“The Sustainable MBA: The Manager’s Guide to Green Business” really aims to do two things; first give individuals the tools to bring sustainability into any job (changing business from the inside out), second changing the way that managers learn about business in the first place (getting to the root of the problem). Lately most of my time has been spent on the second, working with universities and businesses internationally to embed sustainability into business education.

Some universities and businesses are doing really exciting activities that are pushing boundaries while others are reacting too slowly or not at all. The key is to get all the different players involved to make sure that this change happens and one of the major players in the world of business education internationally are the accreditation bodies. An article I wrote on just that has been published today in Forbes.

To read the full article in Forbes click here: How to Make Business Schools Teach Green

I have decided that this week will be ‘Get to know your chicken’ week.

Ok, let’s get cracking (hmm),

Of course one of my favourite things about chickens is that they produce eggs. Omelets, bacon and eggs, chocolate chip cookies, crepes. Eggs are marvelous little things. You probably have some sitting at home in your kitchen right now.

So what do you know about these eggs other than they come from chickens, are egg shaped and egg colour and taste like eggs? Take a look at the packaging on the eggs you buy or have at home. The information on the
labels will vary depending on where you live (and local/national regulations), but can tell you a lot about how the
chickens that lay the eggs you are about to eat live. Do they live in luxury? In a slum? What do they eat?

A quick overview…
- Standard eggs: These are often the least expensive eggs and are usually intensively produced under pretty terrible conditions.
- Barn eggs: Hens are kept in closed barn where there are 9 hens per square metre. They must have access to nests, perches and a litter area. Since these eggs are still intensively produced the birds usually have their beaks tipped so they don’t peck at each other.
- Free-range eggs: Hens are keps in similar way as barn eggs but are allowed out during the day. This is directed by government regulations but generally there must be at least four square metres of outside space per hen.
- Woodland eggs: Hens are free range but have access to woodlands or trees that provide natural cover. They are also allowed to forage naturally in the undergrowth.
- Organic eggs: Hens roam outside with diet of fresh grass and organically grown cereals. They are not fed antibiotics.
- Purple eggs with pink stripes: These are easter eggs and only available at certain times of the year. (just checking to see if you are still with me).

So your homework this week is to take a look at the lifestyles of the chickens laying the eggs you are buying. The boxes they are in should tell you the story. The first step is keeping an eye on what you buy. The next step is looking into where the eggs are sourced in the things you buy, or at restaurants you eat at.

So, don’t be a chicken (hmm), you have no excuse now.

I remember the first few weeks of my first year of the MBA. We were all so excited to be there, smiling, unaware of how much work it was all going to be and the roller-coaster ride the next two years were going to be for us all. One of those first days we were sat down and given our first assignment…to write our own eulogy. Students in the room groaned. They wanted to learn equations and hard skills. Writing a eulogy involved writing…and thinking…and feelings. A few, as expected, turned the exercise into a joke and wrote about joining the circus or saving the world from asteroids and aliens.

I thought it was a really interesting exercise and was thrilled that with my non existent knowledge of finance at the time, this was one assignment I could do. We were asked to write one to two pages about what we wanted to accomplish in our lives, what we wanted to be remembered for. Was it career? Family? Community work? Friends?

Towards the end of the MBA, when we came out on the other side, different, more knowledgeable and slightly more mature individuals, we were given copies of the eulogies we had written two years prior to read. For some people this was a huge shock. These two years had brought them in a completely different direction than they had thought. For others it was still spot on.

A week ago I spoke at HEC’s Sustainable Business Conference. I suggested that students sit down and do the same exercise and revisit what they wrote on a regular basis. It is not always easy to know what all the little in-between steps are in your career. Life will take you in all sorts of different directions, directions you never thought you would go in, if you let it. The important thing is to make sure that these steps are bringing you in the general direction you want to be and the eulogy exercise can help clarify what that direction is.

I recently reread mine again and smiled. Imagine if all the things I wrote happened, how exciting that would that be. I’m looking forward to it!

Even if you don’t have a job title that has the word green or sustainable in it, there are countless ways to bring sustainability into your job. We often don’t realize the positive impact that we can have through the decisions we make every day as employees and as consumers — decisions that effect both the companies we work for and the planet.

The good news: The possibilities are endless! Many of the first steps will be straightforward. Others will require a little innovative thinking. To get you started, here are eight ways you can begin getting involved in sustainability and doing your part at work.

As companies get more engaged in the sustainability arena there are more and more opportunities to work from the inside out. Increasingly sustainability will become part of everyone’s job so it is important to be up to date and aware on the issues.

To view the full article click here for the original post at greenbiz.com.

There is a pedestrian cross walk near my house. It goes across a busy street and cars have to stop when a pedestrian starts crossing the street. Problem is, 5% of the cars don’t stop. Some of them I’m sure don’t know they should be stopping, but most of the ones that don’t stop know you are there, they choose to speed up and try to slip by. As long as they don’t actually hit anyone, it isn’t a problem is it.

A couple of people are walking down the street. They are eating a pack of chips and when they finish the pack one throws the empty pack on the ground as he continues to walk. He doesn’t even seem to think twice about it. There is lots of other garbage around, so one more pack of chips makes no difference really.

At a penguin sanctuary the signs clearly say not to use your flash when taking pictures because the flash disturbs the penguins. You see one flash go off and you say, well, one more flash isn’t going to destroy the penguins (and like that I get a good picture to go home with), so you too take the picture.

Once can’t possibly be bad, even twice, but it doesn’t stop there. It keeps going, it spreads.

Maybe the challenge with making sustainability to become the norm is not so much getting people interested in what it all means and can mean. Perhaps it is simply to get people to take notice of what is around them, to see things again.

Perhaps if we start caring the rest will come. Good things spread too.

An article I wrote for Reuters has just been published. It is a brief overview of ten trends happening right now around the world in sustainable business.

“Sustainability is taking the business world by storm. It seems that every day a new company is getting on board in an incredible range of different ways. While some are still only approaching it on a very superficial level, plenty of others are really taking sustainability seriously, exploring what it does and can mean to their business, their suppliers, their employees, their customers and the role that they can plan in strengthening society and the environment while also running an increasingly successful business.” Click here to read the rest of the article.