Sierra Club Agreement with Clorox Corp.

Background Materials

Clorox Press Release, Jan. 14, 2008

" . . . Clorox today announced an alliance with the Sierra Club. . . . 'Our partnership with the Sierra Club is significant for Green Works but also for The Clorox Company as we continue the focus on our sustainability efforts,' said [Don Knauss, chairman and CEO of The Clorox Company]. 'Industry plays an important role in environmental conservation. We are looking forward to working with the Sierra Club so that we can continue to be part of the solution.' In April, Green Works labeling will feature the Sierra Club's logo - just in time for Earth Day - marking the brand's commitment to supporting the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization in the U.S."

Clorox Company Introduces New Brand of Natural Cleaning Products; Establishes Alliance With the Sierra Club, Jan. 14, 2008, http://investors.thecloroxcompany.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=286938

San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 14, 2008

"[Clorox's] new Green Works products will carry the logo of the Sierra Club - a partnership that may raise eyebrows among some of the club's members. . . . Some environmental experts questioned the Sierra Club's decision to back Green Works without a standardized review process that applies to other products, too. 'It sounds risky both to Clorox and the Sierra Club,' said Scot Case of TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, which runs a Canadian program called EcoLogo that sets environmental standards for products. 'I would want to know exactly how the Sierra Club made its determination. Unless they are going to publish the standard that products have to meet, it sounds like a form of greenwashing.'"

Clorox introduces green line of cleaning products, January 14, 2008, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/ c/a/2008/01/14/MNN7UC1IQ.DTL#ixzz0QtwxuMK2

Club Publishes Timeline of Screening and Approval Process, mid-Jan. 2008

July 2007: Sierra Club and The Clorox Company make contact regarding Green Works Natural Cleaners. Sierra Club’s Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) Department evaluates and negotiates tentative deal and alerts selected Cabinet and the Executive Director and other internal stakeholders.

August 2007: Cause Related Marketing Department (CRM) does research on the Green Works products, the company and all of the company’s holdings and hires an outside researcher to also do research including any environmental, social, discrimination, or worker’s rights issues for all of the company’s holdings.

September 2007: CRM evaluates the research and sends this information and an overview of the deal to the Corporate Relations Committee (CRC) for approval and copies the selected Cabinet, ED, etc.

October 2007 through early November 2007: The Corporate Relations Committee (CRC) does their own research and sends this and the original CRM information out to the Toxics Committee, Energy Committee, and the EQ for questions, comments, and input on Green Works and the company. The Corporate Relations Committee found no problem with either the Green Works products or with the Clorox Company. Questions lingered regarding Clorox and their bleach. Ed Hopkins (DC office), his associate (a chemical engineer from Cornell), and a Clorox scientist are consulted and other research is done. Click here for analyses of Clorox bleach findings. All questions are answered satisfactorily for all committees regarding the Clorox bleach product, but the CRC did not approve the association.

November 2007: The information was sent to the Board of Directors by the Executive Director. The Executive Committee (ExCom) of the Board of Directors received input from the CRC, reviewed and assessed the program and the background information. An ExCom conference call was held and the Green Works alliance/program was unanimously approved.

November through the middle of December 2007: Final negotiations and the legal agreement were completed. The agreement was signed.

Sierra Club Screening & Approval Process, http://clubhouse.sierraclub.org/conservation/partnerships/ greenworks/process.aspx

US PIRG on Clorox, June 2004

We reviewed the [Risk Management Plans] submitted by facilities using hazardous chemicals and found that a single company owning many facilities or a single facility in a large population center can endanger thousands and even millions of people. Specifically, we found:

• The twelve companies endangering the most people are JCI Jones Chemical, The Clorox Company, Kuehne Chemical, KIK Corporation, DuPont, Pioneer Companies, Clean Harbors, GATX Corporation, PVS Chemicals, Dow Chemical, Ferro Corporation and Occidental Petroleum.
• The facilities owned by JCI Jones Chemical, The Clorox Company, and Kuehne Chemical put more than 20 million, 14 million, and 12 million people at risk, respectively.
• Between 1990 and 2003, companies, employees and concerned citizens reported more than 8,400 accidents involving oil or chemicals at facilities owned by these 12 parent companies to the National Response Center (NRC).

