A recent Digital Lifestyle Information Survey from online content company Magnify.net reveals that most people, 64.2 percent, say the information streaming toward them has increased by more than 50 percent during the past year alone. A staggering 72.7 percent of them describe this deluge as: “a roaring river,” “a flood,” or “a massive tidal wave.” Not exactly descriptors indicative of an improved quality of life.

“Something happened when the world went all virtual and mouse-driven,” says XEODesign president and mobile game Tilt creator Nicole Lazzaro.  “We gained access to a lot more data and choice, but lost some of the essence of what makes us feel so good.”

Like a growing number of game designers out there, Lazzaro believes passionately that while the digital world grows more crowded and overwhelming to people, games and gamification represent a way to make life more satisfying – prompting us to play, drawing us closer into the present moment, and potentially transforming the way we live, work, learn and create.

“Today, the way that we design tasks, the way we design software, the way we design our spaces and our organizational systems really ignores one of the most important components of human abilities and that’s the emotional component,” Lazzaro says. “What games do better than most other platforms is tap into human emotions – creating opportunities for novelty, challenge, social interaction and meaning.”

Lazzaro’s perspective on play is rooted in science. Research reveals how starting from infancy, basic play behavior helps wire our brains, form our intellectual strengths and anchor our emotions. Data clearly indicates that the more we play – even throughout adulthood – the smarter and more productive we become. That’s why experts contest that play be taken far more seriously as a field of study and integrated more deeply into daily aspects of modern life. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of today’s most innovative companies are already leading the movement toward a play-based society.

For instance, at this year’s Sustainable Brands conference (June 7-10, Monterey, CA) – an annual event targeting socially-minded companies like Nike, Walmart, Starbucks, eBay, HP, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Timberland, Saatchi & Saatchi S and many others – the  “Play On” theme is all about how fun and games can transform cultures, consumption patterns and help make the world a better place.

“There is no doubt that we must continue down the path toward sustainable consumption, and that those brands that crack the nut in learning how to deliver sustainable solutions that respect and delight all stakeholders in both current and future generations will win,” says conference organizer and Sustainable Life Media CEO Koann Skrzyniarz.  “One problem has been that up until now, the vast majority of communication about the importance of sustainable consumption has lacked creativity, and leaned too heavily on guilt and fear, which we believe is counterproductive. One of the things we’re driving home this year is that humor and play can be much more powerful ways to garner attention and prompt behavior change.”

Behavior change is a worthy end goal for any business wanting to encourage support for its products, services or socially responsible initiatives. Yet, for the majority of companies out there, this outcome is an elusive one. Many brands learn the hard way that when it comes to inspiring people to think and act differently about pivotal issues, traditional marketing tactics often fall short.

“The way that most businesses communicate doesn’t move the needle fast or far enough, particularly in the realm of sustainability,” says Saatchi & Saatchi S CEO Judah Schiller. “Every message gets dull after a while. But what games represent is a way to extend the life of a message or a proposition because players actually gain that internal reward of progressing and engaging.”

“We’re all driven by the needs and desires for reward, status, achievement, competition, self expression, altruism,” adds Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer at Bunchball, a leading gamification company. “But you look at most websites, applications and programs today, how do they address or leverage those fundamental human needs?  For the most part they’re not.  They’re completely ignoring them, but game designers clearly know how to do this.”

Perhaps that’s why the gaming industry has blown up in recent years, reaching over $60 billion in annual revenues. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, the gaming industry’s compound annual growth rate of 10.3 percent exceeds growth rates achieved by the majority of competing entertainment sectors, including movies and music. By 2012, gaming is expected to be a $68 billion business.

“The number of people playing games is huge,” says Michelle Byrd, co-president of Games for Change, the organization behind 3rd World Farmer, Climate Challenge and the soon-to-be-released Facebook game for Half the Sky. “It used to be that you had people who called themselves gamer, but what’s happening now is that games have become so pervasive and the barrier to entry to being a player has come down so dramatically that the opportunity to engage people through social impact games is on the rise.”

“Today, everyone’s a gamer,” adds Richard Tate, vice president of marketing and communications at Hope Lab, a research and gaming organization targeting youth health issues. “Whether it’s Angry Birds or Bejeweled, it’s not just kids online playing World of Warcraft in their dorm rooms anymore. That evolution has really opened up the opportunity for games to shift the way people think about issues beyond entertainment. It extends the potential for games to have a huge social impact.”

The fact is that, owing to their highly emotive and ubiquitous nature, games are having a marked social impact. Take Zamzee, Hope Lab’s latest game designed to promote physical activity amongst young teens. “As we know, young people are increasingly sedentary in their behavior,” says Tate. “Zamzee motivates kids to move around about 30 percent more than they would without the product. That’s equivalent to a marathon a month of running for each kid.”

Additional examples abound. For example, if you own a Wii Fit, you know how fun action combined with positive feedback encourages you to stay in shape. If you’ve ever donated through a crowdfunding site like Kiva or Kickstarter, you’ve been encouraged by leaderboards, badges and metrics to get more involved and ultimately give more. If you drive a Ford, Nissan, GM or Toyota hybrid vehicle, you’ve witnessed the in-dash gaming system tracking your performance and subtly prompting you to improve your driving patterns in order to save gas.

“These are very substantial investments in a core idea, which is that by providing gamified feedback to a user, as they engage with a product, you can subtly shape their behavior,” says Gabe Zichermann, entrepreneur and co-author of Game-Based Marketing. “I think we’re looking forward to an incredibly fun future in which every type of interaction has some game elements in it, and we’re rewarded and positively engaged around all the behaviors that are best for us.”

Saatchi & Saatchi S’s Schiller agrees: “People really want to play,” he says. “They want to have more fun than they have been having lately in their lives, and they want to share those experiences with others. We talk a lot about social media and gaming — the two are intertwined and in the future they are going to play off each other in ways that we can still only imagine.”

In order to better understand the intersection between social engagement and games and where the play movement is headed, Saatchi & Saatchi S recently commissioned both a quantitative survey of two thousand 14-45 year olds in addition to a series of videos highlighting perspectives from industry thought leaders (disclaimer: I created and directed the videos). Both pieces of research will be unveiled at the aforementioned Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey this June.

Fueled by the internet and the public’s growing distain for corporate greed, hacktivism is a trend on the rise. Today’s hacktivists use increasingly clever tactics in order to elevate public debate about the way corporations do business. In more cases than not, they succeed.

“What we do—and what you can do too—is impersonate captains of industry, infiltrate corporate events, give absurd and revealing presentations, and then escape to tell the story in the press, hopefully to the great embarrassment of the target,” say the Yes Men, a group of hacktivists that recently punked the likes of Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Dow, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the United Nations, among others. “You don’t have to be a James Bond for this. But what you might need is a fake email address and a business card.”

Armed with little other than a fake business card, letterhead and a masterfully worded news release, the Yes Men made a big point 2009 after a U.S. Chamber of Commerce “representative”  dramatically announced during a National Press Club event that the Chamber would be changing its position on climate change policy.

“We believe that climate legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Senate is a great start towards a bill that will spur American innovation, create jobs, and give us all a good chance of survival,” the forged news release said. “We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business.”

