ICYMI: Here's a Look Inside Our 2023 Raise the Green Bar Summit
From our inception, Good Housekeeping has always been about keeping consumers informed on products and trends across all aspects of life. In 1900, when the Good Housekeeping Institute was founded, it looked like studying "the problems facing the homemaker and developing up-to-date firsthand information on solving them" and busting up misbranding and adulteration in food with a "Roll of Honor for Pure Food Products" each month.
Today, this idea looks like our annual Raise the Green Bar Summit, where we have product experts, analysts, engineers and more share what consumers need to know about the current state of sustainability, how to spot "greenwashing" to make sure you're actually purchasing sustainable products and how little swaps can help you practice a more sustainable and healthy life.
This year's sixth edition of our Raise the Green Bar Sustainability Summit (and the first in-person since 2020), hosted by Good Housekeeping and MADE SAFE in collaboration with Hearst Autos and supported in part by Ford was one of our favorites.
Below you can check out highlighted recaps of our chats and panels, or you can watch the whole thing below. Plus, if you have a new, cool and sustainable product, you can apply for our 2023 Sustainable Innovation Awards here.
David Carey, the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications at Hearst, started off the summit covering the history of sustainability at Hearst Tower. When the top of the tower was added to the six-story historical base, the edict from Norman Foster (the master-mind architect for the addition) was to "build the greenest office building ever built in New York." When the building opened in 2006, it was truly state-of-the-art. David broke down Hearst's sustainability strategy, a three-prong approach: educating the public, lowering our carbon emissions, and business-to-business (B2B) solutions that enable other corporations to achieve their climate goals.
Laura Brett
Vice President, National Advertising Division, BBB National Programs
Vice President of the National Advertising Division at BBB National Programs, Laura Brett discussed regulation in advertising to ensure advertisements consumers see are truthful and accurate.
Good Housekeeping had issued its first warning about tobacco and cigarettes in 1928 and eventually stopped running cigarette ads altogether in 1952 — 12 years before the Surgeon General would report on the dangers of smoking. It wasn't until 1971 that cigarette ads were regulated and prevented from advertising to consumers across a multitude of industries. It had created an overall distrust of advertising itself, and how consumers could be influenced into purchasing items from seemingly innocent ads that could be potentially very harmful.
Laura pointed out that in some ways, we're living in a similar era of "greenwashing" advertising claims as consumers grow more cynical as idealistic brands are trying to respond with more trusted products to address consumer concerns about the environment. "I think it provides a real opportunity for companies to think about how to raise the bar. One of the ways you can do that is through advertising self regulation, and self regulation more generally," said Laura.
Rachel Rothman
Chief Technologist of the Good Housekeeping Institute
Jessica Hann
Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing and Sustainability, Avocado Green Brands
Kevin Pchola
Head of Events Management and Public Relations, Miele USA
Eleonore Montegut
VP of Marketing and E-Retail, Expanscience Laboratories
Chances are if you look on the back of a product label, you're going to see some sort of third-party emblem. Question is, which ones are real, and which ones are misleading? And how can you tell?
In the Power and Purpose of Third Party Credentials, Good Housekeeping Institute Chief Technologist Rachel Rothman moderated the discussion, first detailing the Good Housekeeping Seal and the Green Good Housekeeping Seal, launched in 2009 on the 100th anniversary of the Good Housekeeping Seal.
She described the basis we evaluate brands like recycled content, water waste and corporate responsibility in addition to the product's overall performance. Rachel then opened up questions to the panel. Jessica Hann, the Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing and Sustainability at Avocado Green Brands, Eleonore Montegut, VP of Marketing and E-Retail at ExpanScience Laboratories and Kevin Pchola, Head of Events Management and Public Relations at Miele USA dove into the importance of third party emblems — like the Good Housekeeping Seal — to brands, why their brands decided to peruse obtaining them and even challenges they faced in the process.
Matt Castle
Appliance Standards Senior Manager, Building Decarbonization Coalition
Appliance Standards Senior Manager at Building Decarbonization Coalition Matt Castle covered the value of decarbonizing home spaces. "We spend most of our time in and around our homes," said Castle. "Shouldn't we be making sure that our homes themselves, and the appliances we're using every day are promoting a healthy and sustainable lifestyle?"
Home electrification is the process of making swaps across your house to make for a more electric-powered home. This could mean replacing your gas appliances — like a gas range or gas-powered dryer — for electric counterparts like an induction range or electric dryer. He also discussed different incentives for swapping over, like the Federal Inflation Reduction Act that incentivizes purchasing electric solutions through consumer tax credits.
He wrapped up by saying "If we work together we can ensure that it happens swiftly, equitably, in a way that benefits us all. Electric homes — I like to say — are cleaner, they're healthier and ultimately they work better for people. And that's a win-win-win."