The Dangerous Dozen: A Look at How 12 Chemical Companies Jeopardize Millions of Americans, U.S. PIRG Education Fund, June 2004, http://static.uspirg.org/reports/DangerousDozen2004.pdf

American Public Media, Jan. 21, 2008

Let's start our journey in 2007 when Clorox and the American Red Cross crossed historically strict legal boundaries on using third-party endorsements on pesticides. Clorox bleach is a registered pesticide, and EPA prohibits third-party claims on pesticides ... except this time where the familiar Red Cross label was used on Clorox bleach which is only supposed to have "use and safety" instructions. EPA is considering making their limited exception permanent (ye gads and hello litigation).

This story didn't make mainstream press but state pesticide regulators found EPA's exception to its own rules not only contrary to law but a dangerous precedent. The story is also routinely discussed in my happy circles of toxics and hazardous waste compatriots here in the Pacific NW.

Next enter Clorox once again who purchased the ubiquitously loved Burt's Bees in November 2007 for $913 million: a small, environmentally-dedicated company swallowed by a mega-corporation in trade for purchasing intact land (Ms. Quimby, one of the original Burt's Bees founders was able to purchase and restore 100,000 acres), helping the successor company green its practice and image, and just plain money. Clorox is a fairly traditional mainstream company which has more recently dedicated itself to improving its environmental performance. Joel Makower met with Clorox officials and wrote beautifully about Clorox's evolution as a company. I hope that Clorox's purchase of Burt's Bees will inform product reformulation of their Formula 409, which contains 2-butoxyethanol, readily absorbed through the skin and which is routinely screened out by cities, states and companies with environmentally preferable purchasing screens on their cleaning products.

Finally, enter The Sierra Club, which will now have its logo on Clorox's GreenWorks line of green cleaners. This is where I have a problem. In fact, the bad actors here in my estimation are EPA (for permitting Red Cross labels in violation of its own rules), The American Red Cross (which made a goodly amount of money in an exclusive licensing arrangement with Clorox) and The Sierra Club.

When you look at a product label, what would you think if you saw your favorite environmental non-profit logo? Wouldn't you think, hey, this product is probably better, safer or greener than its competitors? Well, more than 17 state attorneys general thought so in a killer report on the pitfalls of cause-marketing (that's when corporations or other private interests financially support non-profit work). The problem is that the non-profit and corporation typically have an exclusive licensing agreement which raises issues about product endorsement and the extent to which your purchase really helps the non-profit and its mission.

GreenWorks will also bear EPA's Design for the Environment label which signals to me that the product really is superior from an environmental standpoint. I'd rather have EPA's label on this product than The Sierra Club's. If we decide to go this cliff-hanging route, then we may start to see non-profit logos on all sorts of products -- and the last thing we need is more product labeling confusion.

Be prepared, state consumer protection agencies, because you are going to need some cash infusion soon as well... to help you sort out these implied claims. This is a prime example of what can happen when we let cash-strapped non-profits use corporate money to help fill the cookie jar. Remember how junk food made its way into the public school system?

The Greenwash Brigade: The dubious road to Clorox's new GreenWorks product line, Heidi Siegelbaum, Jan. 21, 2008, http://www.publicradio.org/columns/sustainability/greenwash/2008/01/the_dubious_road_to_cloroxs_ne.html

Corporate Crime Reporter, March 26, 2008

Sierra Club used to be an environmental group.

Now, it’s just another corporate front.

Sierra Club formally joined the ranks of corporate front groups earlier this year when it inked a deal with The Clorox Company.