The hoax circulated virally on You Tube and mainstream television, calling public attention to the growing number of corporations – including Nike, Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG and Levi Strauss & Co –  that had distanced themselves from the Chamber as a result of its conservative stance on climate change. But rather than publicly confront deeper issues and heed to the demands of its forward-thinking members, the Chamber filed a lawsuit against Yes Men and insisted that all videos of the hoax event be suppressed.

Perhaps Chevron will decide go the same way. Just last week the Yes Men targeted the company’s glossy new “We Agree” ad campaign with a satirical version of their own. Whereas Chevron’s campaign asks rhetorical questions like: “Should oil companies support the communities they work in?” and “Do oil companies need to get real?” Yes Men’s questions dig deeper and call attention to the company’s controversial past.

“Chevron’s super-expensive fake street art is a cynical attempt to gloss over the human rights abuses and environmental degradation that is the legacy of Chevron’s operations in Ecuador, Nigeria, Burma and throughout the world,” says Ginger Cassady, a campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, which collaborated with the Yes Men on the Chevron campaign. “They must think we’re stupid.”

Judging from Chevron’s own issued statement about the hoax, Cassady might be right. “There are some who are not interested in engaging in a constructive dialogue, and instead have resorted to rhetoric and stunts,” the company says, in full-blown denial of its own use of rhetoric and, yes, stunts.

Federal courts are now beginning to raise questions regarding Chevron’s persistent efforts to manipulate the U.S. legal system for its own gain. In an apparent effort to derail a potential multi-billion dollar environmental lawsuit against it, Chevron has filed discovery lawsuits against 23 people in the United States, including several lawyers associated with the ongoing Ecuador case. Chevron is also accused of submitting inaccurate and misleading translations to U.S. federal courts.

Wrong Answer

Legal antics aside, it is all too commonplace for corporations to respond to hacktivists in a gruff and humorless manner. But very often, such responses backfire. That’s because hacktivists are a persistent bunch. They are a professional and tactical force that leverages real data, overtakes live airwaves and mobilizes the masses. Corporate dissidence just furthers their resolve.

In response to Chevron’s issued statement, the Yes Men recently stepped up their campaign with a mock statement of their own and a plea to followers to post additional spoof print, web and TV ads online. “It’s been working,” the group says. “Search Chevron in the news and all you get is our spoof. Fifty million spent to keep our eyes off Chevron’s dirt… and it all just went down the drain!”

Lost advertising revenues are hard enough to recuperate. But what about lost corporate reputation? Some of the hardest hit companies of late leverage wholesome values, providing an easy target for hacktivists on a mission to elevate standards.

For instance, last month Hershey released its first CSR Report. Less than 24-hours later, labor rights groups Global Exchange, Green America, the International Labor Rights Forum and Oasis USA launched a counter report (convincingly titled “Raising the Bar: The Real Corporate Social Responsibility Report for the Hershey Company”) and accompanying web campaign.

“In the United States, Hershey conjures up innocent childhood pleasures and enjoyable snacks,” the counter report says. “However, halfway across the globe, there is a dark side to Hershey. In West Africa, where Hershey sources much of its cocoa, the scene is one of child labor, trafficking, and forced labor.”

According to Global Exchange, despite the fact that Hershey is a brand that both targets and supports youth through its marketing and philanthropy, the company seems unwilling or unable to adequately address the countless children harmed by its supply chain practices. Whereas competitors including Cadbury and Nestlé have at least made tentative steps toward labor reform, Hershey lags behind.

“Maybe Hershey is unaware of how this story has played out before and that some kind of reform is inevitable,” says fair trade chocolate company Equal Exchange’s Rodney North. “Or perhaps they are cynically stalling and trying to put off real reforms for as long as possible.”

Hershey’s real motive for stalled progress is anyone’s guess. The company has done little if anything to publicly acknowledge labor problems, let alone address the burgeoning online crusade against it.

“Hershey has not responded to any part of our campaign,” says Global Exchange’s Adrienne Fitch-Frankel. “We haven’t gotten a response to our repeated requests for meetings either, which is disappointing since this is a company that’s using child labor and child slavery. Their silence is really quite disturbing.”

Hershey might not be talking, but hacktivists, investors, NGO’s, film-makers, journalists, mothers and even children themselves are. Collectively, these stakeholders tell a convincing story.

You can run. But you can’t hide.

As the webcast beamed out live to an audience of over a thousand viewers, thought leaders including The Economist’s Matthew Bishop, ThomsonReuters’ Chrystia Freeland, UN Global Compact’s George Kell, BSR’s Aaron Cramer, Campbell Soup’s Dave Stangis and GE Foundation’s Bob Corcoran argued about concept that evidently means different things to different people. As moderator of the debate, my intent was to “navigate” the conversation to the point where a “side” would “prevail.” But within the first few minutes, I realized why efforts in this direction were futile.

“What do we mean by corporate social responsibility (CSR)?” asked Karnani. “It’s not just that the terminology is clunky. It is also unclear.”

Indeed, it is unclear. According to a study published by Wiley InterScience, there are approximately thirty-seven different definitions of CSR floating about the business world. This problem is compounded by dozens of competing CSR or sustainability-related measurement and certification programs. Do well-meaning corporations adopt Cradle-to-Cradle or B-Corp standards? Should they join the Global Compact or Social Accountability 8000? Do Fair Trade or Ethical Trade models make the bigger difference? Who knows?

What we do know is that the old-school CSR rhetoric utterly fails to resonate. At least that was something both sides could agree on. “The problem with the rhetoric is that it can create confusion about what a business is doing in it’s core, versus what it likes to talk about or claim public credit for,” said Freeland, who pointed to campaigns issued by BP, PepsiCo and Goldman Sachs as examples of marketing hypocrisy.

Beyond the language and clear instances of greenwashing, however, there was a deeper point to be made, particularly by practitioners on the panel. When so-called CSR is most effective – when it generates so much value for stakeholders and shareholders that corporations cannot afford to stop investing in it – then it is no longer regarded as CSR, but good business strategy. GE’s multi-billion dollar investments in clean energy and affordable health care stand as a testament to this.

“If you label CSR or corporate citizenship as purely a philanthropic activity, then I agree that’s misguided,” said GE’s Corcoran. “[Authentic CSR] is about the core of what a business does, how it does that, and what it sells that is of value, that helps to meet unmet needs.”

Campbell’s Soup’s Dave Stangis agreed. “CSR is there [at Campbell’s] not because it’s nice to do, but because it makes the company better. It takes money from the supply chain, makes us more nimble and drives innovation.”

Still, despite the demonstrable move toward CSR-driven business models, Karnani insisted that corporations have no obligation to solve society’s ills. “That is the role of government regulation,” he said. “Governments are a far more effective protector of the public good than any campaign for corporate social responsibility.”

Here is where a second key distinction lies. It is one thing for corporations to conduct business ethically – trading within boundaries set by law. However, it is quite another thing for corporations to use laws as a strategic compass. Those that do will be playing catch up forever.

There is also the matter of our transformed society. “We don’t live in a world where government’s only job is to set and enforce rules and businesses only job is to sell products and services within those boundaries,” said Cramer. “We live in a transparent world, a globally connected world, a world where civil society plays a big role, where global markets exist but global governance does not.”  Despite the clunky language, today’s CSR is fundamentally about collaboration, which means getting to optimal solutions faster than if we waited around for regulation or business to advance independently, Cramer explained.

