Products and services

Do your products and services deliver sustainable solutions?

Hallmarks of a leader in products and services

  • The organisation can point to products or services that deliver on sustainability commitments and generate profit.
  • A strategy is in place to make all products and services sustainable. Approaches may range from assessing the impact of a product to rethinking its fundamental purpose.
  • Whole-life, closed-loop thinking drives product and service development.
  • Products and services target specific challenges (such as climate change, poverty, clean water and sanitation) and have a net positive environmental and/or social impact.
  • Choice editing – consciously limiting the consumer’s opportunities to select unsustainable products and services – is built into product stewardship and integrated into the development process.
  • Product and service development is characterised by continuous innovation and testing to improve sustainability performance.

 

Case studies

Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods corporations, responsible for products as diverse as shampoo and ice cream. The company has led the way on sustainable agriculture for over a decade and in 2006 developed Brand Imprint - a tool that combines life-cycle analysis with marketing processes.

Brand Imprint gives an all-round picture of the social, environmental and economic impact of a brand and the influences that will shape its growth in the future. As a result of applying the tool to its tea brands PG Tips and Lipton, Unilever has pledged to buy all black tea from Rainforest Alliance-certified, sustainable sources by 2015. An industry first, this initiative is projected to improve the livelihoods of around two million people dependent on the tea industry around the world.

Other brands that have gone through the Brand Imprint process include the Persil and Surf ‘Small & Mighty’ concentrated liquid detergent. Changes in product specification have led to lower greenhouse gas emissions, less plastic packaging and a reduced use of petrochemicals.

Unilever’s next challenge is to keep up the work towards a fully sustainable brand portfolio and is rolling out the Brand Imprint process to all its major brands.

 

DTZ, the global property company, and the property group Kenmore’s Sustento Property Investment Fund aims to provide a unique offering in sustainable property investing for the institutional marketplace. The Fund has set challenging design targets for the constituent property, which aims to "future-proof" the investment proposition. Sustento will combine development with refurbishment of existing offices across Europe, while uplifting the energy efficiency. Moreover the Fund combines sustainable building design with sustainable occupation through pioneering “green leases”.
 
The Fund, brought to market in early 2008, has raised the bar for the property fund management sector with explicit objectives to not only be a ‘green’ fund, but to offer higher returns than comparable non-green building investments. Expected lower tenant turn-over, lower running costs associated with more sustainable buildings and better rental income protection will help deliver this performance. Sustento’s properties will be several years ahead of current building legislation.  Their environmental performance will be kept as high as possible over the lifetime through commitments, including regular audits, written into leasing arrangements.
 
The commercial pull for investing sustainably is defined in the Fund information paper, and includes expectations that future regulations will favour more sustainable buildings and that demand for transparency on energy performance will increase, to help occupiers differentiate between efficient and inefficient buildings. It also anticipates that buildings that do not comply with higher standards and requirements will depreciate at a faster rate than those that do.

 

Paint is a well used, high-volume product, with 414 million litres being sold in the UK every year. It is also a product that impacts on the environment during production, use and disposal. In 2008 the market leader, Dulux Trade, owned by ICI and now part of Akzo Nobel, launched a more environmentally friendly product called Ecosure. Branded as a step towards greener paint, this new professional paint range represents a genuine improvement in environmental performance for a mainstream product.
 
Ecosure is the result of an initiative designed to understand sustainability impacts along the full paint life cycle. It is a product that has enabled Dulux Trade to reduce levels both of embedded carbon and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in the paint and the can that holds it.

To achieve these environmental improvements a tool called the Impact Analyser was applied, developed by Forum for the Future. This allowed Dulux Trade to compare the performance of Ecosure with its top-selling standard Trade formulations from the point of extraction up until when the paint was sitting in cans and ready to be distributed from the factory.

This new thinking is being incorporated into other aspects of the industry with the aim to achieve further improvements to the paint lifecycle in areas including distribution, brush washing systems and packaging.

 

In 2001 SC Johnson, a global consumer packaged goods company, developed a patented Greenlist process to embed environmental considerations into product development. In 2007, SC Johnson decided to make their patented Greenlist process available royalty-free in the marketplace in order to improve environmental standards and stimulate innovation across the whole sector.
 
The Greenlist evaluates all raw materials used within products and packaging according to their impact on the environment and human health. The raw material is rated with 3 for "Best", 2 for "Better", 1 for "Acceptable" and 0 for "Restricted Use Material”.  The ratings are made available to employees through a global database.
 
For SC Johnson, product innovation happens mostly through incremental improvements. For any product improvements, raw materials selected for redevelopment must have a better Greenlist rating than the materials used in the original product, and any incorporation of ‘Restricted Used Materials’ can only occur following justification and management approval.
 
