Dear Friends,
With this years Earth Day activities, Fortune (and every other) magazine’s “Green” issue, the new BBC Planet Earth phenomenon and Al Gores speaking presentations selling out in rock star fashion, the debate over the need for Sustainable Development is over. It wins. Zero” has become the new “black”, but unlike fashion, it’s not seasonal. It has urgently become mainstream.
Business is paying attention. Business decisions are being made with environmental consequences being considered. Sustainable Development is on the business plans of every start up, in the CSR reports of every public company and on the whiteboards of every boardroom. But for the small business owner, while it’s on their radar, it may seem like a luxury to be able to consider it, never mind understand how to go about “doing” it.
The learning curve is steep and ever changing. As one new solution emerges, a whole new set of challenges seem to accompany it. But the message is clear. We are looking for and acting on better ways of doing things.
Sustainability is about “doing no harm”, “Beyond” sustainability is about giving back. Both seem critical. And anything is better than nothing.
This issue of The Orenda Connection is focused on Corporate Conservation. It’s a snapshot of how business is in the “flow” of repairing the planet, engaging employees and customers in the process, and creating an “Emotional” Profit Center through compassionate conservation in the workplace. Our goal is to educate, motivate, celebrate and communicate in a simple way, hopefully inspiring you with an “ah-ha” moment and/or providing you with the resources to learn more.
Peggie Pelosi
Vision Keeper - Orenda Connections
Companies that Inspire
Some Green Giants leaving small footprints
Patagonia - The Cleanest Clothesline
While taking my first baby step up the very steep learning curve of sustainable development, I had the great privilege of interviewing Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, one of the most inspiring heroes leading environmental change in the corporate world.
Patagonia grew out of a small company that made tools for climbers. Alpinism remains at the heart of a worldwide business that still makes clothes for climbing – as well as for skiing, snowboarding, surfing, fly fishing, paddling and trail running. These are all silent sports. None requires a motor; none delivers the cheers of a crowd. In each sport, reward comes in the form of hard-won grace and moments of connection between people and nature.
“For us at Patagonia, a love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them, and to help reverse the steep decline in the overall environmental health of our planet. We donate our time, services and at least 1% for our sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups all over the world who work to help reverse the tide.”
Patagonia knows that business activity – from lighting stores to dyeing shirts – creates pollution as a by-product. So they work steadily to reduce those harms. They use recycled polyester in many of their clothes and only organic, rather than pesticide-intensive, cotton.
Patagonia was still a fairly small company when they started to devote time and money to the increasingly apparent environmental crisis. Early on, they began initial steps to reduce their own role as a corporate polluter: They’ve been using recycled-content paper for their catalogs since the mid-eighties. They worked with suppliers to develop recycled polyester for use in their Synchilla fleece.
The Patagonia distribution center in Reno, opened in 1996, achieved a 60% reduction in energy use through solar-tracking skylights and radiant heating; they used recycled content for everything from rebar to carpet to partitions. They retrofitted lighting systems in existing stores, and build-outs for new stores became increasingly environmentally friendly. They assessed the dyes they used and eliminated colors from the line that required the use of toxic metals and sulfides. Most importantly, since the early nineties, they have made environmental responsibility a key element of everyone's job.
1% for the Planet
Yvon Chouinard co-founded this alliance of companies that recognize the true cost of doing business and donate 1% of their sales to environmental organizations worldwide. Through their corporate giving, grants and philanthropy, they encourage responsible business and corporate responsibility. The environmental alliance is designed to help their members become sustainable businesses and their environmental group database aids their membership to make choices with their corporate grants to environmental organizations.
There are currently about 540 member companies.
www.onepercentfortheplanet.org
Employee Volunteer Opportunities
Patagonia employees are able to qualify for a one month paid sabbatical to volunteer for an environmental organization. The company is also working in the National Parks in Patagonia, South America, and 4 times a year, 6 employees are sent down for 3 weeks to work on projects. How inspiring for the environmentally conscious employees Patagonia attracts in the first place (they have about 900 applications for every job posting!)
Marketing
When it comes to communicating your corporate giving, Yvon encourages companies to “Let everyone... your employees, shareholders, customers and competitors know what you’re doing to improve things on the planet. It’s critical that the change-makers send a message and lead by example”.