“What is really going on here is a struggle to determine what tomorrow’s markets are going to be in a world that’s changing very fast, where all the old boundaries are breaking down,” said Bishop. “Now we’re all workers, consumers, capitalists and voters. And we’re trying to work out the right institutional arrangements to govern in that new world.”

So where does the “Great CSR Debate” leave divided minds? Perhaps right back where they started, or perhaps pondering the following choice: respond to the new reality, or don’t. Stangis put it this way: “This isn’t a debate about right or wrong, winning or losing. For me, it’s about changing the world, one company at a time – or sitting on the outside describing why that can’t happen.”

When companies lose trust, they often lose capital. Case in point: Gulf disaster stocks BP, Halliburton, Transocean and Anadarko each sank between 25 and 45 percent during the past four months. The Goldman Sachs-SEC debacle pushed company shares down by 15 percent, and the Dow down by 130 points. Massey stock plunged 42 percent following a deadly string of safety failures. Toyota shares dropped 16 percent following its massive recall. And as of today, none of these companies has fully rebounded, indicating the markets grow slower to forgive.

“The last couple of years have provided plenty of reasons for a building sense of mistrust,” says Motley Fool’s Alyce Lomax. “Goldman Sachs and BP have become the most recent high-profile examples of the many big institutions whose highly paid managers seem to be only out for themselves. ”

Indeed, the lost faith Lomax describes seems to be the principle reason why many more investors demand greater honesty, disclosure, transparency, and professionalism from corporations – and flee stocks that don’t deliver. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article on the topic: “Small investors’ faith in stocks, which surged in the 1990s, has collapsed since the technology-stock debacle and the Enron and WorldCom scandals of 2000-2002…Investors talk of a growing disillusionment with big institutions, including corporations, government, banks and political parties.”

The reasons for today’s trust deficit are clear enough. What apparently isn’t as clear, particularly to the large corporations whose stocks are affected, is what to do differently in order to set things straight.

For the most part, the corporations mentioned above used a classic crisis management approach: deny, deflect, spin, repeat. Rather than open up, they withheld information. They denigrated critics, blamed others and refused to answer pertinent questions or engage in meaningful debate. They hid behind the veneer of canned statements and corporate rhetoric – with the occasional blunder thrown in.

There is “no evidence” that huge plumes of oil are suspended undersea, said BP. The charges against us will “hurt America,” said Goldman. The safety-related allegations against us are “a big lie,” said Massey. The independent research from Stanford University was “staged,” said Toyota.

When it comes to rebuilding lost trust, propaganda makes a bad problem worse. What improves situations is candor. Candor conciliates, clarifies and cuts through hype. Candor works. It’s the greed of the Twenty-first Century.

“Candor in business – or in any kind of organization – is a rare and wondrous thing,” write Suzy and Jack Welch in their book, Winning. “Rare because so few companies have it. Wondrous because when they do, everything just operates faster and better.”

Consider the success of online retailer Zappos, which grew its recently acquired, billion dollar business in under five years by forging open and honest relationships with people. From its standing invitation to the general public to come tour Zappos’ headquarters to its progressive use of blogs, videos and books – Zappos gives people outside the company an uncensored look inside the corporate culture. It even goes to so far as to share best practices with competitors.

“A lot of companies feel they need to guard the secret sauce,” said Zappos marketing executive Aaron Magness in a recent interview. “We’re very open to talking about our business model and plans with everyone. We’ve learned a lot along the way and made mistakes that a lot of other companies don’t need to make.”

Smart companies like Zappos don’t just aim for candor. They leverage it, invest in it, profit from it, and build new communities around it. For instance, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs freely about what his company and industry does right and wrong, engaging people on all sides of his business. Apparel company Patagonia tracks the social and environmental impact of its products from design through delivery, encouraging customers to buy smarter and contribute to rich discussions. Seventh Generation reveals the full list of ingredients used in its household products, earning customer loyalty and pressuring its industry to follow suit.

Candid companies help restore lost trust and balance to the markets. Rather than telling shareholders or stakeholders what to think, they allow the community to draw its own conclusions, which is precisely why people believe in them. As Seventh Generation’s Jeffrey Hollender said in a recent speech: “You can’t judge yourself to be sustainable or responsible. You can only be judged by others.”

“We can help make a big dent,” Microsoft SVP and General Counsel Brad Smith told a group of journalists, bloggers and industry influencers at the company’s recent Citizenship Accelerator Summit. “These photos live on the Internet forever and every time they are shared or viewed, the children in them are re-victimized. It’s not enough to stop the perpetrators. The real point is getting these images off the Internet.”

In 2009, Microsoft donated a new technology to the NCMEC that has the potential to make the kind of dent Smith talks about. The technology, called PhotoDNA, was initially created by Microsoft Research and then further developed by Hany Farid, a leading digital-imaging expert and professor of computer science at Dartmouth College. Using a unique digital blueprinting technology that has a 98 percent accuracy rate, PhotoDNA finds hidden copies of the worst images of child sexual exploitation known today.

“The [Photo DNA] project is unique in that it is challenging from a technical and engineering point of view, and has the potential to significantly impact the distribution of the horrifying and troubling trafficking of child porn,” says Farid. “It is rare as an academic to work on something that has both of these properties.”

Although major content hosters such as Yahoo and Google enforce content standards as a matter of practice, the manual and human-intensive processes they rely on to remove inappropriate posts are no match for the sheer volume of child porn online today. That is why a technology like PhotoDNA, which is used by Microsoft’s own Bing search engine, is so necessary. But there are other reasons, too.

“This project is also extremely important because nobody else seems able or willing to publicly address it in a significant way,” Farid says. Indeed, PhotoDNA has received scant attention from the mainstream press, probably because it centers on a problem that no one likes to talk about. Were Microsoft purely motivated by publicity, then their safest bet would probably have been to lay low on the chid porn issue. But to the contrary, Microsoft is moving in the opposite direction. With its A Childhood for Every Child campaign, launched as a complementary effort to PhotoDNA and in conjunction with NCMEC, Microsoft urges the public to take a greater interest in this important cause.

According to Farid and others, this is a case where corporate interests effectively – and perhaps even altruistically – work for the greater good. “I am generally cautious of partnering with corporations,” says Farid. “The Microsoft team, however, has been incredibly committed to working on this problem with no obvious financial benefit.”

Whereas Microsoft’s direct financial incentives are still to be determined, the benefits of leveraging the company’s reach and innovation in order to tackle a pervasive social problem are clear enough. “Very few companies can operate at the same level as Microsoft,” Farid says.

Theoretically PhotoDNA’s underlying technology could be applied to various problems related to Internet content – resulting in social and financial upsides. With respect to child porn, Farid says that PhotoDNA is likely only the first in a series of technologies that he and Microsoft will develop to disrupt the flow of images across the Internet. “We will continually enhance PhotoDNA to contend with counter-measures employed by traffickers. We will also extend this work to analyze video.”

Whatever lies ahead, it isn’t any wonder why Farid characterizes his current collaboration with Microsoft as: “the single most important thing that I have done in my career.” Let’s hope he’s not alone – and that more leaders in the technology space will step up to help make the Internet a safer place.