Under the agreement, Sierra Club puts its stamp of approval on Clorox’s Green Works brand of cleaners.

And in return, Clorox gives Sierra Club a portion of the sales.

Sierra Club won’t say how much money it will be getting from Clorox.

For years, under the leadership of Carl Pope, Sierra Club has been edging away from hard nosed environmental defense into the open arms of inside the beltway corporate lobbyists.

Now, Pope has made it official by signing on with the giant corporate miscreant.

In December 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fined Clorox $95,000 for distributing an unregistered and mislabeled Chinese version of Clorox Disinfectant Bleach, in violation of federal pesticide law.

The EPA said that Clorox’s Los Angeles production facility donated the illegal disinfectants to Los Angeles charities in 2005 and 2006.

The EPA said the products were intended for Asian export, so the labels lacked adequate English-language directions for use, hazard and precautionary statements, and the required statement “Not Registered for Use in the United States of America.”

“The Sierra Club has become little more than another corporate front group,” said Tim Hermach of Native Forest Council in Eugene, Oregon. “Carl Pope has sold out the Sierra Club's mission of saving nature and now seems proud of his role as an obsequious and professional Uriah Heep. As a result, Sierra Club is getting lots of corporate appreciation, cash and favors.”

Sierra Club activist Karyn Strickler told Corporate Crime Reporter that “Sierra Club is more concerned about being an arm of the corporate Democratic Party than protecting the environment.”

“The Clorox deal is a classic,” Strickler said.

Strickler and Hermach were part of an active group of Sierra Club members who a couple of years ago sought to bring the Club back to its mission of protecting the environment.

But Strickler said that the effort at reforming the Sierra Club obviously failed.

“The corporate status quo forces led by Carl Pope didn’t want a grassroots force to make sure that Sierra Club was fulfilling its mission by protecting the environment,” Strickler said.

Pope touts Green Works as the first new line that Clorox has launched in 20 years.

“Green Works is 99 percent natural and made from ingredients derived from coconuts and lemon oil, and contains no phosphorus or bleach,” Sierra Club says in its press release announcing the deal. “The products are formulated to be biodegradable, non-allergenic, packaged in bottles that can be recycled and not tested on animals. Starting in April, the product packaging will contain the Sierra Club’s name and logo and a statement about Green Works’ support for Sierra Club’s efforts to preserve and protect the environment.”

Sierra Club, with Clorox Deal, Becomes Just Another Corporate Front, 22 Corporate Crime Reporter 13, March 26, 2008, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/cloroxsierraclub032608.htm

Ethical Corporation, Sept. 1, 2008

The Clorox partnership fiasco demonstrates poor levels of transparency and weak corporate governance at the Sierra Club, argues Jon Entine

Transparency and accountability are double-edged. Embedded in an organisation’s culture they can burnish credibility and encourage progressive innovation. But if the promise does not match the practice, the greenwashing backlash can cause considerable brand damage.

Oddly, companies are absorbing this new reality faster than many non-governmental organisations. Look no further than the Clorox saga at the Sierra Club.

Earlier this year, Sierra Club, the world’s largest environmental group, with more than 700,000 paid members, announced a deal to sell, for an undisclosed sum, the rights to use its brand label on Clorox’s line of Green Works cleaners produced without chlorine. The agreement went relatively unnoticed for months – even by the group’s own US-based volunteers. But now the proverbial dung is hitting the fan.

“It’s taking money from the devil,” says Peggy Fry, one of the volunteer leaders of the northern Michigan Sierra Club who resigned en masse in July. She discovered the partnership while surfing the internet. “No one asked for our feedback, that’s for sure. As far as the membership was concerned, it was cloaked in secrecy.”

The club’s national leadership has rebuffed requests by members and the media to release financial details of the agreement, further enraging members across the US. “I’m shocked and devastated that we don’t meet the standards for open accountability and transparency that we demand of corporations,” says one prominent staff member in another part of the country. Sounding like a classic corporate whistleblower fearful of retaliation, the staffer asks for anonymity.

