The Green Report Card: Mostly C’s

Among the many blogs, e-newsletters and web sites that I track on a regular basis, GreenBiz.com ranks as one of my favorites. One of the reports that I look forward to reading is their annual State of Green Business Report.

This week, our president Suzanne Shelton spoke at the State of Green Business forum in Chicago – and I got my first look at this year’s report. It’s not a rosy picture, people.

If I took home a report card that had 3 F’s, 11 C’s and 6 A’s, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be getting any allowance for quite some time. But I’m an optimist so I choose to look at the areas that are getting good marks.

Turns out that Green IT, green office space, paper use and recycling, water intensity, clean energy patents and energy efficiency all scored good marks this year. But they’re also the same categories that generally scored well last year.

So I pulled out my copy of last year’s report – just to see what’s changed. Turns out not much.
Last year, the report was remarkably similar to this year’s – 3 F’s, 12 C’s and 5 A’s. The only two areas that showed a change were cleantech investments and green office space – investments slipped in 2010 and green office space took an uptick.

Is this a surprise? Maybe to an optimist who sees positive movements in other areas, like the number of people who are actively looking for green products, even in this recession. Here’s the thing to remember: change is incremental – sometimes even glacial – but it is, in the end, change.

As marketers, the fact that there’s not more good news to report simply means there’s more work to do. There are more insights to uncover, more messages to communicate, more media channels to leverage.

How much change do you see in your organizations since last year? What’s made the most impact?

We’d love to hear your thoughts.