Most of you by now have probably heard the story about the compostable Sun Chips bag that was launched about 18 months ago.  For those of you that weren’t aware of it, you can check out this YouTube video to see what it was all about.

Great idea in concept, right?  Take a quick look (13 seconds) at this guy’s feedback regarding the implementation of that idea.

Now while that was just one person’s thoughts, enough people shared a similar view causing Frito Lay to take the compostable bag off the shelf and throw it into the bin.

This once again underscores the impact that unintended side effects can have on sustainability initiatives at an organization.  Clearly Frito Lay realized that the bag had a different sound and texture when launching it.  What they didn’t expect is that the product would have a major annoyance factor to a large number of its customers, its primary stakeholder.

Having spent time with many organizations talking with them about both their successes and challenges I hear many great stories.  One of my favorite stories is another great example of the impacts of unintended side effects.  The story is about a retailer that was looking for ways to reduce energy consumption in its stores.  One individual decided that the best way to reduce energy consumption in the store was to reduce the number of refrigeration units.  The individual bullishly went forward and took out some refrigerators, and to nobody’s surprise they began to see a reduction in the energy consumption within the stores. 

Everybody was happy, right?  Not really.  What they didn’t consider was that fewer refrigeration units meant less storage for their cold and frozen food products.  Less storage meant more frequent shipments from their distribution center.  This meant an unexpected increase in energy consumed due to the more frequent shipments. 

It also meant an increase in fuel and labor costs for this additional work.  This wasn’t something that was considered when thinking about implementing the initiative.  It got even worse.  As a result of there being fewer refrigeration units, the shelves in the stores were more frequently empty since there was less shelf space for the cold and frozen food products.  This led to dissatisfaction amongst its customers.  In hindsight, what seemed to the individual like a simple change for the better, clearly wasn’t well thought out and had unintended side effects.

Whether the initiative is bringing a new product or service to market or whether it is focusing on internal efficiency improvements taking a systematic approach in understanding the key stakeholders and their wants and needs is critical to make certain you eliminate unintended side effects.