Which products get the bad rap is not always logical or driven by real data - so how can you prepare? SLM expert-in-residence Andrew Winston has a few tips.

Sometimes the perception of a product as good or bad for you can switch fast. Take what's happening to bottled water: Who knows if all the hoopla is really driving down sales, but it hasn't been a great brand moment for bottled water companies. What was once a convenient way to stay hydrated (who knew we had so much trouble getting through a business meeting without water?), is now a sign of wastefulness.

Consumers and other critical stakeholders will make choices that will seem like sudden shifts against you or your products. I'd worry about a few big groups: "the public" and consumers, business customers, and of course the government. Let's look at an example of  how each might affect your business.

Case #1: The Public Turns on You

All the big bottled water companies - Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle - are feeling the heat. As usual, the big iconic brands get hit the hardest and Coke has been getting ready. So while the big guys have redesigned bottles to reduce plastic use, Coke has been the most aggressive across its portfolio, redesigning its glass and plastic cola bottles and announcing massive investments in recycling (here and here). Since glass bottles may be next up in public backlash, and waste is always hot, all of these activities blunt criticism, get ahead of problems, and create real value for the company.

Case #2: Your Business Customers Turn on You

If you sell to big customer-facing brands, especially the big retailers, you're getting some tough questions now about some products. Retailers are taking a pretty hard line on lead in toys, as they should. PVC plastic is on the run, with Target announcing cuts in products and packaging and Sears and Kmart following suit. We may still use PVC in some plastics, like pipes buried in the ground or behind walls, but PVC in everyday products is going away, propelled by big brands trying to green up their shelves. These big business customers are also phasing out somewhat more innocuous problem products like plastic bags - Wal-Mart and IKEA are two of the biggest to tackle the issue. The greening of the supply chain is getting more aggressive.

Case #3: The Government Turns on You

The most obvious group to decide a product isn't good for you is the government - with often severe impacts on business. Cars are under attack, with taxes on big vehicles in France, government websites with information and green rankings in the U.S. and in the U.K., and even an EU-wide mandate in the works to force a health warning in all car ads (echoing the history of cigarette advertising).

Here in the U.S., we've had an interesting, quiet revolution targeting a seemingly harmless product, the light bulb. The last energy bill got so much attention about raising car fuel efficiency (something I'm convinced was going to happen through market forces anyway). But the bill also effectively ended the 120-year reign of incandescent light bulbs. New standards will phase them out, starting in 2012, by setting new energy-use standards that the incandescents can't meet. GE has begun the phase out already, shuttering plants in the old technology. Lucky for GE, it has a big business in the replacement tech, compact fluorescents. What happens if you only make the product that's being eliminated?

Seven Smart Strategies

How can you prepare for these new pressures? A few suggestions:

• Know your footprint better than the critics. Know where you have a legitimate problem and where the criticism is not quite right, where your product is actually better than most alternatives, or even explore when your product is the best solution (e.g., water bottles are pretty good in disaster relief).
  
• Listen to customers about their concerns.
  
• Expect zero tolerance on some issues (such as lead in toys).
  
• At times, do a "mea culpa." The first toy company to say, "Yes, there's a lead problem, and yes, we're fixing it" wins major points."
  
• Deal with major footprint issues through redesign and attention to end-of-life (Coke is taking these on).
  
• Be prepared to invest to avoid these problems.
  
• Innovate and develop a path away from dangerous or "useless" products to an alternative - eat your own lunch before someone else does.
  

The bottom line? Negative attention, deserved or not, can come fast. So stay nimble, know your business, and begin the transition away from those products or ingredients that are never going to come back into everyone's good graces.

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Andrew Winston is founder of Winston Eco-Strategies and co-author of the best-selling Green to Gold. Read his "Eco-Advantage" blog here.

Note: This article has been adapted from Eco-Advantage Strategies, Andrew Winston's regular newsletter on how to build value and competitive advantage by innovating for sustainability.