Wide impact

The agreement has shaken other mainstream environmental NGOs, including ones that regularly engage in dialogue with business. Clorox has long been a pariah because of the alleged dangers in making chlorine-based products.

“We certainly wouldn’t have done it,” Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace, told Ethical Corporation. Greenpeace has a strict policy banning product or company endorsements and a written “dirty business” clause preventing it from being aligned with companies whose core products are, by its judgment, harmful to the environment.

“It’s not as if Clorox has agreed to change the inherently dangerous process it uses for making its signature product,” Hind says. He notes that the Sierra Club’s executive director, Carl Pope, told him in March that he would make use of his new relationship with Clorox to discuss converting to safer processes or chemicals to replace chlorine gas. Hind is yet to hear back from Pope.

The Environmental Defense Fund pioneered partnerships in the early 1990s, working with MacDonald’s to alter its packaging, including switching from Styrofoam to paper. Head of corporate partnerships Gwen Ruta says the fund wants companies “to benefit financially from environmental innovations we help develop”. She adds: “But we don’t endorse a company or a particular product and we don’t take payment from our partner companies – the environment is our only client.”

The Sierra Club executive committee’s move to endorse the Clorox cleaner appears to directly circumvent its own corporate financial acceptance policy, which baldly states: “The club will not endorse products.”

Activists have expressed, privately, as much concern with how the Sierra Club handled its corporate governance and decision-making processes as the decision to partner with Clorox itself.

Sierra Club officials refused to be interviewed for this column, but there is scant evidence to support spokesman David Willett’s assertion that the decision to “make the really big changes we need to protect the environment”, which is how he has characterised the partnership with Clorox, was widely vetted internally.

There is rebellion at the highest levels. “We have a national corporate accountability committee that’s empowered to deal with these kinds of alliances and they were not even told that this was in the works,” says the anonymous staff member. “It was rammed through by a faction on the board.”

The club’s toxics committee pointedly noted that it was not consulted before the deal was signed. The national agriculture committee has reiterated that it considered Clorox a major violator of environmental laws and requested that the national board of directors rescind the partnership and return royalties.

The confronting corporate powertask force wrote: “We not only oppose the substantive decision itself, but condemn the undemocratic and autocratic nature of the decision. The process used to make this decision demonstrates a flagrant disregard for the basic democratic values, history and tradition of the Sierra Club.”

NGOs take brand risks in forging partnerships that are absolutely necessary in an ultra-competitive global marketplace. The stick of messy public criticism and litigation can only work if there are carrots. But key are transparency and internal democracy, which are doubly important for groups that depend on a network of volunteers and paid members.

“Sierra Club prides itself on its membership democracy,” the whistleblower told Ethical Corporation. “It would be helpful if we practise what we preach.”

The contrarian – Sell-out at the Sierra Club, Jon Entine, 1 September 2008, http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=6055

Fast Company, Aug. 7, 2008

Since Clorox enlisted the Sierra Club to hype a new green product line, sales are booming. But the club is dealing with a nasty little stain.

"We're exposed to an almost $3 billion market. If we got just a 5% market share, you're talking about a $150 million business." Don Knauss, the CEO of Clorox, may be laid up in Houston recovering from rotator-cuff surgery, but he can't help getting exercised about his company's breakout new product line. Late last year, the former Coca-Cola exec launched Clorox's first new brand in 20 years, a collection of natural-cleaning products called Green Works. "You're always trying to figure out what megatrends are going on," says Knauss, 57, who took over less than two years ago. "From day one," he says, he focused on the "explosive growth" opportunity in sustainability.