Spreading the Word
In 1988, Patagonia initiated their first national environmental campaign on behalf of an alternative master plan to deurbanize the Yosemite Valley. Each year since, they’ve undertaken a major education campaign on an environmental issue. They took an early position against globalization of trade where it means compromise of environmental and labor standards. They’ve argued for dam removal where silting marginally useful dams compromise fish life. They’ve supported wildlands projects that seek to preserve ecosystems whole and create corridors for wildlife to roam. They hold, every eighteen months, a "Tools for Activists" conference to teach marketing and publicity skills to some of the groups they work with.
Measuring the Business Impact
When asked about how to measure the business impact of corporate responsibility, Yvon says ”don’t”. If your customers are saying good things, and your employees are engaged, that’s all you need to know. “The best letters I get are from college students who say they can’t really afford our product, but buy it anyway because of what we and our products stand for. That’s my measurement.” says Chouinard,”
Build the best product, do no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
–Patagonia's Mission Statement
Find out more at www.patagonia.com
Read more: The April 2, 2007 edition of Fortune at: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/
There are thousands of companies taking giant steps to reduce their footprint and engage their employees with their programs. We chose a few that we feel are profound. When you have some time check out their websites. They are inspiring!
Climbing Mount Sustainability- Turning Corn into Carpet
Interface is the worldwide leader in design, production and sales of modular carpet and a leading manufacturer and marketer of broadloom carpet, panel fabrics and upholstery fabrics. Headquartered in Atlanta, Interface has manufacturing locations on four continents and offices in more than 100 countries. In business for more than 30 years, Interface is a leader in industrial ecology. With the vision of becoming the world's first environmentally restorative company by 2020, Interface is pioneering management and manufacturing processes that will achieve this goal.
www.interfaceinc.com
Green Acres
Stoneyfield Farm is the world’s leading organic yogurt-maker. They produce all natural and organic yogurts, smoothies, soy-yogurts, ice cream and milk Stoneyfied is working to promote sustainable agriculture, and protect and restore the environment. And they’re showing business leaders everywhere that environmentally and socially responsible companies can be profitable, too.
www.stoneyfield.com
Brewing Beer off the Grid
Founded by an electrical engineer and a social worker, it only makes sense that New Belgium Brewing Company has always looked for ways to be energy efficient and socially responsible. Through embracing new technologies, seeking out alternative forms of energy and reducing their waste stream, they strive to make smart business decisions and do well by the environment each and every day. www.newbelgium.com
The Tree Planting Printer
As I pour over the many magazines and newspapers that arrive in my mailbox everyday, I can’t help but think about the energy that goes into producing them, not to mention their most significant raw ingredient- our trees. It caused me to think about the publishing and printing world, especially with this past month just about everybody doing their “green” issue!. Pictorial Offset Corporation is the first printing company in the world to become carbon-neutral through the conservation fund... and it does it by planting trees.
www.pictorialoffset.com
The Book(s):
Both by Paul Hawken
The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
1993 New York, HarperCollins
Over a decade ago, Paul Hawken, co-founder of the garden retailer Smith and Hawken, wrote the bestselling book The Ecology of Commerce. In it he brilliantly points out that the quality of every living system on earth is in decline as a direct result of personal and corporate irresponsibility .Our air and water are polluted, our forests are being destroyed and our animals are facing extinction. At the same time, human health is deteriorating, in part due to the stress and strain of the modern employee.
He goes on to predict that the trend will turn: there will be a profound business transformation, he says, one that will render new business unrecognizable. The companies of the future will be in the business of healing our world. Businesses that exist to rebuild our communities, repair our ecosystems, protect the environment, improve our health and provide inspirational work environments that create prosperity, will thrive.
“ To create an enduring society, we will need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative. Business will need to integrate economic, biologic and human systems to create a sustainable method of commerce. As hard as we may try to become sustainable on a company-by-company level, we cannot fully succeed until the institutions surrounding commerce are redesigned. Just as every act in an industrial society leads to environmental degradation, regardless of intention, we must design a system where the opposite is true, where doing good is like falling off a log, where the natural, everyday acts of work and life accumulate into a better world as a matter of course, not a matter of conscious altruism. That is what this book tries to imagine.”