“Company stakeholders from investors to customers to employees to regulators watch the 100 Best Corporate Citizens List closely, and are using it now more than ever to make important decisions,” said Corporate Responsibility magazine publisher Jay Whitehead in a recent press release. “As a result, making the List is worth millions or even billions in increased shareholder and brand value.”

This should be good news for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Monsanto which, despite their notoriety, have been counted as “Best Citizens” by Corporate Responsibility numerous times. “When someone asks you to define corporate transparency, show them this list,” touts the magazine. But to an increasing number of observers, the transparency seems elusive – as does a clear indication of what the CSR industry stands for.

“Corporate Responsibility magazine’s so-called transparency only extends one layer deep,” observes Sea Change Media executive director Bill Baue. “We can see the categories and weightings, but we can’t see the rationale behind the decisions on actual scoring of company performance.” Baue notes that organizations including Corporate Responsibility collect data from business executives whose names and positions are not revealed, leaving questions about a company’s true impact on society unanswered. “Input from external stakeholders would make the methodology much more robust and credible,” he says.

Baue isn’t the only one questioning the value of CSR performance rankings. As evidenced by blogs and discussion boards across the web, a growing number of people are frustrated by CSR industry lists and the manner in which they are constructed. Some even perceive a pattern of favoritism. “Unlike programs like the Nobel prizes, Macarthur Fellowships, or Economist Innovation awards, the companies that run CSR awards and lists often have an incentive to fix the results,” says Martin Smith, founder and CEO of CSR industry website Just Means. “For instance, Corporate Responsibility magazine makes money from the companies that it rates in its annual list (through sponsorship, registration fees for events, and brand licensing arrangements). This, in any industry, would be seen as a conflict of interest, but in the realm of CSR and business ethics it is purely hypocritical.”

The backlash against CSR industry lists is nothing new. Last year, financial news site 24/7 Wall Street warned global equity investors to take Ethisphere’s results with a grain of salt, indicating: “the basis on which [the list] was put together is a bit naive and it appears to be troubled by several conflicts of interest.” In 2005, green business writer Joel Makower criticized Corporate Knight’s approach, saying: “The rankings only go so far. The whole exercise raises as many questions as it answers.” And when Corporate Responsibility magazine (previously called Business Ethics) first released its list, green media company AlterNet complained: “When one looks at this list, it is easy to be baffled at the real meaning of CSR. It is riddled with companies that have significant blemishes on their record when it comes to environmental matters, labor practices or treatment of customers. The likes of Wal-Mart and Big Oil have not yet made the cut, but that may be only a matter of time.”

Clearly the time has come, as many of the world’s most profitable oil, food, agriculture, pharmaceutical and retail companies are featured on the latest “most ethical,” “best citizen,” “greenest,” and “most sustainable” company lists. Given this fact, one has to wonder: Is the CSR industry completely missing the point? And if so, then so what?

Critics see several downsides to the muddle. “CSR is often too hard for the average consumer to grasp when making a purchasing decision, so companies use lists as stamps of approval,” says Smith. “But unfortunately, not only are the lists misleading for consumers, they actually bring an overall lack of credibility to the entire field of sustainable business.”

Given the importance of sustainable business practices to the future of the planet and its people, this lost credibility is a real concern. “The most vital CSR issue to measure is whether a company is operating sustainably, in the scientific sense,” says Baue. “Environmentally, for example, is the company using natural resources at a rate that allows for the planet to regenerate them sufficiently to provide for future generations?  Unfortunately, almost no companies [on the lists] fully integrate sustainability into their business models, and almost no CSR industry lists consider the sustainability context.”

What Next?

If inclusion on a CSR list translates to “millions or even billions in shareholder and brand value” as Corporate Responsibility magazine indicates, then it stands to reason that some investor and consumer wealth is being channeled in the wrong direction – toward companies that, to Baue’s point, may invest a few pennies in CSR, but make millions or billions of dollars in profits by selling things in ways that take a huge toll on society. This isn’t right. But are CSR industry lists entirely wrong? Not according to some profiled companies.

Dave Stangis, vice president of CSR and sustainability at Campbell Soup Company (which ranked number 12 on Corporate Responsibility magazine’s 2010 list) sees both an underlying purpose and a path forward. “No matter how bad a list is, there is something inherently useful about it,” he says. “It is easy to look at a list and poke holes in it, but what I’m trying to do is use the methodology and questions asked to determine what strategic elements I need to improve inside my company.”

Corporate Responsibility’s analysis, conducted by investment firm IW Financial, assesses 360 data points of public information across seven categories, including human rights, philanthropy and environment. But unfortunately, the same breadth of field that helps companies like Campbell’s to identify strategic weaknesses allows controversial companies to slip through the cracks. “People were up in arms this year, wondering how an oil company like Hess could be considered the tenth best corporate citizen,” says Stangis.  “But in terms of the questions IW Financial asks, such as: Does the company measure its carbon footprint? What violations occurred? How many people were injured? Hess fared well, since they got credit on the disclosures.”

Disclosures aside, many are wondering when CSR industry lists will get around to rewarding companies for creating positive value rather than merely mitigating risk. “These lists should showcase companies that are helping us innovative away from industries like oil, vertically integrated agriculture, and so forth,” Smith says. Stangis agrees: “I think the lists of the future are going to have to better address the issue of strategic opportunity. The real question is: can we finally come up with a list that rewards companies for producing products and services that meet unmet [social and environmental] needs, rather than just minimizing potential damage?”

Surely, that would be something worth recognizing.

“We finally let off our last two passengers, celebrity artist Wyclef Jean and a young orthopedic surgeon from Grand Rapids, a father of four who had been in Haiti since day three performing emergency amputations with borrowed farm equipment,” Swartz recounts. “That gave me thirty-five minutes of one-on-one time with Bill, who I never get to be alone with. But I don’t think we said a word to each other the rest of the trip.”

Swartz and Shore were likely in shock. The full-blown mental processing of what they had just endured in and around Haiti would begin later, as they assimilated back into their previous routines. As part of his re-acclamation process, Swartz wrote a series of downloads to Timberland stakeholders – including a Fast Company blog post, which summarizes his takeaways, and a personal letter to employees entitled: “Bearing Witness to Haiti,” which provides a remarkable play-by-play account of his physical and emotional experience.

“I felt I needed to get this off my chest,” says Swartz. “So I wrote about the heroism of the many doctors we saw, the heartbreak of the destruction, the inspiration I felt with Bill and Wyclef, and the indignation I felt at the world’s well-intended but inept efforts to cope with this disaster.”

Also, Swartz says, he wanted to leave people with a solid indication of why a boot-making CEO would personally venture “to hell and back,” as he puts it, despite the risks involved in doing so. Just prior to his trip, reports of street violence in Haiti had escalated as millions of citizens struggled to survive a series of powerful aftershocks without adequate food, water, shelter, government or emergency support. Given the magnitude of the situation, how could a few individuals – let alone a corporate CEO – possibly make a significant difference? And besides, what would Swartz and the Timberland organization stand to gain from such a venture?

“Before I left for this hastily-planned trip, people  – many of them rightfully disgruntled family members – demanded to know what I hoped to accomplish,” Swartz says. “I always replied, honestly, that I didn’t know and wouldn’t know until it happened.”

