I'm writing this post a week after the most recent Wild & Scenic film festival, the biggest green/environmental film fest in the country, and a few days before the inauguration of a president who looks to be creating a huge opening in terms of support for and legitimization of sustainable business. In a time where there is a lot of ammunition, figurative and literal, to feel quite despaired about where we're at, I feel tremendously optimistic.
I know on a business blog that some would say it would be unwise to show that you are an emotional person, but I have to share that I cried during a film last week.
Mind you, it was no tear jerker in the typical sense. But for me as a sustainable business consultant, it was tremendously moving. What was it? So Right, So Smart, which made it's debut at this year's Wild & Scenic film festival. It won best of the fest, so I suspect others agree as to it's potency.
What made it so powerful?
For me, aside from it reaffirming the value of and the purpose behind my work, creating a feeling of pride in my profession and a renewed sense of meaning, it was who else I envisioned seeing it that got me quite excited. So Right So Smart quickly and compellingly makes the case for why doing business sustainably is not only needed, but can be exceptionally profitable, even in, or perhaps especially during challenging economic times.
And they do it without coming across as unrealistic or ungrounded in reality. On the contrary, they show it all, including the doubts, the issues, the challenges to it.
Though the film is a veritable hit parade of the now icons of sustainable business, including Paul Hawken, Janine Benyus, Lester Brown, Yvon Chouinard, and Dr. David Suzuki among others, it's Ray Anderson of Interface that gives the movie its most personal, human, and yet utterly pragmatic face. The man knows how to tell a story.
And though his story, for some of us, is a well worn one - Head of company gets saddled with doing a presentation on his company's environmental policy, has no idea what it is or where he stands, is given a Paul Hawken book, has epiphany that his company is a major contributor to the problem, and then spearheads a radical revamping of his company - this movie takes time to tell it with more background, including a healthy dose of skepticism that his staff felt, and ultimately came to see, in various ways, the value of doing business that is more efficient, thinking in ways others haven't before, and providing true value to their customers at the same time.
One of the most amazing moments in the film was when they decided to have a company wide meeting at a hotel in Hawaii. Anderson had created a "dream team" of people (Hawken, Lovins, Benyus, et. al.) to gather and consult annually on Interface's progress and possibilities. They were flummoxed at his choice of location - as Hawken put it, a hotel where it seemed their aim was to be as unsustainable and as wasteful as possible.
After initially advocating for canceling the gathering, they decided that they'd see this as a giant problem to be solved. And so, the gathering went on as planned, with some additional aspects.
All energy/resource use and waste creation was calculated on day one. Then each day, they told people to do various small measures, nothing a massive impingement on them going about their day as usual. And each day they were shown how much they'd saved, reduced, and recycled as a group. Massive changes happened in the course of one week. In seeing this, it was made abundantly clear how much impact their individual actions could have. And how, in searching for more and deeper ways to affect change, personally and as a business, they had a lot of power.
In what will probably sound terribly sappy here in print, but was flooring to hear in the film, Anderson described how one employee showed their buy in to his efforts to become a greener company. He emailed him a poem called Tomorrow's Child.The film intercuts between the two of them reading it. If that doesn't melt everyone's hearts and give context to why we're doing what we doing, I don't know what will.
And that is but one part of this amazing film. Between the stories coming from people of all manner of backgrounds, effective use of animation and effects to quickly explain concepts, and quite the soundtrack, it would leave anybody with even a cynical interest in what it means to be a green business convinced it is most definitely a path to explore, with enthusiasm.
It was just completed weeks before last week's showing, and they're now in the process of creating and releasing a dvd. I don't know whether they yet have a distributor, but if you are or know one, do get in touch with them.
Readers: What films, books, websites etc have you found that compellingly make the case for sustainable business to a diverse audience? Comment below please.
