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Social Change From the Inside Out

When a company is as environmentally responsible as Stonyfield, you’d expect them to shout it from the rooftop.  But they’re not that kind of company.  Truth is, many of Stonyfield’s customers will never know that it was the first dairy processor in the country to pay farmers not to treat cows with synthetic growth hormones or that it was America’s first manufacturer to offset 100% of its CO2 emissions from its facility energy use.

Lisa Drake, Natural Resources Director at Stonyfield, has been leading the company’s environmental impact and stewardship efforts for almost eight years.  I first heard Lisa speak on Timberland’s Stakeholders Conference Call, and was impressed by the approach she takes toward Stonyfield’s social impact.  Her approach is sincere and calculated, and what I like most about Lisa is that she understands environmental change—and any social change for that matter—starts from within.

Check out our interview below.

I think you’re the only non-governmental Natural Resources Director I know.

Certainly there are not a lot of us, at least with that title, in the corporate world.  Many of my compatriots at other companies have titles using the words “environmental affairs” or “sustainability”.  Our Natural Resource Department started nearly 20 years ago when the word sustainability was not so widely used.

Using the words “Natural Resources” reflects my role here—it’s not about environmental compliance.  My role is about recognizing the impacts Stonyfield Farm has on the environment through our use of natural resources (water, energy, waste, etc.) and working to minimize those impacts.

What has been your biggest accomplishment at Stonyfield?

That has to be my work in establishing our Mission Action Program, or MAP.  While Stonyfield has a long history of environmental action, we’ve grown tremendously over the years and it was hard to be sure that we were headed on the right track and that everyone was aligned with our environmental mission.

MAP was set up as a structure to accomplish that—it’s comprised of 10 teams of employees challenged to address our biggest environmental impacts from our own operations to our supply chain to our distribution.  The teams are cross functional and engage the people within the company that make decisions in their every day jobs that ultimately result in our company’s environmental impacts.  Each team was given a charter and asked to create a vision as well as goals—and encouraged to think big.

Getting the decision makers on board and making it core to their job is the best thing we’ve ever done.  People are engaged, inspired and achieving goals that may have at first seemed impossible.   We still have a long was to go, but MAP is our vehicle for achieving great things!

I often think of companies in terms of their ability to influence positive social decision-making among the public at large.  But at Stonyfield, you start with your employees.  Can you tell me about that?

Both are important, but we feel it’s important to walk the talk first.  With our employees, it starts on the first day you come to work at Stonyfield.  New employee orientation includes a general environmental orientation.  Then within the employee’s first quarter here, we also commit a full day to more environmental and organic education.  We spend the morning in a classroom setting learning about climate change, Stonyfield’s environmental and climate impacts and what we’re doing about them, followed by an afternoon on an organic dairy farm.  Quickly people learn that consideration of environmental impacts permeates everything we do here.  It’s our way of thinking and approach to our business.

And then, people start to take it home with them.   They start incorporating what they do at work with what they do at home.  It affects the food they buy, the car they drive, and how they are heating their homes.  And it really works both ways here.  We expect our employees to contribute to our company’s environmental mission, but we also support them in their efforts to have a positive impact in their personal lives as well.  Whether it’s our carpooling initiative, opportunities to attend home energy conferences, buying organic produce through a CSA (community supported agriculture) program, or our fuel efficient vehicle incentive—we try to inspire and help our employees improve their lives and reduce their environmental impact.

I’m not saying that everyone here is a bike-riding environmental zealot.  But I do think that we’ve raised our employees’ consciousness about their personal impacts and, in many cases, spurred positive change.

What are some of the challenges you face translating that accountability to your consumers?

We talk a lot about the power of the consumer.  Every purchase you make is a vote.  When you check out at the grocery store, you are making a choice—to vote for organic or conventional agriculture, family or corporate farms, synthetic growth hormones or not, toxic pesticides or not.  But it doesn’t end there.  We also use our yogurt cup lids and our voice with consumers in general, to educate, inspire and activate.  Whether its farming issues, climate change or nutrition, we hope that our consumers are not just buying a product, but they are also learning and deepening their understanding of these important issues.  And just like we support our employees, we also try to support consumers with things like the recent “Green Living Guide” we developed with Body & Soul magazine.  So in the end, we hope that through their loyalty to Stonyfield and the resulting continuing dialogue, that we’re helping them make a difference.

It would be great to see other companies adopt some of your environmental practices.  How are you documenting the work you’re doing or sharing it with the community?

I’m glad you asked!  We are working feverishly on a whole new website that we hope to be launching in mid-October.  As part of that work, we have documented a lot of our environmental work—our approach, our systems, our efforts and accomplishments, and resources for consumers as well as businesses.  Just as we’ve had the help of many smart and talented people along our environmental history, we are proud to share our learnings and provide resources to others.  It will be up soon at Stonyfield.com.

We also are out in the community regularly speaking about our work and experiences.  Dialogue is so important in creating movement and momentum in sustainable practices.