But Swartz discovered answers in Haiti – several of which hold significance for business leaders interested in blending commerce with conscience. “[What I learned was that] CEO as disaster volunteer is not a good model. But, CEO as witness — that is a different story,” he says. “What my eyes have seen, my heart has felt. And so this voyage is just beginning.”

World-Changing Leadership

World-changing business leadership requires three things: enhanced perspective – the ability to see clearly issues and patterns of significance that others don’t; personal resolve – the sheer determination to make a positive difference in the world; and formative relationships – the collaborative connections that amplify individual and organizational effectiveness. While in Haiti, Swartz solidified all three.

The experience appears to have permanently bonded Swartz, Shore and Wyclef. Swartz and Shore, who remain dear friends, serve on each other’s boards and recently confirmed their commitment to the Timberland-Share Our Strength cause partnership. Swartz also agreed to serve on Wyclef’s Yéle Haiti Foundation board in an effort to deepen their existing relationship.

The Timberland-Yéle Haiti alliance has resulted in notable innovations since it was formed back in 2009, including a successful line of eco-conscious boots. For every pair of Timberland Earthkeepers™ Yéle Haiti boots sold, Timberland donates $2 to Yéle Haiti to support restoration and environmental education projects in Haiti.

After the earthquake struck, the relationship took a necessary turn. Wyclef was in Haiti helping to deliver aid, collect dead bodies from the streets and, via CNN and other international news sources, broadcast the urgent need for more efficient disaster relief. At the same time, Yéle Haiti was accused of financial impropriety. That was when Swartz realized he needed to stand by Wyclef in a literal sense. In addition to publicly voicing his support, Swartz joined forces with him on the ground.

“Wyclef is a man of many faces,” writes Swartz in his letter to employees. “We know him as a musician and a celebrity, for sure, but if I jump ahead and tell you about [who I saw in] Wyclef by the end of this voyage, I would speak of an immensely gentle, noble, powerful man — one part dreamer, one part prophet, one part revolutionary. And one part real friend.”

In fact, Clef (as Swartz now calls him) proved himself full of surprises during their Haiti voyage. Upon landing in Port-au-Prince, he casually announced that he had arranged for a meeting between their burgeoning convoy – which now included Swartz, Clef, Shore, action movie star Vin Diesel and an armed security detail – and the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez.

“There I am decked out in my disaster duds: Timberland hiking boots, cargo pants, travel shirt, baseball cap, and Smartwool base layer.  Not exactly presidential visit attire,” recounts Swartz. “Clef whips out a suit he brought, just in case.”

The meeting proceeds and Swartz is struck by the surreal nature of it all. “There’s Vin and the gun show flexing in one chair, the President looking presidential, Clef suited up, and me in my ‘let’s go hiking’ look.”

Despite his dorky get-up, Swartz, whose Dominican Republic-based boot factory employs approximately 1,800 local citizens and has operated in the country for 25 years, jumped at the opportunity to put his personal resolve into play. He helped do what previous negotiators had failed to: temporarily open the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti so that vital supplies could flow through.

“What I said was: “Señor Presidente, history is watching. How do you want to be judged? Haitians are dying because aid is not reaching the people, and we can help solve that  problem—with your help. From our warehouses in the Dominican Republic, Timberland can consolidate and ship by our trucking network. Yéle Haiti is prepared to receive and distribute the aid. Are you prepared to let the trucks go through without the usual bureaucracy?”

President Fernandez agreed. With that, Swartz turned his attentions to the Timberland team, both in the Dominican Republic and back in New England. Failure to move food and supplies across the boarder was no longer an option, Swartz realized, and so he instructed his staff accordingly: “Don’t tell me that you can’t find a way to get stuff across the border,” he told them. “If stuff gets stuck at the border because you guys can’t figure out an innovative way to get the job done, please understand the consequences. If you have to beg, borrow or steal – just make it happen.”

And they did. Later that day, Swartz’s convoy arrived in Cite Soleil – the City of the Sun –  one of the worst slums in Port-au-Prince. In his letter to employees, Swartz portrays a vivid account of his experience handing out 8,000 hot meals to a crowd of starving people. Here is an extended passage:

…Clef says: “Not a lot of blanche (white people) in Cite Soleil. Should be interesting.” Just what I’m looking for – interesting. Because as the convoy weaves through the city, I am reduced to holding the video camera in my lap and filming my knee. I can’t believe the physical destruction. Nor the swarm of humans walking. People walking in the streets — this is one of the overwhelming images of this voyage. Where are they going? What are they seeking? Walking, everywhere. Streets choked with dust and detritus and despair, and folks out walking. Whole blocks just leveled…

We are in the Cite to feed the hungry. We’ve  already seen a UN convoy heading from the airport to distribute food and water — white armored personnel carriers, soldiers in body armor and combat gear, turret gunners manning loaded weapons, sirens blaring, trucks roaring through the clogged streets — just to hand out fifty pound bags of rice. Clef reminds me that good intentions don’t feed people. Fifty pound bags of of rice are not all that helpful when there is no pot, no cooking fire, and no clean water anywhere with which to cook the rice.

The Yéle model is a little different — we  brought food from the Dominican Republic, food that Yéle purchased, and somehow, in this destroyed city, Clef’s team cooked 8,000 hot meals of Haitian cuisines (goat stew).  Someone “found” 8,000 styrofoam takeout trays from one of the  destroyed restaurants somewhere in town. And found a truck. Here’s the truck, here’s the meals, here’s Clef with a bullhorn shouting in Creole, and here is a mighty river of the hungry, lining up to be fed. With sweat pouring off of everyone, we began to hand out the meals.

It started “OK,” meaning I’m handing meals to human beings, little kids in Creole or French saying “thanks.” I am trying to say something in French for encouragement, we are working hard in the sunny version of hell, but despite everyone’s best efforts, all of a sudden, it starts to get tense. The Yéle volunteers are shouting at the folks in line in Creole: “don’t push, don’t push,” but you could see in the eyes of the mothers and the fathers and the children, everyone watching the pile of cooked meals in the back of the truck get smaller and smaller and a sense of despair and maybe even panic: “Will I get a meal for my child before they run out?”  And so all of a sudden, the business of Sunday lunch heads in the wrong direction — the river of hungry humans becomes a raging river, pressing forward, starting to crush each other and us. And so the security guys – with good  intentions – shove themselves in front of us, and everyone started taking out their weapons. I heard safeties being taken off and I knew we were not far from a really bad situation.

At this point I was kinda crushed behind a wall of security people, up against the open back of the truck. In front of me, not three humans deep away, there was a little girl. And someone must have stepped on her or something – she started to cry. In the raging ocean of human suffering—her tears and her fear was too much for me. So I reached between two security guys and put my hand on her and shouted in French: “It’s OK, I’m gonna get you.” I couldn’t lift her up; I was wedged too tightly. But now I was back in CEO mode and so I said to the security guy in front of me: “get me that little girl.” And he did. Lifted her up and passed her back to me and I held her tight, in my arms, and she was sobbing and so was I.  I held onto her, maybe eight years old, talking to her in French, and after about 30 seconds she stopped crying.  Because the crushing that was hurting her—that’s gone now. I’m holding her and we’re behind a security guy and so she’s not going to get crushed. So she stopped crying.

