"People thought we were tree-hugging, tie-dye wearing, pinko-lefty freaks"

With clients as diverse as Greenpeace and Shell, it might appear that public relations company Futerra Sustainability Communications would represent anyone who is prepared to pay.

But the fact that an organisation such as Greenpeace is prepared to appear on the same client list as a big oil company, is testament to the serious approach that Futerra appears to take to the services it supplies.

The explosion in investment and interest in sustainable approaches to business and climate change has been seized upon by marketeers as a way to promote products or services, no matter how unsustainable they might be in reality. The rising tide of greenwash is troubling for those organisations who have a genuinely sustainable message to impart, as they risk having it diluted or even subverted as a result of others' desire to leap on the environmental bandwagon.

Established in the early nineties before sustainability became part of the zeitgeist, Futerra established its credentials at a time when the idea of an ethically focused PR company seemed like an contradiction in terms and is now seeking to take on the challenges presented by the vogue for greenwash.

Born out of a desire to combine a passion for the environment with a flair for presentation, Futerra was initially a short-term project run by founders Solitaire Townsend and Ed Gillespie. The two met while studying for a master degree in sustainable development backed by theatre producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh and environmental guru Jonathon Porritt.

Initially funded for a year by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Futerra has since become one of the leading agencies in the emerging green and ethical PR sector.

BusinessGreen.com caught up with Townsend recently to find out how the PR industry is slowly shaking off its repuation for regarding ethics as a county to the east of London.

BusinessGreen.com: So why did you and Ed decide that what the world needed was an environmentally responsible public relations company?
Solitaire Townsend: After we left the masters, we both went off and worked in corporate social responsibility, but became incredibly frustrated with the fact that no one had any idea what we did for a living, thought it was as dull and assumed before they met us that we were tree-hugging, tie-dye wearing, pinko-lefty freaks, basically. And this whole extraordinary issue of sustainable development, the growing issue of climate change, social equity, the fascinating things that were going on inside business, had such a poor image, had a such a poor reputation out there in the wider world, that we came up for the concept for Futerra. That was about nine years ago and it took us two years to secure the funding for what we originally thought was going to be a short-term project.

How effective were companies at communicating around sustainability 10 years ago?
For a lot of businesses it was basically saying: "Look, we are not as evil as you think we are". There was very little solutions-orientation, it was a rear-guard action, often very defensive or even self-flagellating – there was very little that was engaging with the audience. It was almost as if businesses forgot everything they knew about communication when this issue came along. Things that their marketing department would never ever have okayed would go out there. I had a lot of fun in the early days, putting companies' customer facing web pages next to their corporate social responsibility pages and showing just what a difference there was in terms of life and energy. It used to look like it came from two completely different companies.

Is that because there wasn't the funding or importance given to it at the time?
Yes, there wasn't the funding or focus, but then companies have been dragged into the same tired thinking that if you want to be taken seriously, then you have to be as dull as possible. If you want to get a message across put it in the biggest possible document that you are able to bring about – more means more. That was the situation that a lot of people were in.

Futerra is obviously a profitable company, but given its altruistic grounding did you ever think about setting it up as a charity instead?
No, that was never the philosophy behind the organisation. This was a service that we could offer to others rather than a campaign we could run. If we were running a campaign then we would have been a charity and searching for funding or we would have been an think tank turning out ideas and concepts.

What sort of reaction did you get to the business at the beginning?
People would say that, "You can't just have an agency that will only do sustainable development, you will not get the clients". We were told that we would have to take on cause-related marketing, and CSR reporting work, which we didn't want to do in the early days. The idea of just doing PR and communications around sustainable development wasn't going to fly, we were told. But seven years later we now have a number of competitors. That said, we have been doing it longer than most of them and we get a lot of respect for that from potential clients.

What does your client base look like at the moment?
We do a lot of work for local and central government in the UK, we were involved in the launch of the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative in the US, the first mandatory cap-and-trade system in the US which is working across 10 US states. We now have an official office in the US. The other part of our business is FTSE 100 companies such as Shell, United Utilities, BT and HP.

