Better Choices for the Table: What the Obama’s, the Windsor’s and Millions of Consumers have in Common

This week the White House made an effort to set the pace for the rest of the nation by announcing the property’s first organic garden - foodie blogs to national media ran the story with zeal. Since the beginning of the Administration, Michelle Obama has taken on the challenge of setting an example for the rest of us when it comes to healthy eating and local options for our tables. There also a subliminal message that this can help cut costs during a slow economy and generally boost spirits. However, the trend doesn’t stop at the White House gates - it is also popular overseas. The trend for local and sustainable gardening is being revived by our British friends who also inspired Eleanor Roosevelt to call American gardeners to their yards during WWII.

On the other side of the pond, London’s largest landowner, the Queen, has developed a Victory Garden in St. James Park “to bring back the flavour of those times (WWII) and encourage people to embrace the idea of growing your own.” During WWII, “Dig for Victory” was a government-led wartime campaign that turned gardening into a patriotic duty. More than 15.5 million people in Britain are already estimated to grow some of their own food and the recession has increased demand for allotments and seeds, as families turn to the soil to cut bills.

Even those of us without a community garden option are just as enthusiastic about the trend and want to take advantage of options for eating local produce. We support this healthy trend by stocking up at our local farmers markets that provide good healthy options with a lower carbon footprint. In my backyard, Alexandria, VA , a bedroom community of Washington, DC, we have over one thousand visitors to our neighborhood every Sunday from May through October - all looking for local produce and handcrafted products at the neighborhood market. I recently sat down with one of the market’s organizers to hear more about how the venture has grown. Three years ago when it started, there were a half dozen vendors and today it has expanded to almost twenty-five. According to the organizer, if it grows to thirty vendors, then it’s considered a small mid-size market. On a larger scale, DC’s Freshfarm Markets “operates 8 farmers' markets in the Chesapeake Bay region” and can demand crowds of up to 100,000 customers with recognition in national media outlets including the Wall Street Journal.

So whether you have a slice of land as small as a suburban yard, a few acres or an urban bungalow, there are options for everyone to make better choices and support the growth of healthier and local food options.

To find markets nationally go to Local Harvest

To find one of the over 200 Washington DC markets go to the Washington Post guide.

HBR In Brief: Why Sustainability Is Now the Key Driver of Innovation

I picked this (and the PDF) up from Environmental Leader today. Worth a read as they give tips on implementation and theorize a process for corporate sustainability.

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami

The Idea in Brief

• Sustainability isn’t the burden on bottom lines that many executives believe it to be. In fact, becoming environment-friendly can lower your costs and increase your revenues. That’s why sustainability should be a touchstone for all innovation.

• In the future, only companies that make sustainability a goal will achieve competitive advantage. That means rethinking business models as well as products, technologies, and processes.

• Becoming sustainable is a five-stage process, and each stage has its own challenges. Here’s how to tackle them and emerge from the recession ahead of the pack.

Going Green for Permission Research

I recently stumbled across a Twitter thread concerning comScore, a leading digital audience measurement organization. This thread reminded me that I haven’t been to the comScore site in a while and they are practically my neighbors here in Northern Virginia. For those of you unfamiliar with comScore they provide the following factoids on their site that help give some perspective to what they do (and how they make money!):

· comScore is a leading source of data on mobile as well as PC-based Internet usage

· comScore data are truly global – the company tracks more than 3 million unique websites worldwide and the comScore panel includes consumers from 170 countries

It was wonderful to see a front page link for the corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, as CSR often gets buried in secondary pages. It appears as though comScore, “…has partnered with Trees for the Future to plant a tree for each new person who joins PermissionResearch (a division of comScore) through the comScore Trees for Knowledge campaign.”

Digging deeper into the PermissionResearch site, I realize they have a great CSR pitch and outline very specific, and appealing, member benefits. They have software downloads (free) that range from power management software to screensavers. Additionally, there is a points-based rewards program that is a catalogue of interesting consumer products which might appeal to the CSR demographic (i.e. tents – apparently we like the outdoors a lot).

What’s in all this for comScore? Engaged research panelists that likely fit a demographic that is attractive to their customers (opinion-elites) and why, yes, trees planted to offset our carbon footprint. Hats off to comScore for developing a program that wasn’t sent to the secondary or tertiary page dungeon, clearly outlines attractive benefits for participants and also serves to move their business forward. Well done.