This is a bit of a funny “ha-ha” story I’d like to tell on myself. You see, recently, we’ve been trying to come up with a design for our new business cards. And I insisted that we use PolyArt for the card itself. PolyArt, while it looks like paper and even feels like paper, is actually made from recyled plastic. William McDonough and Michael Braungart actually use the stuff to print their book, Cradle to Cradle. It’s an amazing material, we probably should be printing all our books with this stuff, and I thought this is precisely what we need for our business card. It says from the get-go what we are all about.

The problem was this: while it works great for books, the product we had looked rather flimsy and not very impressive. Colleagues at work were underwhelmed. It looked a bit cheap. And ugly.

Nevertheless, I was pretty obstinate about the whole thing, and so my colleagues by and large decided not to debate the issue, assuming it was a foregone conclusion.

Until our controller, Karen Stewart, someone with whom I’ve worked for about a decade and who is very committed to giving back to the community in all sorts of ways, said to me: “You know, the real problem with using PolyArt as a business card is that the people who receive our business card are simply going to throw it away. And then all we’ve accomplished is adding more plastic to the landfill.”

Upshot: End of PolyArt as our business card.

And almost immediately, Tommy Linstroth, our Sustainability Officer, kicked off a discussion about other options: alternative recycled paper and soy-based ink. In lieu of fiat from me, we got discussion and debate; in lieu of a directive from above, we got involvement and inclusion from colleagues and partners.

Lesson learned.

Recently, there was a Herald Tribune article about the return of fur as a fashion statement. The article mentioned, among other things, that Cindy Crawford, who was once a spokesperson for the antifur movement, is now modeling for Blackgama furs. After my initial reaction to this apparent contradiction, I thought about some of the contradictions inherent in our own practices. Go into our offices in Savannah and Atlanta and you will find a host of things we are not doing very well or very sustainably. Our business card itself is not an ideal solution. It’s a work in progress.

And that is how it should be. We don’t have it down. We aspire to be part of a dialog, one that helps facilitate a discussion of how we might make a difference. That’s our real calling card.

Martin Melaver, CEO Melaver, Inc., Q1 2005