In the Spring of 2008 Colored Planet Connextion began researching a travel expo around green travel and hospitality which had just begun to come to the forefront of the industry's minds. We had been arranging contacts and B2B contracts between corporate travel companies and corporations. We saw that some of the travel companies were beginning to embrace green travel at that time and " The Green Thing", but most of them did not have a clue as to what being green entailed nor in which direction they should turn towards. We researched deeper and began to see clearly that corporations and individuals were hopping on to the Green bandwagon by tweaking their business as usual programs a little and then re-designing their entire website as being the best thing since white bread. There were gross exaggeration about their products and offerings and we saw that we had to wade through an ocean of material to find companies that talked and walked the green walk. It amounted to searching for a needle in a haystack! If it amounted to this much work for us and we were dedicated? How difficult would it be for the business person, let alone the every day consumer? What is Joanna the consumer out there feeling when confronted with all of these claims and how does one make a proper environmental choice? Who can I trust my life, my family , my money when making such a choice? So one can imagine the dilemma one has to confront in every day purchasing decisions. We began to ask ourselves what were consumers interested in seeing, knowing and feel comfortable about a concept. We made a list of priorities: - A concept which would be straight forward supplying them with the knowledge they would need to make a decision about products and services.
- A concept which would require a minimum of interaction and easily accessible 24/7/365
- Whatever it was going to be it would also have to be reliable and trustworthy above reproach
- The concept would have to have transparency. In the event there were issues concerning the product or service then, an immediate feedback system to inform the powers that be at mission control
- The concept would have to have to include accountability
- A system which would place the environment at the center of concern for the company, the employees, the stakeholders and the consumers
- A system which would encourage the elimination of waste in energy, natural and human resources
- The system would have to have the ability to be replicated global across language and cultural barriers
- It would have to be a Software as a Service. A system which would be able to remotely monitor a companies logistical processes, it's energy, human capital and natural resource management
- Companies would have to be certified
- There would have to be a Contractual Agreement to fulfill their environmental engagement and continually reduce their GHG on an annual basis with the goal being zero green house gas emissions.
- There would also have to be consequences in the event they were proven to be less than fort right with their input of company information or had tampered with the software to improve their position
- A stipulation that someone with authority to speak for the company be designated as a Company Environmental/Social Manager
- An in house Environmental Management System (i.e.- ISO, Bureau Veritas, etc.)
- Whatever we chose it should also have a carrot besides doing the right thing. So there would a monthly running award leading up to an annual Award for different categories.
- We discussed also how to reward a company accomplishing a zero carbon foot print with incentives as encouragement to the other companies that the impossible is possible.
Conceptualized by Colored Planet Connextion |
|
|