Green Works is one of the most successful launches of a new cleaning brand in recent memory. But it also has wider implications for anyone interested in the movement of the mainstream marketplace toward greener products. For Earth Day 2008, Knauss rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange -- a first for a Clorox chief -- and at his side stood a most unlikely partner: Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, the country's first -- and largest -- national environmental organization. Just a few weeks earlier, Clorox had announced that the Sierra Club logo would appear on all Green Works labels. In return, the Sierra Club would receive an undisclosed fee based partly on Green Works sales. It sounded like a win-win for everybody. What could go wrong?

Depends who you ask. Knauss couldn't be happier. He has seen Green Works' momentum continue to build, with Wal-Mart and other major retailers increasingly devoting shelf space to the hot-selling line. But within the Sierra Club, the reaction to the deal has been contentious, with emails flying back and forth and charges that Pope's executive committee has sold out -- and is retaliating against dissident members. The Sierra Club is now trying to pacify its troops, but the awkward pairing with Clorox underlines both the huge potential upside for major brands discovering green and the danger for nonprofit environmental groups plunging headlong into the for-profit world. It's the sort of thorny situation we're likely to see more often as saving the planet becomes less a cause than an industry.

. . .

Jessica Frohman, the volunteer cochair of the club's toxics committee, says her panel never took the standard vote on the Clorox products: "The Green Works proposal said CONFIDENTIAL all over it. My committee never saw it. My cochair and I did ask [Clorox] a lot of questions -- we wanted to know what was in the product." They reviewed the EPA's report on the Green Works ingredients and asked about the environmental effects of other Clorox products such as bleach. But, Frohman says, "the people who serve on these committees are more policy wonks than chemists. There isn't anyone in the Sierra Club who's going to guarantee anything about those products. If it were up to me, I would have done a lot more investigation down that path... . It doesn't make me thrilled, to be perfectly honest. "

The club's volunteer corporate-relations committee did vote on the Green Works deal -- and rejected it. One member, Stuart Auchincloss, a retired environmental lawyer, says he felt strongly that "we shouldn't be in the business of taking money for endorsing products." But Pope and the national board of directors rejected the rejection, and the executive committee promptly signed off on the Clorox proposal.

The Sierra Club brass further rankled the base by taking the unprecedented step of removing the heads of its 35,000-member Florida chapter on March 25, and suspending the chapter for four years. That chapter's leadership, which had publicly and vocally rejected the Clorox deal, accused the national leaders of exacting revenge. Sierra Club president Robert Cox has publicly stated that the suspension resulted from long-standing complaints by members and had nothing to do with Green Works.

Still, environmental blogs and the club's own Clubhouse Web site have been burning up for months with comments from angry members, some asking for a national referendum on the Clorox decision. In May, chapter leaders in northern Michigan resigned over the deal. Emails exchanged by a list of past members of the club's board of directors, obtained by Fast Company, voice dismay at the decision and the way it was handled internally. "It is not the club we have known in the past -- it is sad to see some leaders tired with it all and leaving," wrote one committee leader. A past director wrote: "They are destroying the club's credibility. They should all be ashamed of themselves." Another former director: "[Sierra Club founder] John Muir's birthday will be a sad one this year."

Further fueling the controversy, the club has refused to release financial details of its arrangement with Clorox to the public or its members, citing the terms of its contract with Clorox as well as its own rules. "The Sierra Club has a long-standing policy of not giving specific details about individual sources of funds from donors," says spokesperson Orli Cotel. "Our supporters can be assured that it is a significant contribution and is not restricted, which means that we can use the funds for any branch of our work."

With no independent scientific assessment of Green Works products, and with an undisclosed amount of money changing hands, what does that Sierra Club seal on the back of the bottle really mean?

For Clorox, it's nothing but upside. For the Sierra Club, it's risking -- if not undermining -- its most valuable asset: its independent reputation. In exchange for the use of its name, the Sierra Club applied precious little leverage. For example, it made no demands for Clorox to offer recycled packaging or change the environmental profile of other products. Not only did the club withhold financial information, but it also agreed not to lend its name to any other natural cleaning products, even if they're 100% organic and packaged in a coconut shell. Adviser Makower, who originally encouraged Clorox to reach out to nonprofits, is dismayed by the deal the Sierra Club struck: "To be tied directly to sales and not reveal [the details], and to be flacking the products, is, in any world, borderline unethical," he says. "It soils the living room for everybody."