Kills me. My view of the world says, she should have still been crying.  But her view of the world is: “No. I may not have a home, I may be hungry, I may be living in hell – but that’s normal. That isn’t worth crying over. If someone is hurting me on top of all that, then I’ll cry.” I handed her a meal and off she went – as if to say: “I’m going back to the normal despair of my day and I can handle that, don’t need your help, thanks a million and have a good day.”

We went back to handing out the food. The crush didn’t go away, but the fear of a bad scene did. Everyone got their heads around the fact that we had 8,000 meals — not  8,001. So if you get one, great, if you don’t…I don’t know what. Clef exhorting the crowd; people shouting, crying, waiting…I’m still kinda pinned against the truck when, from under the truck, a little brown hand reaches out and grabs my cargo calf. Scared the hell out of me. I  look down, and there is a little hand clutching my leg. Can’t see the child — he or she has crawled through the densest crush of people I’ve ever seen, wriggled under the truck, and grabbed me — signaling: “I beat the line, now give me a meal.” I slipped one down to the hand; the hand grabbed it and vanished.  My heart still has not come back — a child, figuring out how to get a meal…

This is just one of a series of intense experiences that left Swartz traumatized, and yet focused on what needed to be done. “How am I feeling today? I don’t know. I don’t feel so good,” he says. “I still haven’t yet got my mind around the question: How can we let this happen?”

Swartz admits to being far less patient today than he was before his trip, particularly toward those who perceive insurmountable challenges. “If a small-scale boot maker from New Hampshire, a prophet dreamer called Wyclef and a social justice guru like Bill Shore can take a field trip to Haiti and as a consequence, 8,000 people get served and a [border opens], you can’t tell me it can’t be done,” he says. “This isn’t in my, Clef’s or Billy’s job description – and yet I’ve got the pictures, and I can show you the faces of the people we helped. So when folks say it’s an impossible situation, that’s just not true. We have the intellectual capital. We have the resources. The question is: do we have the will to make the hard choices?”

The will is alive and present at Timberland. As an outdoor company with a direct connection to the environment and local population, Timberland promises to pursue both reforestation projects that repopulate Haiti’s more desolate areas with newly planted trees, as well as broader initiatives that help struggling citizens to help themselves. “We have a strength to share,” Swartz says, “and we are going to share it.”

“Most consumers don’t know where the gold in their products comes from, or how it is mined,” says NoDirtyGold.org, a group that encourages retailers to cease carrying gold that comes from illegal sources.  “Gold mining is a dirty industry: it can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments.”

Dirty gold is no marginal issue. According to a recent 60 Minutes report, dirty gold mining is rather pervasive, and is also responsible for “the deadliest war since WWII.” Five million people have reportedly died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a war primarily funded by gold mined in the country by warlords, and then smuggled out to be sold in retail stores around the world. Could that bracelet you just bought at Wal-Mart have come from illegal gold originated in Congo? According to 60 Minute’s findings, it is a vague possibility.

As part of an in-depth investigative research process, 60 Minutes talked to some of the Nation’s premier gold retailers in order to determine which companies could trace their gold back to a particular mine. One retailer, Tiffany & Co., said it could trace nearly all of its gold back to a particular mine in Utah. On the other hand, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest purveyor of gold, was far less certain about the origin of its products. The company said it plans to trace the source of 10 percent of its gold products by 2010. But given the scope of the tragedy in Congo, critics say Wal-Mart’s plan leaves much to be desired.

“Wal-Mart has moved so dramatically and impressively on its sustainability initiatives, that it’s surprising, and disappointing, to see them moving so tentatively on dirty gold,” says Gil Friend, author of The Truth About Green Business and CEO of sustainability consulting firm Natural Logic. “Their goal is too low, and their pace is too slow.”

As Friend and 60 Minutes point out, if Wal-Mart were to demand traceability all the way back to the mine on all the gold that it sells, it could have tremendous commercial implications for the industry – not to mention help put an end to a tragic war. In appreciation of this fact, Wal-Mart just signed on to support NoDirtyGold’s “Golden Rules” of gold mining, along with retailers Kmart, JCPenny, Blue Nile, Van Cleef & Arpels and many others.

Grassroots campaign support is at least an optimistic sign. It represents a first step toward ethical gold sourcing and sends a message to the market that will hopefully help to kick off the process of purging illegal gold from the global supply chain. But as gold industry insiders point out, in order to successfully shift to a socially just and truly sustainable industry “gold standard,” there is still quite a distance to travel and also, systemic issues to consider. For instance, to what extent are communities around the world affected by gold mining? And what about the industry’s overall ecological footprint?

“Customers need to understand that the environmental impact of gold mining in our own country is quite devastating, even though the US is a developed country with strong environmental policies,” says Meghan Connolly Haupt, founder of San Franciso-based sustainable fine jewelry company C5. “The largest mine on earth is actually in Utah and measures 2.5 miles wide and one mile deep. It is visible from outer space. This is an important piece of information for consumers because it helps shatter the perception that the issues associated with mining are exclusive to developing countries.”

Haupt explains that no matter where it occurs, gold mining is associated with the destruction of habitats and volumes of waste. One gold ring results in more than 30 tons of mine waste, she says. And that’s a quantity that continues to go almost completely unchecked. Where are the industry standards and safeguards?

“The industry as a whole has operated in almost the same way for many decades with little regard for the environmental and social impact,” says Haupt. “Lack of customer demand is often quoted as the reason the industry has been slow to change. But mining is a global industry and there are no universally accepted standards or industry certifications at this time. Those companies with the resources to devote to promoting change are often those that are the most stifled by existing operations.”

Perhaps that’s why large retailers lag behind pure-play, sustainable jewelers like C5 in terms of sustainable performance. In C5’s case, the supply chain is miniscule by comparison, so clearly there is a built-in advantage. Innovative, sensible and sensitive methodologies are a lot easier to implement and achieve.

Haupt crafts jewelry made with either recycled or fair-trade metal, using processes with minimal social and environmental impact. As her company reminds consumers, every piece of jewelry purchased from C5 versus a mainstream jeweler is one less that contributes to pollution, destruction of habitats, forced labor, displacement of communities and other negative impacts.

“I started C5 company to help create a systemic change in the jewelry sector,” says Haupt. “By leading the sustainable jewelry movement, we are helping to raise the standard of business, which translates into positive economic development in some of the world’s most impoverished countries.”

C5 is just now launching its first two collections of finished jewelry, and according to Haupt the company will be expanding those lines in 2010. Though as a start-up C5’s financial future is somewhat uncertain, its value proposition is abundantly clear. Talk about your statement pieces.

Going in, there was significant skepticism about the developed world’s ability to work with emerging economies in order to come to a workable agreement on how to share the burdens related to climate change. Now, with only a moderately aggressive climate change agreement in place, the IEA estimates that global oil consumption will continue to rise – and with it, greenhouse gas emissions, international tensions, and the race of top oil firms to tap into the world’s reserves wherever and however they can.

Deep in the trenches of Ecuador lies an unfortunate victim of the developed world’s unwillingness to more rapidly taper its addiction to fossil fuels. It is a primal rainforest – an incredibly pristine and biodiverse region, holding the greatest known selection of trees, insects and amphibians on earth. The Amazon rainforest serves a distinct purpose for humanity, providing essential nutrients, absorbing large quantities of carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen into the atmosphere. It is home to several indigenous communities, including the Achuar, Shuar, and Kichwa peoples, who have lived there for millennia.