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming
2007 New York, Viking Press
In his new book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming, Hawken talks about the thousands of grassroots organizations that have converged to create the critical mass that the environmental movement is now experiencing
"Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot. causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up, in every city, town, and culture. and is emerging to be an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide.
Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and hidden history, which date back many centuries. A culmination of Hawken's many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire and delight any and all who despair of the world's fate, and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself. Fundamentally, it is a description of humanity's collective genius, and the unstoppable movement to reimagine our relationship to the environment and one another."
-Viking Press
Both books are availabe at www.amazon.com
Sight and Sound (just so you’re in the know!)
Planet Earth - The DVD Series
in case you haven’t heard!
Last Christmas my son Michael showed up with a copy of the BBC Planet Earth DVD series which he had picked up in London. As we were spellbound watching this stunning television experience, we realized that we were watching a “snapshot” of our planet as it exists today. It is unforgettable journey through the daily struggle for survival, and is overwhelming in its beauty.
A companion to the Planet Earth series, Planet Earth- the Future (BBC version), looks at what the future may hold for endangered animals, habitats and ultimately - ourselves. There is a fascinating chronology of the environmental movement, from Save the Whales, through pesticide, acid rain, rainforest and global warming awareness. Following the environmental issues raised by the groundbreaking series, it asks why so many species are threatened, and how they can be protected in the future.
It’s a thing of beauty!
Canada:http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/planetearth.html
USA: http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/about/episode.html
UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/planetearth/
SOS and Live Earth - The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis is a series of concerts planned to take place on Saturday July 7, 2007 to promote action to confront our climate crisis. Seven concerts- Seven Continents- One day.
SOS-Save Our Selves is designed to trigger a mass-scale movement to combat our climate crisis. Our climate crisis affects everyone, everywhere. That's who SOS is aimed at. The magnitude of the climate crisis makes it so that only a global response can begin to address it. SOS asks all people to Save Our Selves because only we can. SOS is more than a distress call. The most important part is how people respond. As we move forward, SOS will not only issue the call, but will provide the solutions individuals, corporations, governments and the world can use in answering it.
SOS will reach people in every corner of the planet through television, film, radio, the Internet and through Live Earth, which will bring together more than 150 of the world's top musicians for 24-hours of music from 7 concerts across all 7 continents. Live Earth alone will engage an audience of more than 2 billion people. That audience, and the proceeds from the concerts, will create the foundation for a new, multi-year global effort to combat the climate crisis led by Vice President Al Gore.
All Live Earth venues will be designed and constructed by a groundbreaking team of sustainability engineers and advisors directed by John Picard. This greening team will address the environmental and energy management concerns of each concert site, as well as the operations of sponsors, partners, and other Live Earth affiliates.
Each venue will not only be designed to maintain a minimum environmental impact, but will showcase the latest state-of-the-art energy efficiency, on-site power generation, and sustainable facilities management practices.
SOS was founded by Kevin Wall.
www.liveearth.org
The Seeds of Change
Until recently I fell into the “someday I’ll” category of environmental action-takers. It all seemed overwhelming and like so many, I felt that my contribution was so insignificant. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, shared a meaningful metaphor with me in our chat... and he suggested that I pass it on. In the world of capitalism...we know that one dollar that we invest now can appreciate more than the $10 we wait to invest later, when we have more. Likewise, the one dollar we donate now can do more good than the ten dollars we may be able to donate later if we wait. And the light bulb we change for a new energy efficient bulb now can do more good than the room of light bulbs we change later when we have more time and more money.
So, as I take the baby steps up the learning curve of sustainable development, I’ve taken some simple steps to “do better”. There a hundreds more, but hundreds can overwhelm.
- Turn off computer monitors when the day is done
- Print on 2 sides of the paper
- Invest in a large water dispenser... eliminate the small plastic bottles
- Recycle computers to an agency that may be able to find a home for them in an inner-city school or home.
- Let employees work from home sometimes. Save the commute.
- Ask cleaning people to use eco-friendly cleaning supplies
- Do a team tree-planting day.
Why plant trees?
