VIDEO
Take responsibility for your ripples
A service business’s largest impact often comes not from its own operations but from its impact on others.
Some businesses may chose to ignore those ‘externalities’, but you can often differentiate yourself and build a positive image by ensuring your impacts are positive instead of negative. Negative impacts have a way of catching up on you eventually. The well-publicized example of Wal-Mart putting the fate of a new store into voters’ hands in Inglewood, California and losing after spending $1 million on the campaign is but one example. Increasingly, the public holds you accountable not only for what you do but also for your ripple effect.
• Shorebank Pacific is a small bank based on the coast of Washington State. They were founded to fund restoration and other environmentally sound investments. Their unique mission has helped them attract deposits from all over the country. They employ a rating system adapted from The Natural Step framework to rate their loans. This rating system helps them invest in projects that will have the greatest environmental and social benefits.
• Bon Appétit runs cafeterias for a number of businesses and universities. They have staked out a niche by providing healthy food from local organic and in-season produce. They have adopted the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch List, only buying species that are plentiful (while over 70 per cent of the commercially harvested species are in serious decline). They boycott farmers who do not provide appropriate living conditions for migrant workers. They take good care of their employees as well, paying above-market wages and providing health benefits to all employees.
• The Doubletree Hotel at Portland, Oregon’s Lloyd Center offers guests the option of offsetting their climate impacts with an arrangement through the Climate Trust. At checkout, the guests can offset the average greenhouse gases associated with their room. While the cost is minimal – often less than $1 – the donations can add up.
• Burgerville, a northwest fast-food chain, has committed to buying all their hamburgers from Country Natural Beef (formerly Oregon Country Beef ), a cooperative of over 40 sustainable family ranches dedicated to raising cattle in harmony with nature, without the use of hormones, antibiotics, genetically modified grain or any animal by-products. This cooperative has saved a number of family farms in the area by providing a premium product. Burgerville worked with this cooperative for several years to help them increase their production so that this arrangement would be possible. Burgerville also features delicious seasonal shakes and sundaes from locally sourced, seasonal produce. They purchase green power for all of their electricity usage in their stores between Albany and Portland, Oregon.
• Staples, the office products retailer, worked with Metafore, a non-profit organization, to support responsible forest practices. Now most of Staples’ paper products boast 30 per cent or more recycled content. They participated in the Paper Working Group, a collaborative effort including 11 other companies, FedEx Kinko’s, Starbucks, and Time among them, to create an assessment tool for buyers and suppliers of paper. They also provide recycling services for electronics, ink cartridges, and other office products.
• McDonald’s recently issued notices to their suppliers, specifying a humane minimum cage size for chickens that produce their Egg McMuffins and discouraging the practice of withholding water to increase egg production. They are also addressing the profligate use of antibiotics, which are showing up in our rivers and creating super germs resistant to treatment. Approximately 70 per cent of the antibiotics produced in the US are given to livestock, mostly to promote growth, not treat illness. By setting this policy against the use of growth-promoting antibiotics, they are putting pressure on the agricultural sector to change their practices worldwide.
• Gerding/Edlen Developers in Portland, Oregon have gained national recognition for their green building efforts. They’ve been interviewed on Public Broadcasting, highlighted in USA Today, and touted in a host of industry journals. How did they get all this attention? While the owners have always been interested in socially responsible business practices, the turning point was when Dennis Wilde participated in a peer learning group convened by the Oregon Natural Step Network. With the help of others in the industry, they used The Natural Step’s ‘backcasting’ process to write a White Paper describing the attributes of a fully sustainable building: creates more energy than it uses, keeps all rainwater on site, etc. On each of their own projects, Gerding/Edlen raises the bar towards this ideal. Their commitment towards innovation has paid off handsomely, not only in public recognition but also in decreased operating costs and demand for premium-priced properties.
• While credit cards have turned into a commodity business, Barclays rose above the fray in the United Kingdom with their Breathe Card where half of the profits will go toward carbon reduction projects. Cardholders benefit by getting discounts on green products and are offered environmentally friendly options for statements and payments.
• Northwest Natural, a natural gas utility, gave their customers a reason to switch to online statements. The customers choose from a handful of worthy local charities and the company donates the money it is saving from not having to mail invoices.
• Ashforth Pacific, a property management firm, promotes the use of alternative transportation by its employees. It provides free bus passes, bike parking, and two parking spots for their FlexCar (a membership service that charges for car use by the hour and mile). They even offer a half-day of personal time to employees who commute 80 per cent or more by alternative transportation in a month.
• Norm Thompson, a US catalogue retailer, wanted to reduce the impact of shipping products, so they started up a ‘Ship All Together’ programme. If a customer orders several items, one or more of which is out of stock but expected to be in within a week, the customer is asked if he or she is willing to wait for the items to be shipped all together. This simple change is saving them over $200,000 per year and 30,000 shipping boxes or bags, along with all the other packing materials.