Over 35 oil firms keep a keen eye on this precious ecosystem, as they have great incentive to unearth what lies beneath. “We’ve been following oil and gas development in the Amazon since 2004 and the picture has changed before our eyes,” Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests told The Guardian back in 2008. “When you look at where the oil and gas blocks are, they overlap perfectly on top of the peak biodiversity spots, almost as if by design, and this is in one of the most, if not the most, biodiverse place on Earth.”

According to a recently published research report from Save America’s Forests, there are now 180 oil and gas blocks (ongoing extraction projects) covering 688,000 kilometers of forest in the Western Amazon alone. Many of the blocks cover protected areas, such as national parks, that were originally established for biodiversity protection. The oil blocks invade indigenous community living territories, which is why community members have attempted to organize themselves, taking grassroots and legal action against oil firms.

“The Shuar and Achuar peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon want it to be known that the position of our communities is ‘no’ to oil exploration, ‘no’ to dialogue and negotiation, ‘no’ to deforestation, ‘no’ to contamination, and ‘no’ to all oil activities,” says Bosco Najamdey, President of the Shuar Federation on Amazonwatch.org, a website dedicated to depicting indigenous community efforts against oil firms ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Hunt Oil and others.

In a November 2009 letter issued to Hunt Oil CEO Ray Hunt, tribal leaders sent a fervent message:

“The area in dispute, besides being a declared nature reserve, crosses the headwaters of several important river basins, and lies in the buffer zones of Manu and Bahuaja Sonene National Parks, two of the most biodiverse national parks in the world…

Ten indigenous communities live around and benefit from the reserve. It is their ancestral territory. They were never consulted by the Peruvian government or Hunt Oil and are opposed to the operations. FENAMAD (the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios) has repeatedly protested the company’s operations and recently filed an injunction against the company based on the potential damage to the watershed and the lack of consultation. Thus far Hunt has refused to cede to any of FENAMAD’s demands and the government has sent only low-level officials to talks and armed forces to patrol the area rather than hold meaningful talks with the indigenous communities.”

Whether oil firms like Hunt operating in the region will acknowledge tribal voices and leave the rainforest in tact, or whether they will press on with exploration projects, potentially leading to future fatal clashes between protesting locals and the government’s armed forces, remains to be seen. But clearly, the Amazon’s indigenous communities have a rigorous battle ahead of them.

From a legal perspective it isn’t clear which side has the upper hand. According to Save America’s Forests, local governments claim the authority to manage natural resources located on or below indigenous peoples territories for the public interest. Thus far, when the government has concluded that opening the rainforest to extraction projects benefits the public – generating energy, tax dollars, jobs and so forth – they have done so without prior informed consent from indigenous communities. On the other hand, indigenous communities protest the lack of consultation. They claim that their existing property and territory rights allows them the right to free, prior and informed consent regarding proposed extractive projects on their lands.

As tapping into the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves becomes more costly and difficult for corporations, tension in the rainforest builds. Do indigenous communities stand a chance against the will of governments supported by Hunt, Chevron and ConocoPhillips? What will it take to save the most priceless real estate on earth?

Expanding Worldviews

The Achuar, Shuar, and Kichwa peoples have one thing that oil companies don’t: ancient wisdom. If effectively leveraged, it is hypothesized that such wisdom could translate to a groundswell of public support for the ‘save the rainforest’ cause. Ancient wisdom could potentially build bridges of mutual understanding between indigenous communities and mainstream Western culture. Ultimately, it could help win the ongoing “Amazon oil war” in a way that benefits all humanity.

The Amazon rainforest’s indigenous leaders, along with strategic partners here in the United States, envision a sweeping wisdom-sharing mission to be carried out. The Pachamama Alliance, a San Francisco-based non-profit group dedicated to preserving the rainforest by empowering indigenous communities, has stepped in to carry this wisdom-sharing process forward.

“Hundreds of organizations have formed and are doing important work addressing virtually every level of the (rainforest destruction) problem. And yet, rainforests continue to fall, by some estimates at the rate of 10 million trees per day,” says Pachamama on its website. “Our goal is to successfully combine the best elements of worldviews into a single global vision, an alloy that blends the intellectual and scientific prowess of the modern world, with the deep and ancient wisdom of traditional cultures. This is the commitment which underlies all of our work.”

Pachamama co-founders Lynne and Bill Twist recently announced the formation of an “Urgency Coalition” campaign planned for 2010, which aims to “wake up, motivate and inspire” people around the world through communications that impart bits of ancient wisdom. Portland-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, creator of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, has been tagged as the creative force behind the initiative.

“The next four years [are] critical if we are to reach the tipping point in human thinking that will be necessary to achieve environmental sustainability and social justice on the planet in our lifetimes,” says Pachamama. According to Pachamama, the Urgency Coalition campaign will set a high bar, aiming to transform the way people see the world.

In addition to executing transformative campaigns, Pachamama also hosts regularly scheduled rainforest trips, where ecotourists undergo total immersion in the Amazon experience and gain a new life perspective. “Become one of a handful of people to experience a direct, intimate encounter with the Achuar,” Pachamama says in its online marketing brochure. “Learn what it’s like to live in harmony with the Earth directly from the elders and shamans of one of the world’s oldest and most intact remaining dream cultures.” Apparently, this trip is as once-in-a-lifetime as it gets. When people see and experience what the Achuar’s have to offer and teach the Western world, their natural instinct is to want to spread the word virally.

“The experience was extraordinary,” says musician and environmental activist Christen Lien, who attended the Pachamama Alliance’s November 2008 ecotour. “What really struck me was the Achuar’s whole approach to life – the way families interact and the way the community functions as a whole. Everything is reciprocal. You take what you give and there is an awareness of the role that everyone plays within a larger system. They don’t even know what a power hierarchy is because to them it serves no purpose.”

Since returning from the Amazon, Lien has herself conducted a press tour, blogging about the experience, speaking to political and business audiences and conducting a series of radio interviews with NPR. “I’m amazed by how receptive and interested people are in what this culture has to share,” says Lien.

According to Lien, Westerners can get a more realistic picture of themselves and their potential fate by stepping outside of their world and seeing things through Achuar eyes. Tearing down million year-old forests to service short-term energy needs? Building petroleum-based products designed to last in landfills for 15,000 years? Not signs of an intelligent, enduring civilization.

The Achuar have lived in the rainforest for thousands of years, but have spent the last few decades integrating themselves into Western society in order to ensure their own survival. As oil companies are intensely organized in their pursuits, social isolation is no longer an option for the Achuar. Having established offices in key cities, they now maintain regular communication lines with the West.

However integrated and familiar the Achuar are with our ways, their mindset remains distinct. For one thing, the Achuar consider themselves guests rather than owners of the land and respect the rainforest’s delicate balance. “They take care of their home in order to better ensure their long-term survival,” says Lien. “It just makes sense.”

The Achuar are natural cradle-to-cradle manufacturers. The products and tools they use to enhance their lives are soon returned to the earth, just the way the earth supplied the raw materials in the first place.

