Mike's Ideas

Jeffrey Hollender, former CEO and current “Chief Inspired Protagonist” of Seventh Generation maintains a blog at the Seventh Generation website.  He recently posted some notes that he didn’t get through at a recent speech, which really resonated with me and inspired me.  Click the link to see the full text of his notes, but the exerpt below covers what I think is really important:

“If you were all CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies and I asked who’s running a sustainable, responsible business — every hand in the room would go up

But — 99 out of 100 companies are not yet on track to create the future we need to ensure the health of our planet, our children, and grandchildren.

While in almost every boardroom in America companies are trying to develop a “green” business strategy, few understand what it means, let alone how to do it.
Too few companies are seriously engaged in thinking deeply enough about how to make a positive impact

We need to stop thinking about how to be “less bad” and start thinking about how to be good!

The present paradigm of “doing less damage” will not succeed nor will it allow us to seize the opportunity that lies in front of us

What does this mean?

The world quite frankly is way too screwed up and in too much danger to aspire to merely:
- reduce CO2 emissions
- engage in less rainforest destruction
- operate fewer sweatshops
- put more recycled content in products
- pay less obscene wages to CEO’s
- offer health care benefits that only help you once you’re sick rather than keep you healthy

We need to create a whole new generation of businesses, business that have at their essence an entirely different purpose: to first and foremost make a positive contribution to society.

The good news is that this has begun to happen but it’s not fast enough or systemic enough.
The biggest challenges we face:

Most companies don’t understand sustainability at a systems level = environment + equity & justice

This thinking leads them to do good with their right hands while doing bad things with their left.
Being less bad will never be good enough.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a number of thoughts I’d like to share with you.
The answer to what we must do tomorrow lies in the question, “What does the world most need that we are uniquely qualified to provide?”
To answer that question we must be willing to look for answers that may take 10, 20, or in some cases even 50 years to achieve — not something that business has ever been very good at.
For Seventh Generation, those answers take the form of what we call global imperatives, and we aspire to have them guide every decision we make.

Seventh Generation Global Imperatives

• In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.

• We will be educators.

• Creating a world of consciousness, equity and justice, health and wellbeing.

• A world that is rich in value rather than a world that is rich in artifacts.

• Where everyone has the opportunity to develop to their full potential.

• And where we do everything from a systems perspective.

• So that all products and services are not just sustainable, but restorative to people and the planet.

So specifically what do we need going forward to address the challenges we face?

10 things we must do!

1. Systemic thinking - global warming will not be solved with carbon offsets
2. Full cost accounting/stop externalizing costs
3. Publicly-financed elections - get the money out of politics
4. National health care - not linked to employment & focused on prevention & wellness
5. Work in coalition – multi stakeholder initiatives
- Wal-Mart brought together labor, environment, social justice, health care
- Palm Oil & Coconut oil initiatives
6. Invest in Education & Value Caring Professions: teaching, nursing, homemaking, elder care, etc.
7. Transparency
8. Activate consumers & overcome cynicism
- vote with your wallets/purchasing power
- send letters & emails to both good & bad companies
9. Design business to develop their human resources to their full potential
10. Ownership not employment

As business students, I think it is critically important that we understand what he is saying.  We are going out in the world to create the “new generation of businesses” and it is not good enough to do “less bad”.  We need to revolutionize the way that business is done.  This is our challenge.

After 117 years, Sierra Club decides to add a for-profit arm to its operations.  Interesting!

I found this recent release from GRI on online sustainability reporting to be quite interesting.  It basically looks at the trends in sustainability reporting and pros and cons of reporting online (web based) vs. a paper report.  While web based reports can make information easier to access through a menu-based approach, they can also make it more difficult to get a complete picture, as stakeholders may have to check multiple locations to find the information that they are looking for.
This is interesting timing as SAP recently got a lot of talk (mostly positive) around their interactive online report.

After over 20 years at the helm of Seventh Generation, Jeffery Hollender is stepping down as CEO.  For those who don’t know about Hollender, he is one of the pioneers of CSR.  He started Seventh Generation, one of the few truly green cleaning products companies and played a huge part in introducing the world to sustainable concepts.

This is a big deal in many ways.  Part of the reasoning for stepping down is that Seventh Generation is at a transitional point.  It has already grown beyond being a small company, but their objective is to grow even more - from its current level of $150M in annual sales to about $1B in sales over the next few years.  So the big question is, “Can Seventh Generation sustain this kind of growth and stay true to its sustainable roots?”  Let’s hope the answer is “yes”.

This is inspirational.  Of all the waste in SF, only 28% went to the landfill and, as the article states, that includes construction waste as well.  They’re well on their way to their goal of 75% recycling by 2010.

They now will recycle almost all types of plastic (as opposed to Denver only taking bottles).  The only exceptions are styrofoam and plastic bags - and plastic bags have been banned in the city.  Gavin Newsom rocks.

“The Social Enterprise Alliance is the only member organization in North America to bring together the diverse field of social enterprise. It serves as advocate for the field, hub of information and education, and builder of a vibrant and growing community of social enterprises.”