Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Sustainable Packaging Coalition Survey

Per&Per has done a survey along the 160 members of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition in order to investigate the underlying reasons for such a percipience and also the members allocation. It was founded that only 28% of the members where business to consumer companies and 83% where is some way selling packaging or packaging solutions, 2% where either governmental bodies or schools. The most interesting part of the survey is when analyzing the different business to consumer companies, fifty percent of those where represented by food and beverage including fast food companies.

When analyzing the B2C companies we took economic volume, ownership and allocation in to consideration. This approach divided the B2C companies into two slightly different groups. The first and biggest group, represented by two third of the total amount of B2C companies where selling for more than 2 billion USD per year, and all of them are selling on a global market. The second group consists of smaller companies all privately owned selling environmental niche products to developed countries; none of them, selling for more than 1 billion UDS per year.

A continuance of the analysis of the big selling B2C companies will show their reasons for putting effort and money into the Packaging Coalition, hopefully revealing the risks and opportunities in consumer paper board. For example McDonalds is one of the huge B2C companies in the coalition and them states in their sustainability rapport that they have failed in finding enough sustainable packaging. The survey results are to be continued, enjoy.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Saturday in Southport

Per and Per performs an interview with the CFO for Iggesund Paperboard, Una Lausen, in USA during the Saturday. Some great inputs for the master thesis and a glint of the beautiful Southport are the result.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Old fashion management


In Sweden we teach our kids their first management tool when they are around 10 years old, brainstorming, a way of turning chaos into order, at least that’s the intention. However, thank to some modern organization theorists we can now arrange the brainstorming more structured. In her book named “Organization Theory”, Mary Jo Hatch introduces the PEST method. PEST is an abbreviation for Political/Legal, Economic, Social/Cultural and Technology.

Let’s use those sectors in order to find parameters that will have influence on business due to global warming. For example political decisions will lead to smaller amount of carbon dioxide emissions in a certain region, making the prize to rise, affecting the marginal costs for companies. So we therefore put the PEST on the y-axel (see picture above) and try to weight the parameters against each other with some kind of failure mode and effect analysis on the x-axel, the shortening for the failure mode and effect analysis is FMEA. But let’s also try to find opportunities instead of just the failure mode. In the picture above we named the columns opportunities, threats (the failure) and also adding a column for the sum of how detectable, sever and the accuracy of the threat or opportunity. How the columns are to be ranked we leave for further research and instead focus on why to do this.

As explained in the previous post, “WRIs green success recipe”, a company can’t just focus on their own operations it must also consider other risks in its surroundings. Let’s use the forest product company Weyerhaeuser again to explain that environmental related risks exists also outside the mills. For example climate change might have physical effect on its main raw material, trees, such as greater damage by wood beetles because of milder winters. So in the model introduced below “increasing damage on wood due to beetles” could be put in as a threat and then the severity, possibility and rate of determination ranked afterwards.

We have also added a column of geography so that the risk or opportunity could be spread on the affected regions. We will get back to this later and also arguing pros and cons with the model. We are also aware of other existing models that are very alike the one above and will introduce those as soon as our research allows. But until then, enjoy some old fashion management in order to assess carbon related risks and opportunities.

WRIs green success recipe

The four steps above is according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) the way of succeeding on gaining competitive advantages on a warming planet which where published in Harvard Business Review last March under that title, competitive advantages on a warming planet. The authors are the President and a financial analyst at WRI, Jonathan Lash and Fred Wellington.

The first step is about getting to know your carbon footprint; you can’t manage if you don’t measure. And quantifying the carbon footprint also makes great sense if you’re an actor on a carbon market, like in Europe. One method for such quantifying is the Greenhouse gas Protocol (GHG), developed with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) where different scopes provide measurable goals for carbon emissions. There are some other different tools, the International Standards Organization (ISO) is one and that has led to some more industry specific tools e.g. the International Council of Forest and Paper Associations.

The second step is about getting a grip of the carbon related risks and opportunities. The article make a great example of the forest products company Weyerhaeuser which have set very ambitious goals for its mills but should also consider other risks and opportunities along the supply chain as well as political, social and physical.

The third step makes company exposure to carbon related risks an issue to decrease and also states that the company must seize the opportunities to remain competitively. To summaries this step it is more of how to manage the two steps before. As stated earlier, you can’t manage if you don’t measure.

The great conclusion pretty much speaks for it own. The fourth step states that you have to do it better than rivals in order to get those competitive advantages on a warming planet.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Good news for green-wave riders

IWAY - The green way

According to the book “Green to Gold” IKEA is arguably the most sustainable company in the world. A great reason for that is realized when reading there sustainability rapport. Approximately a third of the editorial text in the sustainability rapport is written by four different NGOs that are covering the interests of nature, animals, and children well being. And not enough with that the different organization gets to write in the rapport, they are aloud to pay criticism against IKEA as well. For example Greenpeace thinks that IKEA are moving to slow and should support its wood suppliers in a better way and WWF thinks that IKEA should let the customer be more involved in showing which green way to go.

IKEA also states in their rapport that NGOs are very important stakeholders and often refers to the relationship with NGOs as “dialogues and partnerships”. ”The IKEA Way on Purchasing Home Furnishing Products” (IWAY) defines what suppliers can expect from IKEA and what IKEA requires from its suppliers in terms of legal requirements, working conditions, child labor, environment and forestry management.

What is for sure is that IKEA in a very successful way has managed to use their flat packaging and sourcing of the assembling to customer to argue for their environmental awareness but IKEA is also taking pole position when it comes to build strong bands with NGOs.

Green strategy, a part of PPM

The bondery between different parts of the environmental strategy and how they end up as a mean of control for managing the product portfolio.