Are there companies that you wouldn't work for given your ethical stance?
We have quite an interesting process internally at Futerra. It works like this: if a client comes to us or there is a client opportunity that is contentious or in a contentious arena or issue – such as carbon capture and storage, which we have questions about – then we will sit down as a company and discuss it. If we think that what we are being asked to do will make the world a better place, if we think it will move sustainable development forward, then we will take the work and will throw ourselves into it 100 per cent. But the rule is that if we think that it will not – if we think it is greenwash – then we don't just say that we don't go for that contract, we set ourselves a target to, in the following days, months or years, find a contract that actually conflicts with the one we were offered.

For example, if we have chosen not to take the opportunity to promote a certain government policy, then we have to go and work for an NGO that is campaigning against it. If there is one thing we will not do it is wash our hands of something. There is no client or industry where we will say: "Well, we rather they just didn't exist". We either work for them or we work against them and those are the rules internally. That can be very hard for people who work here to get their head around.

Can you give an example of when this has happened?
No. Of course I can't.

Not the company – but maybe the industry or area concerned?
There have only been three contracts in the history of Futerra that we have been offered which we turned down and only two of them so far have we managed to find the antithesis of – one of them we are still looking at.

How do companies react when you turn them down - they can't be expecting it?
We are always clear with companies why we will not take the contract. Once that has even led the company re-thinking the contract. For example if the contract is just greenwash-puff we will simply tell them that our due diligence to you is to tell you that "this is a piece of PR puff and that you are going to get an Advertising Standards Authority complaint held-up against you".

Is that approach just tacitly held knowledge in the company or is it actually written down somewhere?
No, it's in our employee handbook. There hasn't been a staff member who hasn't asked me that at interview. Every single staff member has asked at interview, " who won't we work for?"

What is your take on how the global downturn is going to affect investment around sustainability and climate change?
I get asked this about 10 times a week and there is a superb irony being asked that when you are working sixteen hour days and there are not enough people in the company to do the work that is coming through the door. The implicit assumption that these issues are going to be less important during a recession is deeply worrying indicator of the psychology of the movement itself, as it seems to be those within the green movement that are asking this question quite a lot.

I would love it if the challenges of sustainable development were so light that we could choose to pick them up and put them down. If you consider the last major wave of economic challenges in the eighties, then some of the [green issues] could be put down. It is bad that they were, as they were hard to pick up again... but the main focus was on biodiversity and equity. It sounds terrible, but people do choose to care less about the tigers and the starving children when they have less money in your pocket. One thing I don't think many people are appreciating is how selfish the current calls for sustainability are. This is not about being a good person, it is not about saving the tigers, this is not about giving back, this is about surviving climate change and u nfortunately – climate change is not going anywhere.

Current business interest in green issues is not being driven by altruism then?
It is not driven by altruism at all. For a lot of people who were involved in the green movement in the eighties, there is an assumption that interest will wane when recession hits just as it did then. You are probably going to get less frou-frou environmentalism, but carbon markets are not going anywhere, cap-and-trade is not going anywhere, the climate change bill is not going anywhere, the desperate need for environmental adaptation in the developing world is not going anywhere, post-Kyoto Copenhagen isn't going anywhere, and unfortunately the effects of climate change are not going anywhere. Energy costs are continuing to rise, so the need for efficiencies are right there, the fact that we are going to have to decommission a number of our energy sources in this country and choose to rebuild of do something else, all these remain as questions. It might be less exciting and less fashionable that it was this time next year, but it is all still there and has to be dealt with.

Consumers are obviously tuned into ethically and sustainably developed products, but do you feel that it goes deeper than that and products that aren't environmentally attuned have been tarnished somehow? A car that five years ago would have been a satisfying purchase because of its luxury and comfort, may now be perceived as subconsciously lacking something because it isn't green. It is still as fast but it no longer as perfect or high end as it once was?
I think it is a fascinating point. You hear people say that only 30 per cent of people purchase based on environmental considerations – yes that is true but that is only the ones that have actually flipped over. Look at the statistics of how the majority of consumers feel about their consumption, does that not worry you? Are you not concerned by the fact that your brand is associated with something negative, and although consumers are still buying it, they are feeling bad and guilty for buying it.