Over the last forty years, dedicated citizens working through the environmental movement have made great strides in protecting the earth.  The movement's crowning achievements in the U.S. occurred in the 1970's, in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, when clear, discrete pieces of legislation could carry the day. The Clean Air Act made the skies above cities across the country cleaner; the Clean Water Act meant a rapid improvement in water quality across the country, from the Cuyahoga River to our beloved San Francisco Bay.  But something happened after those Bills passed.  The movement allowed itself to grow out of touch with the aspirations of the American public.   While environmental values have grown throughout the world, in the U.S. they've stagnated...until now.  

The moment we face today is widely different than where we were in the 1970's. First off, the scope of the ecological problem is larger and more challenging than anything we've faced before.  To solve global warming we'll need to rewire our communities, the things we buy, and the way we live.  While some think this can be accomplished by laws and regulation alone, the changes of the scale we need will only be accomplished by integrating personal and cultural change. We'll need a better north star than "our goal is to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." That's a goal that only an atmospheric chemist could love.   We need to be able to offer a better way of life, not a life full of depressing predictions for the future and sacrifices.  Who wants that?

That's where Act Now comes in.  First, our north star (you could call it a mission if you'd like) is to create a world full of happy people living on a healthy planet.   To be happy, people need to have more than their material needs met; they need access to healthy food, great health care, close relationships, something to believe in, and something to be a part of.   Second, we've chosen to focus on consumer behavior, media, and business operations as the means to accomplish these goals.   There are plenty of organizations dedicated to political change; we empower companies to improve their performance and consumers to improve their lives while protecting the planet as well.  Third, we aim to work at the scale of the problems we face.  That means our goal is to work on big projects -- we work for the largest corporation in the world, and you can expect to see us working with organizations of similar size -- or of similar influence -- because that is what the problems require right now.  

Enter Act Now, a small and rapidly expanding team of leaders that bring both the skills and the passion to address this moment.  Today the most influential institutions in the world are grasping for ways to integrate sustainability into their businesses and we hope to help.  Our value is in our team --- everyone at Act Now has made sacrifices to do this work -- and we're not stopping until our work is complete.

 
The Moment  

Today, no company in the Fortune 500 can afford to be without a comprehensive sustainability strategy. Yet sustainability efforts at the vast majority of these companies are defensive, disjointed and poorly integrated into their core business. Even those companies that have a formalized sustainability initiative do not generally have one that unites operations, marketing, and HR objectives. The result is that progress towards sustainability is slower than the planet needs and that companies frequently address sustainability from a reputational or charitable perspective.  Until companies understand that moving towards operating in a truly sustainable fashion is a necessary step for their business -- both for raising top-line revenue and bottom-line results -- sustainability faces the threat of being a fad or a thin green coat of paint on a poorly run company.  

The primary service offerings of Act Now - Outreach, Consulting, and Creative Services – enable a company to proactively embrace sustainability in a way that improves its top-line and bottom-line performance. Act Now helps businesses position themselves to capture the rapidly emerging green customer base; implement operational efficiencies that save natural resources and money; and use sustainability as a means of developing and motivating employees.   The company gets a better business out of the relationship, we get a platform to pursue our North Star.  

That's what we do and why we do it.   

Adam Werbach, CEO