I am a big supporter of environmental responsibility in business. I love the fact that, today, more businesses are environmentally conscious than ever.<\/p>\n
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Having said that, I believe that businesses should be environmentally responsible because it is the right thing to do, NOT to be able to use their thinly-veiled environmental efforts as a marketing scheme.<\/p>\n
It seems that everyone is trying to market themselves through claims of environmental responsibility to the point that it is getting unclear what some of them are selling. Some organizations are actually embarrassing themselves through their attempts at green marketing.<\/p>\n
Take ISM, for example. They issued a release touting the \u201cgreen-ness\u201d of their International Supply Management Conference and, for one of the examples, said that \u201ctemporary tattoos celebrating ISM\u2019s new\u2026qualification \u2014 are printed with vegetable oil ink on recycled paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
To me, that is environmental waste, not environmental responsibility. Who are they marketing this qualification to? Four-year olds?<\/p>\n
Recycled paper is still paper. Paper that can be used more responsibly so that fewer trees have to be cut down and fewer forests have to have their natural habitats destroyed for the sake of creating paper. Even office supply vendors are cutting their ties with paper suppliers because of environmental irresponsibility.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s management teams expect us to use environmental responsibility as a factor in our supplier selections. So what can we \u2013 as buyers, purchasing managers, procurement executives \u2013 do about this green marketing problem?<\/p>\n
I say that we challenge our suppliers\u2019 claims. Show them that it will take more than just using the word \u201cgreen\u201d in their marketing collateral to win a higher score on our supplier evaluation sheets. Dismiss their thinly-veiled efforts and explain what real environmental responsibility is. Share your sustainability definitions with your strategic suppliers and, where your firm has sustainability expertise, share that with those suppliers so that they, too, can make a difference for the planet.<\/p>\n
By purchasing professionals upping the standards of environmental responsibility claims, we can help the planet and hopefully get rid of the noise that is masquerading as green marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am a big supporter of environmental responsibility in business. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n