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Setting Sustainability Goals: DMA Takes Industry Aim at Bottom-Line Benefits

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By Chet Dalzell

One of the challenges for advancing sustainability in everyday business practice is that investments made toward the “triple” bottom line must indeed generate payback in three ways: financial, environmental and social. Many times, “people” (social) and “planet” (environmental) may get an obvious nod, but “profit” (financial) is difficult to articulate.

As a member of the Direct Marketing Association Committee on the Environment and Social Responsibility, we are focused on articulating triple-bottom-line benefits in each and all of the activities we undertake on behalf of the business. Two such Committee initiatives have been given specific recognition by the DMA Board of Directors as industry-wide sustainability goals: (1) a commitment to apply preference, data hygiene and proper postal preparation to reduce Undeliverable-as-Addressed-Advertising (UAA) mail by 25 percent by 2013 and, by doing so, generate savings approaching 1 million tons in carbon equivalents (announced July 2008); (2) a commitment to increase recycling collection rates for catalogs and direct mail, as tracked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to support growth of recycled paper markets (not publicly announced by DMA yet, but approved by the DMA Board at its recent October 2011 meeting).

The triple bottom-line benefits of each of these two goals are worth articulating. They include (but are not limited to):

Public Goal 1: List Hygiene & Carbon Reduction

  • Less mail waste is generated as more mail is delivered as properly addressed (financial);

  • Preferences as indicated by consumers are respected and honored (social); and,

  • Unwanted or improperly addressed mail avoids entering the municipal solid waste stream (environmental).

Public Goal 2: Increased Catalog/Direct Mail Recycling

  • The more paper fiber that is recovered for recycling, the greater supply and availability of paper and packaging made from recovered fiber thereby decreasing pricing pressure on products made with recovered fiber (financial);

  • Less hostility toward discarded mail waste, as more material is put toward subsequent, useful purpose -and recycling programs are fully supported (social); and,

  • Less discarded catalogs and direct mail are destined for landfills (environmental).

Perceptions persist that sustainability initiatives are “feel good” activities that don’t support the enterprise. In contrast, DMA and CESR will be emphasizing in 2012 that sustainability is an industry imperative that will lead to measurable, accountable benefits to our industry’s collective bottom lines—all three of them. In this blog, I will discuss in more detail some of the specific efforts being undertaken to achieve these important goals.

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Chet Dalzell

Marketing Sustainably: A blog posting questions, opportunities, concerns and observations on sustainability in marketing. Chet Dalzell has 25 years of public relations management and expertise in service to leading brands in consumer, donor, patient and business-to-business markets, and in the field of integrated marketing. He serves on the ANA International ECHO Awards Board of Governors, as an adviser to the Direct Marketing Club of New York, and is senior director, communications and industry relations, with the Digital Advertising Alliance. Chet loves UConn Basketball (men's and women's) and Nebraska Football (that's just men, at this point), too! 

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