For every ton of new wood that grows, about 1.5 tons of CO2 are removed from the air and 1.07 tons of life-giving oxygen are produced. During a 50-year life span, one tree will generate $30,000 in oxygen, recycle $35,000 worth of water, and clean up $60,000 worth of air pollution or $125,000 total per tree without including any other values! For 29 more reasons go to http://www.treelink.org/docs/29_reasons.phtml
Why recycle computers?
There are hazardous materials, such as lead, mercury, and hexavalent chromium, in circuit boards, batteries, and color cathode ray tubes (CRTs). Televisions and CRT monitors contain four pounds of lead, on average (the exact amount depends on size and make). Mercury from electronics has been cited as a leading source of mercury in municipal waste. In addition, brominated flame retardants are commonly added to plastics used in electronics. If improperly handled, these toxics can be released into the environment through incinerator ash or landfill leachate.
In 1998, over 112 million pounds of materials were recovered from electronics, including steel, glass, and plastic, as well as precious metals.Reusing and recycling the raw materials from end-of-life electronics conserves natural resources and avoids the air and water pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions,that are caused by manufacturing new products.
Canada: www.rebootcanada.ca
USA: www.computers.interconnection.org
UK: www.computeraid.org
Resources:
Zerofootprint’s mission is to change the world by helping people reduce their environmental footprint. Our goal is to provide a forum for the massive and growing, but mostly unconnected majority of people – whether they think of themselves as citizens or businesspeople, parents or consumers, activists or theorists—who want to do the right thing. www.zerofootprint.net
The Conservation Fund has launched a new program that makes it easy and affordable for individuals, corporations, or even entire communities to Go Zerosm by measuring and then offsetting their carbon dioxide emissions – simply by planting trees. www.conservationfund.org/gozero
1% for the Planet: Yvon Chouinard co-founded this alliance of companies that recognize the true cost of doing business and donate 1% of their sales to environmental organizations worldwide. Through their corporate giving, grants and philanthropy, they encourage responsible business and corporate responsibility. The environmental alliance is designed to help their members become sustainable businesses and their environmental group database aids their membership to make choices with their corporate grants to environmental organizations. There are currently about 540 member companies. www.onepercentfortheplanet.org
Treelink was created to provide information, research, and networking for people working in urban and community forestry. For the researcher, the arborist, the community group leader, the volunteer - our purpose is to inform, educate, and inspire. www.treelink.org
Evergreen explores the relationship between nature, culture and community in urban spaces, and provides corporate volunteer tree planting opportunities. www.evergreen.ca
The Nature Conservancy ‘s mission is to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. www.nature.org
Friends of the Earth The world's largest grassroots environmental network, uniting 70 national member groups and some 5,000 local activist groups on every continent. www.foei.org
David Suzuki Foundation – The Nature Challenge
Ten simple things you can do to preserve nature
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge
ClimateSafe certification enables consumers to enjoy goods and services that have little or no impact on Global Warming. http://www.climatesafe.com
Plenty is an environmental media company dedicated to exploring and giving voice to the green revolution that will define the 21st Century. We live in exciting times: people everywhere are reexamining every part of their lives. From the coffee we drink to the cars we use to drive to work, our lives are getting greener—and Plenty is here to document it.www.plentymag.com
Beware the “Greenwashing”
In our work at Orenda guiding corporate philanthropy programs, we often find companies who although with good intentions, are not actually “doing” for the community what they claim to be doing.
A term merging the concepts of “green” (environmentally sound) and “whitewashing” (to conceal or gloss over wrongdoing). Greenwashing is any form of marketing or public relations that links a corporate, political, religious or nonprofit organization to a positive association with environmental issues for an unsustainable product, service, or practice.
In some cases, an organization may truly offer a “green” product, service or practice. However, through marketing and public relations, one is wrongly led to believe this “green” value system is ubiquitous throughout the entire organization.
The U.S.-based watchdog group CorporateWatch defines greenwash as "the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment." This definition was shaped by the group's focus on corporate behaviour and the rise of corporate green advertising at the time. However, governments, trade associations and non-government organizations have also been accused of greenwashing.
Savvy consumers are also watching. Make sure what you say and what you do are the same.
www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/g/greenwashing.php
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Greenwashing
www.greenwashing.net |