Oh, and I can’t not mention Climate Counts.  In 2007, Stonyfield founded a nonprofit organization called Climate Counts that is scoring some of America’s largest corporations on their climate leadership.  The idea is to spur the companies to take their climate obligations seriously and get moving if they are “stuck”.  And at the same time, motivate consumers to support companies who are taking the lead and push those who aren’t to do better.  It’s a carrot and stick approach that’s had a lot of resonance both with consumers and in the business community.  You might be surprised to see who some of the leaders and laggards are!

No Tradeoffs

Last week I participated in a conference call featuring Andrew Winston, writer of Green Recovery.  The call was part of the “Issues in Depth” series hosted by Net Impact, a network of business students and professionals committed to bettering the world.

As a globally recognized expert on green business, Andrew doesn’t just demonstrate how simple operational changes can be good for both your business and the environment.  He also demonstrates why it’s important and why “culture matters an awful lot.”

Andrew is full of stories from inside the industry—how UPS reduced 28 million miles from its driving routes by removing left turns, how Heineken uses internal competition between its breweries to decrease energy consumption—but one of his best bits comes from Procter & Gamble.

P&G talks about the concept of “no tradeoffs”: consumers shouldn’t have to sacrifice cost for environmentally-friendly products.  Perhaps they even pay less.  Basically, environmental benefits should have just as high a priority as quality and price.

According to BBMG’s 2009 Conscious Consumer Report, consumers are starting to feel the same way.  When asked which product attributes are most important, price and quality ranked at numbers 1 and 2—no surprise—while health benefits, where it’s made, and energy efficiency came in right behind.  As Andrew put it, “Consumers who will pay more for green is small.  The conflicted consumer is becoming nearly everybody, and they want it all.”

This is encouraging.

Price and quality are important for obvious reasons, but they’re also things we can see.  We can look at the price tag, we can touch the material, or judge how well something is crafted.  The other items are priorities for us, but just not as visible, and so we’re more willing to excuse a product’s deleterious effects on the environment or our health.

Businesses that make the intangibles visible—without charging more—can really say “no tradeoffs” and rise to the top.

A Rich Blend of People and Profit

There’s a reason Dean Cycon’s coffee-roasting company, Dean’s Beans, uses 100% fair-trade beans.  It’s not because it sounds good in the company tagline, or because it’s popular among the “ethical consumer”.  It’s because anything less than 100% would mean that some of the farmers he buys from get the chance to improve their lives and some of them don’t—and that just doesn’t seem right.

When you think in those terms, fair-trade has little to do with market price and standards, and everything to do with an ethical approach that guides your work.  But that’s just the kind of guy Dean is.  He operates not to move a product or improve brand perception, but to aid people in creating better lives.  His product is just a way to help him get there.

Check out our interview below. 

You can find coffee literally at every corner.  What makes Dean’s Beans special?

Dean’s Beans was founded on the principle that business can and should be a vehicle for positive social, environmental and economic change.  Every decision we make gets filtered through that ethical lens.

Since we have long term, respectful relationships with all of the farmers we buy from in fourteen countries, we know that they give us their best coffee in return.  That’s not just hype, that is what the farmers tell us and our independent cupping bears that out.

A consumer can be assured that everybody in the supply chain is being treated respectfully, fairly and being assisted to realize their life’s goals as well.  We do this through our People-Centered Development program, where we co-design with the farmers development projects that address their highest community priorities.

There are many companies that are into charity, but not necessarily social change.  How do you distinguish between them?

Charity is an important thing, but it is not about change, it is about maintenance and help.

Many smaller companies don’t have direct relations with the farmers, buying through brokers instead. So charitable giving to organizations like Coffee Kids (which I co-founded in 1988) or Grounds for Health is the only way for those companies to give something back.

But charity does not require the giver to change their own behavior, only to give when they feel moved to do so. In order to participate effectively in social change, we must look at our own part of the equation and realize that we are participating in a system that will keep coffee farmers poor and disempowered forever.  Social change requires us to change our behavior as well, to break the cycle of trade relationships that took advantage of or even created underdevelopment in those lands.

How have you seen socially responsible business evolve over the last 16 years?

Many businesses are trying to incorporate aspects of social responsibility into their operations. I applaud all of those efforts. At the same time I have to make two observations.

First, social responsibility is not just another product on the shelf, it is an ethical construct that should inform all of your behavior.  So it is really not enough to be “socially responsible” in your labor relations with your workers while you are a massive polluter. It can’t be compartmentalized if there is ever going to be real, lasting change.

Second, many companies use social responsibility as a marketing tool, with no serious commitment. Some companies spend massive amounts of money advertising their meager participation on fair trade or other socially responsible movements, but they have no company-wide commitment.

As a social movement, however, social responsibility is here to stay. It has evolved into an integral part of corporate thinking, and I have seen this all over the world through my work with FAO and the UN Global Compact. Now the fun begins as the battle between serious integration of the concept and manipulation for marketing purposes gets into full swing.  But that is always the tension in social movements.