The take-home message for the Sierra Club and other nonprofits may be that they need to draw a careful distinction between two types of nonprofit/for-profit relationships: cause-related marketing and endorsements. Historically, in cause-related marketing campaigns, a group such as the Sierra Club would collect proceeds from the sale of a non-mission-related product, such as a calendar. There are no special environmental claims being made about the calendar itself -- the organization's name is simply a sign of support. "It's like the Easter Seal," Pope says. "You're getting money from a candy. It isn't that the candy is better for polio."

In endorsement relationships, on the other hand, a group such as the Forest Stewardship Council or the Sustainable Fishery Advocates puts its seal of approval on a product that claims some mission-related benefits. No money should be involved, or that seal isn't going to be worth much.

In the Green Works situation, the distinction seems to have collapsed, which Pope himself admits. He says the Sierra Club has started a task force to reexamine its corporate policies in the wake of the experience. "Because we insist that these products meet our mission standards, the distinction for us between cause-related marketing and product endorsement is a little fuzzy. It's pretty clear that we're having a hard time keeping the distinction clear in our minds, so how can we possibly expect the consumer to keep it clear?"

Consumers, of course, may not care either way, and ultimately, Pope, as the leader of a grassroots organization, must strike a balance between keeping the club members happy and reaching a much broader audience. The club is facing challenges recruiting younger enviros, who increasingly choose to engage online rather than become lifetime contributing members, even as the activist volunteer core ages and shrinks. Of the 1.3 million Sierra Club contributors, only 800,000 have made the commitment to become members. Being exposed to millions of shoppers at Wal-Mart, Target, and elsewhere has to be a plus. "Many more people are buying Clorox Green Works than know what the Sierra Club is. It's like getting an advertisement on the back of the Clorox bottle," says Adam Werbach, a former president of the Sierra Club who is now a sustainability consultant with Saatchi & Saatchi S, working for Wal-Mart. "That's much more valuable than whatever dollars they got paid for it. "

In the meantime, the unlikely partnership continues to grow despite its fraught beginnings. Green Works sales forecasts have already been boosted six times, and each product now leads its category within the natural-products universe -- and not through cannibalization. Green Works has actually grown the overall size of the naturals market by 300% in the categories it competes in, and more products are in the pipeline, all stamped with the Sierra Club seal. What's more, both Pope and Knauss say they're talking about a new effort to promote a green rebranding of Clorox's Brita water filters as an environmentally friendly alternative to bottled water. "When I got on board 21 months ago, the question was, How quickly can we sell this thing?" Knauss says of the Brita business. "In the last 9 to 12 months, as people have been educated about the sustainability issue, Brita has seen its strongest growth in over a decade."

Sounds like a win-win for everybody. What could go wrong?

Clorox Goes Green, Anya Kamenetz, Aug 7, 2008, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/128/cleaning-solution.html?page=0%2C0

Greener Design, January 19, 2009

Clorox has added biodegradable wipes to its line of Green Works cleaners and announced how much it is giving the Sierra Club as part of their marketing relationship. On the one-year anniversary of the launch of Green Works – a product line that now include eight different cleaners, all made with plant-based ingredients – Clorox has announced its new Green Works cleaning wipes. The wipes are made with 100 percent cellulose fibers harvested from forests that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or Program for the Endorsement of Forestry Certification. Their packaging – HDPE, or #2 plastic - contains at least 25 percent post-consumer recycled content. They are also biodegradable, but only in compost conditions, based on the ASTM Standard 5338 for biodegradability.