Individual product managers decide which raw materials to replace, discard or upgrade within the product development lifecycle and there is a link between product Greenlist scores and employee performance and salary.
 
Nearly all products are redeveloped within a five-year timescale and since 2006 this resulted in an increase in the use of ‘Best’ materials by almost 64 thousand tonnes in 2006, whilst use of the lowest-rated materials in the same period was reduced by 7 thousand tonnes. The current company goal is to achieve a 34% improvement in the accumulated Greenlist score by 2011.


Goldman Sachs’ SUSTAIN is one of the most sophisticated valuation frameworks of mainstream asset management. SUSTAIN is based on the analysis of future sustainable development trends (e.g. globalisation, climate change, energy security). It uses these to select a Focus List of companies across sectors that are best placed to take advantage of these trends. Beyond these sectors it also includes emerging industries trends (e.g. clean tech and nutrition).

SUSTAIN uses future trends that go beyond the normal bounds of data used for valuation. This enables Goldman Sachs to judge which companies are most exposed to future sustainability risks and which are best placed to benefit from the opportunities. The GS SUSTAIN Focus List has outperformed the general market by 25% to date.


RSA have developed an innovative car insurance product that advises customers on the carbon emissions of their driving habits. ‘Green Wheels’ uses a mobile phone sized gadget that records speed, acceleration, braking and the revs of the engine. This information is then used to generate web-based reports to the customer on how much CO2 they are producing and how they could save more. RSA’s direct sales brand MORE TH<N also rank customers giving them an A to G rating similar to energy labels on fridges. This has the potential to create competition between customers to save fuel.

MORE TH>N’s ‘Green Wheels’ product costs no more than it’s standard insurance policy. Customers normally buy insurance hoping they will never have to use it. With Green Wheels, RSA are providing ongoing value to their policyholders at no extra cost. In a conservative sector, this is an example of leading product innovation. 

B&Q is the UK’s leading home improvement retailer, with a long history of innovation and leadership in the area of corporate sustainability. With a heritage of environmental awareness stretching back nearly two decades, it was at the forefront of responsible timber sourcing as a founder member of the Forestry Stewardship Council in 1991. Since then, it has remained committed to those same sound sourcing principles and has just been awarded chain-of-custody certification from both FSC and PEFC. This means customers can track B&Q’s timber and timber-based products from forest to shop floor. It is now working to become a ‘One Planet Living’ business, tackling both its own footprint and that of its customers.

In 2008 B&Q was one of the first 12 companies to achieve the Carbon Trust Standard – an award that requires an organisation to measure, manage and reduce its carbon emissions. In being awarded the Standard, B&Q had to demonstrate year-on-year reductions, based on efficiency gains rather than off-setting or purchasing renewable electricity.  In 2006/07 B&Q reduced its own carbon emissions by 7000 tonnes.

With millions of visitors going into store each week, B&Q has a huge opportunity to communicate green and sustainable values to its customers and to help them reduce their environmental impact. It was the first retailer to offer affordable energy-efficient products, such as wind turbines and solar panels to the domestic market and to introduce a VOC labelling system on paint that is now adopted as industry standard.  In addition, B&Q has phased out the sale of carbon-hungry patio heaters this year, offering more sustainable alternatives in their place. This commitment to sustainable alternatives is also evident in its procurement of peat-free products. B&Q has ambitious commitments to reduce its reliance on peat and is helping drive this across the industry through it’s lead membership of the Growing Media Initiative.

Future plans include the extension of the ‘One Planet Home’ range that offers products that help customers reduce the environmental impact of their home. B&Q’s own market research confirms the value of this approach, with environmental credentials highlighted as an influencing factor in purchasing decisions.

City Car Club – driving profits from mobility solutionsMoving from a focus on product delivery to an understanding of the underlying consumer requirements is a key strategy for delivering sustainability. By reframing car ownership as the consumer’s need for mobility, the City Car Club is delivering reduced environmental impacts and growing market share. This pay-as-you-go car service allows members to pre-book cars online and then, using their membership card, collect them from designated parking bays distributed across residential areas in a growing number of UK cities.

Drivers benefit from cost avoidance in terms of car ownership, insurance, and insulation from fluctuating fuel costs, while increased efficiency of use reduces manufacturing impacts. In addition conscious selection of fuel-efficient cars for the available fleet drives the environmental impact down further. Commercially car clubs are creating a new market amongst consumers for whom car ownership is not economically feasible, whilst modal shift is encouraged in car club participants with studies suggesting that former car owners increase their use of alternative transport forms  by 40% after joining.