Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation (Creative Commons photo from the Flickr account of dreamymo)

Note: This post is continued from Thursday’s post. I suggest you start there.

Hollender attended a conference by Business for Social Responsibility and blatantly asked the question, “Will this conference make business more responsible?”

It’s a good question to ask since BSR is, according to Hollender, the largest and most well-known organization promoting socially responsible business practices. Hollender’s answer in so many words: “No.”

I sense the same ineffectiveness with conferences such as GreenTown. My college, Columbia College Chicago, hosted it recently, and I covered Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech there, as well as a panel on waste diversion. But did it actually do anything to help the planet? Will the city officials who attended actually take anything away from it? Yet to be known. (If it’s hard to find the tangible results of something as big as this, hasn’t it failed anyway?)

How about the one-year get-together of players in the Chicago Climate Action Plan—was this any more than a back rub for those involved? I doubt it.

So thanks, Mr. Hollender, for saying what needs to be said. I hope I can always be that way myself.