Clorox also said that is it giving the Sierra Club $470,000 as part of the relationship for the product line. When Green Works was first announced, the Sierra Club endorsed the product, letting the cleaners carry its logo for, at the time, an undisclosed amount. The contribution is based on sales of Green Works products from April to December 2008.

Clorox Expands Green Works Line, Gives $470K to Sierra Club, January 19, 2009, http://www.greenerdesign.com/news/2009/01/19/clorox-expands-green-works-line-gives-470k-sierra-club

Seventh Generation, January 26, 2009

I have to tip my hat to Clorox. From purely a marketing point of view, Clorox's promotional deal with the Sierra Club has proved to be a clever tactical move.

You might recall that a year ago, Clorox won--for an undisclosed sum--the Sierra Club's endorsement for the bleachmaker's GreenWorks line of products. Rather than put in years of effort trying to gain the marketplace's approval by competing solely on the merits of its cleaners, Clorox basically bought itself some instant credibility with Sierra's seal of approval. The deal proved to be a boon for Clorox; the same cannot said for the Sierra Club.

For many months, thousands of Sierra Club members requested greater transparency in regard to the organization's financial relationship with Clorox. Sierra Club officers in northern Michigan quit in protest over the deal, while state chapters in New York, Florida, New Jersey, and Tennessee criticized it. But it wasn't until last week that Clorox, according to GreenBiz.com, announced it was giving $470,000 to Sierra "as part of the relationship for the product line."

I can't help but wonder why the Sierra Club gave away so much for so little. Fortune magazine once calculated that intangible assets--all of the customer/community relationships that ultimately enhance a brand's reputation--represent as much as 75% of the total value of the average US business. I suspect that the same rule-of-thumb applies to the average US non-profit. And the 116-year old Sierra Club, with its more than 700,000 members, is not your average not-for-profit. It's doubtful whether the payout will ever cover the true cost to the Sierra Club's reputation.

For Clorox, the Sierra deal has certainly proven to be a smart bit of business. I have yet to be convinced that it's good business.

Clorox Finally Comes Clean, January 26, 2009
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/learn/inspiredprotagonist/clorox-finally-comes-clean

Toxic Culture, Aug. 7, 2009

We were in the grocery store the other day looking at toilet cleaners . . . We were confronted with two choices: the obviously Clorox-branded one and something called Green Works. The latter was also a Clorox product, only the “Clorox” labeling was less conspicuous and blended in with the usual Good For The Earth type packaging. [Photos of bottles, including photo at top of this page.] The Sierra Club has long since stopped being anything close to the cutting edge of environmentalism, retiring into a kind of Clintonesque triangulation/ accomodationist senescence in its old age, so we weren’t that surprised by this. But still, it’s kind of jarring to see the Sierra Club logo on the back of something that you’re not supposed to get in your eyes or inhale the fumes of.

Turns out that we’re a little behind the curve on this one. Green Works was launched in 2008 (Clorox CEO Don Knauss rang the NYSE bell on Earth Day last year, if you can imagine it) after considerable wrangling to cash in on the sustainability trend. From the Clorox end of things, you can read about the product line here (best part of their site is the “Our story” section: Desire! Develop! Discover! Dissemble!)

Playing Gallant to Clorox’s Goofus is John Muir’s venerable Sierra Club (like I said earlier, the Clinton of the environmental movement – everyone thinks it’s good, although most people can’t name any specific thing it’s done). The advertisement for Clorox FAQ on their site is defensive forthright about the partnership, and the “perfect is the enemy of the good” line that runs through all their answers should be familiar to readers (and critics) of Toxic Culture.

About a year ago, the business magazine Fast Company published this article exploring the Green Works phenomenon. It makes the relationship seem a touch more ‘Bobby and Whitney’ than ‘Goofus and Gallant.’ You can read it for yourself (and decide who’s Bobby and who’s Whitney), but warning signs started appearing for me when Clorox said they viewed the Sierra Club as the “Good Housekeeping seal of environmental groups.” As we’ve noted before on Toxic Culture, most people believe that you have to pass some vetting process or test to earn the GH seal, when actually it is just something you get if you have been an advertiser in Good Housekeeping.