Companies have to change their behavior, but consumers do as well, right?  Is it just a chicken and egg situation?

Change is like a wave on the shore. It starts somewhere out there and swells with momentum. We only see the end product.

Companies only change their behavior in response to momentum from the public. The most clever or responsible ones see the momentum sooner and take action out of sincere commitment or just to capture an emerging market.

So it really begins with society at large, not necessarily the particular company’s consumer.  How it all begins is a mystery, but where it goes from there is not.  I have heard so many companies say they respond to consumer demand, that’s when they will change their behavior. Yet at the same time these companies put out information that lulls the consumer into believing that the problem is being addressed, even though the change at the company level is cosmetic and the commitment meager.

So what are the benefits of this kind of serious integration?

If the companies truly integrate social responsibility into their decision making, the benefits are enormous.

First of all, our environment benefits, as an important aspect of social responsibility is care for the environment.  That benefits all of us, although it is so difficult to quantify the benefits for an individual (they are there!).

Second—and again, this is hard to quantify, but that to me is not the final judge of something’s worth—social responsibility can go a long way towards peace-building in the world.

Believe me, I have seen so many times the result of treating people in the developing world with respect. People who feel respected and hopeful that their lives and their children’s lives will be better are far less likely to blow themselves up or firebomb a church. I don’t take that lightly.

Judging a Book by Its Impact, Not Its Cover

Imagine building an online bookstore with 2 million books.  Maybe you could do it.  Now imagine building an online bookstore with 2 million books that aims to teach the world to read while saving the planet.  That’s a pretty formidable task.

For the people at Better World Books, they’re happily taking on the challenge.  And as VP of Marketing John Ujda explains, the social impact piece isn’t a burden, it’s just the business itself.  They’re not the kind of company that donates money at the end of the year or does something socially responsible to avoid criticism.  Doing good is literally baked into their business model.  And that makes for a pretty good recipe.

Check out our interview below. 

How does Better World Books make the world better?

By teaching the world to read, and helping save the environment.

Here’s how we do it: First, Better World Books takes “unwanted” books that would otherwise have ended up in landfill and finds new homes for them. We do this through library discards and donations, campus collections, and community book drives—so far we’ve diverted over 26 million books from landfills.

Then, when we sell the books a portion of every sale benefits our nonprofit literacy partners who use the funds for scholarships, to build schools, and to get books to people who need them. So far we’ve raised over $6.5 million for our nonprofit literacy partners.

How closely do you work with your nonprofit partners?

We work very closely with our nonprofit literacy partners. For example, we regularly send college textbooks to Africa through Books for Africa in addition to funding much of their operation.

We recently worked with NCFL to develop a grant program—the BWB/NCFL Libraries and Families Award—that will make 3 awards a year of $10,000 to libraries. And of course, Invisible Children and Better World Books ran the biggest book drive in history last year, bringing in 1.9 million books.

But the greatest indicator of our commitment to our nonprofit partners is our new initiative to grant stock options to several of them. So now as Better World Books grows, our nonprofit partners stand to benefit.

Better World Books doesn’t just give money to charity—it has integrated social values into so many aspects of its business.  I’m interested to know what drives that commitment to being so responsible.

People want to be socially responsible—it shows in our employees who are passionate about their work making a difference, and it shows in our customers who choose us over other alternatives because of our social mission.

What’s been lacking is a model where people can apply these principles to their daily work while not being divorced from the capitalist engine that forms our society. Triple bottom line companies, for-profit social enterprises, b-corporations—these are all part of a movement to change the way business is done to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

So ultimately, the commitment comes from the desire to have what we’re spending our time on matter in a profound way in the world.

We’re noticing technology play an increasingly important role in social enterprises.  Tell me how technology is making your business possible.

We’ve grown from nothing to $31 million in sales in 5 years, and it is technology that has enabled us to scale effectively. Under the hood, we are actually a very sophisticated technology and analytics company.

For example, we constantly benchmark millions of prices across the web, and we measure supply and demand to arrive at fair, competitive prices. We list our books on 21 different Internet marketplaces, again facilitated by technology. And we use our technology combined with our logistics expertise to enable free shipping in the U.S. and low cost shipping around the world.

So what is it about your business model that you think other businesses can adopt?

It’s hard to generalize from a specific business instance, but I think there are a couple of principles that small businesses can think about.

First, we take an unwanted resource—used books destined for landfill—and we turn it into a valuable product. There is something to say for thinking of society’s waste streams as a valuable opportunity not only through re-cycling, but through “up-cycling” or re-using first.

Second, the way we create that value is by leveraging the Internet. It provides us a potential customer base of something like a billion people, and our business is all about getting “unwanted” books where people can find them, which suddenly makes them very wanted indeed.

Finally, when you find the right way to build social benefit into your business, it isn’t a burden—it is the business. That’s a tall order, but there are a lot of very smart, creative entrepreneurs out there who can figure out how it applies and help fast-forward the social enterprise movement.