Friday I sat at the back of the room while a group of corporate sustainability and social responsibility people listened attentively to a presentation by Per Grankvist, editor-in-chief of CSR iPraktiken.se. He told them what he, as a journalist who regularly looks for green stories, believes they should or should not do to get their messages across. One of his concerns was greenwashing, that mind-numbing business of companies telling us how green and environmentally conscious they are, to the point where we doubt their sincerity.

First, he suggested that companies should remember how journalists work and what matters to reporters: being first to get the story, gettng the facts right, getting both sides of the story – never publishing rumours.

He pointed out that for any company the bottom line is always financial: it is involved in sustainability issues because this makes good business sense. A company’s first obligation is to stay in business and any message from the CRS (corporate social responsibility) team has to reflect this approach. Talking about sustainability and branding at the same time is likely to make people in the company think you haven’t made the link between sustainability and profit. For non-profits, the financial equivalent is fundraising.

“Transparency communicates honesty,” Grankvist said. And honesty means trust, and trust translates into transactions. Nike became the first major shoe manufacturing multinational to offer a list of where its factories were, but only after getting grief for not doing so. It wasn’t enough to answer questions about where they were – the public wanted to know that the company was forthright enough to publish the list. Transparency was the issue, not where the factories sit.

To the inhouse question faced by so many corporate social responsibility people, “we follow the rules, so why should we do more?” Grankvist suggested that communicators avoid clashing with corporate environmentalists and instead encourage them to send the message that although in this company we travel less and use video conferences we also try to make it easy for our people.

In the end Grankvist noted that communicators need to always find a way to make their green story human, coming down to the details. And before worrying too much about the media, it makes sense to start at home and make sure that employees and customers have been convinced by the corporate green message.

I would add one more point, from my back row journalist’s seat: many of us long to support a green approach, sustainable businesses, but in the end we need to have something so vast redrawn at a more personal level. What can I, as an individual reading an article or hearing a radio report, really do to make a difference?

Grankvist was addressing the Genevacom and CSR, two local business organizations.