It seems clear that Sierra Club head Carl Pope rammed the endorsement through and then misrepresented the group’s internal vetting process to partner Clorox. And the Sierra Club is getting some amount of money for the use of their name and logo, though nobody will say how much it is. Must be a good sum – the two are looking into another co-branding opportunity with Brita filters, which may be spun as the “environmentally friendly alternative to bottled water.” Yes. Except we already have one of those. It’s called tap water.

No matter. We’re well through the looking glass now, as evidenced by this quote from the Clorox CEO: “Both Carl and I start with one foundational belief: Corporate America and environmental groups must start working together. We really do have the best interests of the consumer and the planet at heart.” Anyone who believes this is either hopelessly naive or a sociopath. Legally speaking, corporations have only one function – to make money for their shareholders. Any action that deviates from this can be a cause of action. But it’s good for business to say things and to get the warm and fuzzy CEO out in front, and to make nice with the environmentalists, because that’s how you will get people to buy your stuff. And when people buy your stuff, you make money.

I don’t feel sorry for Carl Pope. And I don’t begrudge people buying Green Works. Just like I don’t mind (and maybe even like some of the projects put on display by) the group Global Inheritance (who I recently learned about when I saw they were opening Environmentaland, “the world’s first eco theme park.” I had no response to this. Or more to the point, I had a lot of responses to that, some involving consideration of “alternative energy golf carts.” No need to hate on water-guzzling landscape-destroying bourgeois playground golf courses. Better to make the golf carts solar.).

Global Inheritance creates spectacles like “Global Warming Chess” (which made “One Night in Bangkok” run through my head for at least 24 hours). The concept: a life-size chess board of “cause” vs. “cure.” Team “Cause” contains such puzzling choices as “Lobbyists.” Um, don’t environmental groups also hire lobbyists? Team “Cure” features “Scientists” (as if science never in any way contributed to global warming) and “Polar Bears” (maybe because they’re white and reflect heat?). These “teams face off in un-rigged matches to illustrate the unpredictable reality of the battle between environmental violators, like carbon producing fuels and corporate lobbyists, and options that improve the possibility of sustaining human life for at least a few more generations.”

Where do you even start with something like this? The fact is that the fight against global warming is totally rigged, and is completely predictable. Momentum doesn’t get turned around easily, especially when there’s so much capital invested in the carbon economy. And it’s NOTHING LIKE CHESS, where there are rules, defined consequences, predictable outcomes, and reliable models, and defined roles for the actors, and no real stakes, and, and, and (sputters, exasperated).

Look, I’m a big fan of creating spectacles. The more, the bigger, the merrier. We don’t have enough public art projects. But I think it’s a mistake to confuse Global Inheritance’s work with “a new variety of activism.” The Los Angeles Times said this about GI’s Executive Director Eric Ritz: “What makes Ritz’s brand of activism different — and what fuels his efforts — is that unlike earlier generations of social advocates, Ritz said he and his Generation Y audience don’t see big business as the enemy.”

Because that was really the problem before. Too many people were seeing big business as the enemy. That’s why we are facing extinction level impacts due to industrialization. Because too many people were hostile to corporate interests.

Suddenly it’s clear that, far from retrenching, Pope has positioned the Sierra Club on the cutting edge of environmentalism, which happens also to be the cutting edge of corporate marketing. Clorox is the Sierra Club is Environmentaland – institutions striving toward green to capture your consumption dollars, miseducate you about the causes of environmental catastrophe, and relieve any nascent or nagging guilt about your role in said catastrophe. We’re all on Team Cure now, which is to say that we’re all on Team Cause.

Buying in: Green Works and the Sierra Club, Kate, August 7, 2009, http://toxicculture.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/buying-in-green-works-and-the-sierra-club/