Cynthia Williams
Global Director, Sustainability. Homologation and Compliance, Ford
Natalie Neff
Editor in Chief, AutoWeek
Speaker Natalie Neff, Editor in Chief at AutoWeek said it best: "I've seen vast changes in the [auto] industry, mostly in the last few years, as we all have." As she points out, a decade ago, 15,000 total electric vehicles were sold in this country, but in the last year alone Ford sold over 40,000 of just the Mustang Mach-E.
In the automotive industry, a lot of the sustainability problems that we face go beyond the products themselves. For Cynthia Williams, Global Director of Sustainability and Homologation and Compliance at Ford, the foundation to getting it right is the power grid. Working with federal and state governments and municipalities to lay out what the framework might be to make sure we have a resilient energy grid, using renewable energy to power it. "One of the key things that we still hear from our customers is infrastructure is one of the barriers [to entry] that gets them up in arms," said Williams.
Williams also suggested a strategy that would make most companies hesitate: working with competitors to make progress toward sustainability. Recently, Ford and Tesla collaborated to bring Ford customers additional fast chargers for their EVs, something that wouldn't have happened without thinking out of the box and being willing to work with competitors you wouldn't normally work with.
Dr. Manasa Mantravadi
Board-Certified Pediatrician & Founder/CEO, Ahimsa
Products, planet and people. Has a nice ring to it, right? For board-certified Pediatrician and CEO, Founder of Ahimsa, Dr. Manasa Mantravadi, they're all interconnected and each play into the other, affecting our overall wellness. Her journey began when she noticed a health policy saying to avoid plastic dishes and opt for glass or stainless steel, while big-box stores only sold plastic bottles and plates for children.
"The environment impacts our health. Actually, now there's an emerging field of medicine called environmental health, and it really stands at the intersection of how our planet affects our health and how what we do to our planet certainly affects our health," said Dr. Mantravadi. So she founded Ahimsa, a brand that focuses on creating stainless steel cups, plates, silverware and more for kids and schools to replace all the plastic. Every month we eat around 21 grams of micro-plastics that enter our food by way of our air, water, soil and products. For reference, that's about a half-full rice bowl of plastic a month (I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to eat zero grams of plastic a month).
While adults can make educated choices for themselves, as Dr. Mantravadi points out, children can't. They use, play with and eat what's put in front of them, and can't vote to make changes on a widespread scale. And while we can't change it right away either, we can take little steps to lower that 21 grams and leave behind a better world.
Alice Chun
Amy Ziff
Moderator, Founder/CEO, Made Safe
Eli Halliwell
CEO, Hairstory
Sarah Paiji Yoo
CEO, Blueland
"We need to disrupt what has become the accepted status-quo and norm so that we can kind of break the chain, do things differently for a more sustainable future, for a healthier future." These were some of the opening comments moderator Amy Ziff, founder and CEO of Made Safe, said to kick off the discussion on startups who are putting sustainability at the core of their business strategies.
First, she prompted panelists to define what sustainability means to each of their brands. For Sarah Pajiji Yoo, CEO of Blueland, it's about prioritizing people and the planet ahead of profits. CEO of Hairstory Eli Hallwell said they start with idea that you have to self sustain, the whole ecosystem of suppliers and beyond have to be self sustaining so it can continue to go on its own. Lastly, for Alice Chun, CEO of SoLight Design, it's about how small things matter and everyone has the ability to do one small act. Three powerful definitions from three trendsetting brand leaders. They continued, discussing how to balance making a profit with staying sustainable, with Eli saying "I think we have a similar disease in our financial markets, where the whole idea that you raise money, you spend it and then you raise more money and spend it is just sort of broken and stupid. You should raise some money to begin with and then you should learn how to live on that money. And then you earn the right to get more money and grow bigger over time by thinking about being self-sustaining."
They wrapped up by talking about the role that innovation plays in sustainability, and how looking for new sustainable ideas can lead to practices we might have never thought of, like Blueland creating soap in a powdered form instead of a bar. They also spoke on how innovation can lead to surprising sustainability measures that aren't always obvious.
For Hairstory, they created products in pouches and cut down their plastic usage and carbon emissions, but when they broke down the environmental impact their product was creating, turns out the largest factor, by a long shot, was the amount of water saved because people spend less time in the shower by using only one product. "It's good to do the math, but for me, people just want better hair. My job is to deliver them the better hair in a way that's going to be better for the environment, and that's what I care about... They're not going to buy something because of the environmental benefit, they're looking for the outcome that they want. If you keep that in mind, then you try to set the culture and say, 'Here's what we're doing everybody' and everyone in the company can feel really great about what we're doing, but that's not what we're selling. We're selling the outcome," said Eli.
Laurie Jennings
General Manager of the Good Housekeeping Institute
General Manager of the Good Housekeeping Institute Laurie Jennings finished up the Raise the Green Bar 2023 Sustainability Summit, thanking everyone for attending and participating, and reminding us that we can all make that one little change.
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