the questioning would have been extensive and rigorous.
We advocate a “greenality clauses”. We believe that if we choose a company, considering their green efforts as part of the decision making process, that they should be held accountable for those green efforts, as well as capturing that criteria in the contract. Again, we like to give the obligatory caveat that we were not in the room when the decision was made by BP to go ahead and lease the rig from Transocean, so we don’t know exactly what went on. But from our point of view, the project did not consider all of the green aspects it should have and that green project management would have helped in that process.