Balance also reigns with respect to social relationships, as the differences between men and women are cherished. In Achuar culture, women are relied upon not only to give life, but also to heal it and to reign in the male desire for conquest. “Achuar women’s role is to say when,” says Lien. “They tell men when they’ve cut down enough trees, hunted enough animals, taken enough from the earth. And the men listen.” Imagine if Western women wielded that kind of power.

Lien says Achuar leaders make some important observations about Western culture, and that we should take heed for our own good and evolutionary benefit. For example, the Achuar perceive that Western world power currently resides with our culture’s de-facto shamans. Those would be the corporate marketers, talking heads, evangelists and politicians dominating the majority of our airwaves and selling the manufactured American dream, which often tempts us into mass consumption. Buying homes with huge mortgages, buying cars with mediocre gas mileage, working in jobs with glass ceilings, eating convenience foods produced in vast quantities are steps along the mainstream track, they observe. But as the Achuar point out, this path helps serve the interests of a chosen few while creating serious implications for the bulk of the world’s population.

The Achuar urge us to consider the implications of our collective dream, because in many ways our dream imposes hierarchies, power structures and tensions. It draws divisions between people. It prompts us to spend our lives chasing specific goals that others have convinced us will produce happiness. But do they?

“They kept saying this over and over,” says Lien. “Don’t give into the nightmare. Don’t feed into the greed. Change your dream, because then you will change your lives.”

Perhaps that is the leap of faith to contemplate this holiday season. If we can successfully transform our vision of ourselves, what we want and what we truly need, then reality will follow. I suspect Weiden+Kennedy, with its powerhouse creative team, will blast this and other Achuar messages through loud and clear. I look forward to that, and to the oil industry’s response to the Urgency Coalition campaign. Let’s hope they come back with something other than bulldozers.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Last Christmas and Chanukah my son received, among other things, the Evenflo Exersauser, Baby Einstein Color Blocks and a Fisher Price Go Diego Boat Toy. While the Exersauser took a painfully long time to put together (the instructions might as well have been written in Chinese), both the Color Blocks and Boat Toy were recalled for a violation of lead paint standards. How do I know this? Because I monitored their status on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) website. How would an average parent who does not obsess about such matters know this? Most wouldn’t, as virtually no marketer spends as much recalling a dangerous product as promoting its sale.

The CPSC’s list of 2009 toy recalls for lead and related safety violations is shockingly long, particularly considering the publicity uproar surrounding the 2007 lead-laced toy recalls, where Mattel Inc. alone took back over 1.5 million toys. Are toy industry standards improving? If they are, then it seems to be happening rather slowly. Companies including Various Toys, DND Imports and TDI International recalled products for lead paint violations in 2009, despite new consumer safety legislation banning lead, beyond minute levels, in children’s toys.

Since corporate standards sometimes fail and CPSC auditing resources are themselves limited, dangerous toys inevitably slip through the cracks. The actual number of lead-laced toys on our store shelves is surely higher than we realize. That’s a serious issue since even limited lead exposure can lead to life-long learning and behavioral disorders in children. My sense is that as long as China remains the world’s toy factory, parents get torpedoed by escalating safety and regulatory risks.

The environmental integrity of plastic toys is another matter for consideration, as parents are all but left in the dark as to the ecological and health-related impacts of the chemicals used during the manufacturing process. Many toys sold in the US are made from PVC, a poisonous plastic.

“PVC is the most toxic plastic for our health and the environment,” says the Center for Health, Environment and Justice in a recently published Fact Sheet on PVC and children. “No other plastic releases as many dangerous chemicals. These included dioxins, phthalates, vinyl chloride, ethylene dichloride, lead, cadmium, and organotins. There’s no safe way to manufacture, use or dispose of PVC products.”

There is also no sure-fire way for parents to determine which toys on Toys R’ Us shelves contain PVC and which do not, since no labeling standard exists for the industry. Material disclosure options are left up to individual companies, and most companies opt not to disclose much of anything. That begs a question: What is a concerned parent to do? On the upside, there are some wonderful online resources and product alternatives for those inclined to opt out of the black box, toxic toy system.

I recommend starting with the Green Guide, an online resource containing facts, environmental impact data, product comparisons and shopping information. Browsing through Green Guide it should become fairly clear that one need not sacrifice fun and ingenuity for peace of mind. From PVC and pthalate-free LEGOs to PlaSmart’s PlasmaCar and Radio Flyer’s Earth Wagon, the selection of toys on Green Guide is fairly broad. It includes selections from small as well as larger companies, indicating that that the trend toward eco-friendly toys is not a temporary fad, but rather a genuine shift in the global market.

Global to Green

At the Pottery Barn Kids Corte Madera store, the statement reads loud and clear: Green is here, the company is invested, and quality comes first. A huge wall of environmentally friendly products – cars, cranes, planes, trains, recycling and dump trucks made from sustainable rubberwood and painted with natural, water-based dyes; all-terrain vehicles made of 100 percent recycled eco-plastics; phthalate-free zoo animals and figurines; BPA-free Klean Kanteen® Water Bottles and other amusements – greets arriving customers and provides a wonderful selection of holiday gifts for choosy parents.

“One of Pottery Barn Kids top priorities is the health and safety of children as well as the environment,” says Christina Nicholson, Director of Sustainable Development at Williams-Sonoma Inc. “Offering simple, safe, high-quality products are founding principles of our brand, which is why we have such a variety of eco-friendly products. Our customers have asked for more unique, eco-friendly products and we are excited to be able to offer a broad assortment.”

Unlike so many other mainstream toy brands, Pottery Barn Kids sets a relatively high bar, not just for its designated eco-friendly products, but for everything it sells. Whereas toy industry standards determine 600 lead parts per million as an acceptable lead content range for products sold in the US, Pottery Barn Kids abides by an internal standard of 90 lead parts per million. The company also voluntarily tests for a variety of other compounds, including antimony (Sb), arsenic (As), barium (Ba), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), and selenium (Se). Remarkably, not every toy company does that.

Product development-wise, Nicholson sees expansion opportunities. “Customers are responding very well to our eco-friendly offerings,” she says. “They appreciate the benefits these products offer their home and children. With each season we will focus on growing our eco-friendly product assortment in all categories – toys, furniture, textiles and décor.”

In addition to eco-friendly toys, Pottery Barn Kids also offers FSC-Certified furniture and organic bedding. In 2008 the company reintroduced its Anywhere Chair, which has long been been a staple in the Pottery Barn Kids assortment, with a new “hybrid” insert made from 30 percent sustainable soy-based foam. Further plans for eco-makeovers on existing products, as well as the development of new eco-product lines through partnerships with manufacturers Sprig Toys, Plan Toy and Green Toys, are reportedly in the works.

“We are parents too and we are committed to making sure everything we sell is as safe for our customer’s kids as we demand that it be for our own,” says Nicholson. “We recognize that there is much more to be done, and we are committed to growing even more eco-friendly as a company.”

Nicholson’s attitude is a signal to parents – and smart marketers, too. Some US toy companies puff up their “rigorous standards.” Others blame lax oversight on the part of the Chinese government, or on the part of US regulators for their quality-related woes. On the other hand, Pottery Barn Kids, having made a significant investment in green toys while humbly communicating environmental and safety-related ambitions for the future, gives people a better sense of assurance. They neither over-promise nor under-deliver. And that’s the key to building trust.