The Clean and Green Club

Within my parents’ lifetime, six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis for the crime of being Jewish–including some of my mother’s cousins. As a Jew of Eastern European ancestry, I cannot be silent while one set of people is singled out for removal of the privileges of full citizenship–because we’ve already seen where that road leads. I speak out against injustice, and I speak out in favor of full citizenship rights for all classes of people: black, white, brown, or yellow…gay, straight, bi, or transgender…rich, poor, or in between…Christian, Muslim, Jew, or other religion…And I believe fervently that all people’s rights must be vigorously defended, and that our freedoms stop when they transgress the rights of others.

–>If I did not take this stand, I would have no right to claim any authority on ethics.

And I believe that committed life partners should have access to the same rights that many of us take for granted: from coordinating care in a terminal illness to playing an active role as a parent. The back of the bus isn’t good enough. Separate-but-equal is not equal, as the Supreme Court ruled in 1954.

In this context, I salute the Equality Business Advisory Council, a business coalition that sprang up to oppose California’s reprehensible Proposition 8–the ballot initiative that took away the right of same-sex couples to legally marry. Unfortunately, the ballot initiative passed.

I do not understand the anti-gay-marriage movement. As a man married to the same woman for 25 years, I don’t see how the right of two people who love each other to make a legal commitment that allows them to be full partners in any way lessens the marriage I have with my wife. I can’t see taking away that right as anything other than discrimination. And I live in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been legal for several years. I haven’t noticed that the sky has fallen. I can see only positive changes from this law–changes that materially impact only the families involved, but whose impact is huge.

The Equality Business Advisory Council included such well-known companies and organizations as MTV, PG&E, Levi Strauss & Co., and Google. Even the usually conservative Clear Channel joined in.  Apple Computer gave $100,000 toward the effort and issued this strong statement:

Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Google’s public statement opposing Proposition 8 was written by none other than co-founder Sergey Brin:

Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions — Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay — we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

However, while there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

In all, the coalition included well over 500 businesses, community organizations, Chambers of Commerce, and media outlets, including 68 newspapers who wrote editorials opposing passage.

My thanks to fellow ethics blogger Chris MacDonald for telling me about this coalition, and flagging the Apple and Google statements I cited.

If ever a business created the perfect positive storm around quality, integrity, and product story, it was Newman’s Own. This selection of salad dressings, snack foods, and other goodies has been on my list of businesses to feature in this column for many years. It took Paul Newman’s death to move it to the front of the line.

The biggest qualification for inclusion is the firm’s pledge from Day 1 to give 100 percent of profits to charity. OK, so it helps that his movies made Newman independently wealthy–but still, this is a remarkable platform. And a whole lot of terminally ill children who attended one of Newman’s camps will never forget his generosity (to name one of dozens of examples). In his years in business, he was able to raise and donate $250 million to thousands of different charities, some of which–like those camps–he was directly involved in setting up and running.That’s an average of 410 million a year!

While most of the rest of us will never be in that situation, we could certainly donate five or ten percent of our net revenues to worthy causes. Tithing really does make the world better, and often helps the giver as well (see my friend Paula Langguth Ryan’s work at artofabundance.com.

Bt it’s not just the charity work. It’s a commitment to organics before it was fashionable (now spun off to a separate company, Newman’s Own Organics…a willingness to forge creative partnerships (as I advocate strongly in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First)high-quality, great-tasting products…and a sense of humor and play that’s present on all the company’s packaging and very much in evidence on the website (consider that the press room page is labeled “hoopla”–or this quote from the “Our Story” page):

We anticipated sales of $1,200 a year and a loss, despite our gambling winnings, of $6,000. But in these twenty-six years we have earned over $250 million, which we’ve given to countless charities. How to account for this massive success? Pure luck? Transcendental meditation? Machiavellian manipulation? Aerodynamics? High colonics? We haven’t the slightest idea.

This month’s Positive Power Spotlight has a guest author: Cynthia Kersey, from her book, Unstoppable. This profile of Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop was written a few years ago. Roddick was given the honor of Dame by Queen Elizabeth, sold The Body Shop to L’Oréal in 2006, and died in September, 2007 at age 64.

Here’s Cynthia:

No one who has ever followed a dream has taken a direct, unobstructed path and arrived at his or her destination effortlessly and on time. Following a dream is not a direct highway but a bumpy road full of twists and turns and occasional roadblocks. The journey requires modifications and adjustments in both thought and action, not just once, but over and over.

Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, used creativity to overcome challenges that would have stopped the vast majority of new business owners. She broke just about every rule in the book when she started The Body Shop and she’s still breaking the rules today. Of course, such irreverence has its consequences. In Anita’s case, the consequences read like this: The Body Shop now has more than 1,500 stores throughout the world, is worth over $500 million, and has influenced the products and marketing of all its chief competitors. And those are just the consequences in the business arena. The Body Shop is also a powerfully effective vehicle for social and environmental awareness and change; as far as Anita is concerned, that is the most important consequence of all.

From the moment in 1976 when Anita first conceived the idea of opening a shop to sell naturally based cosmetics, she was thinking in a most unbusinesslike manner. Most entrepreneurs set out to establish a company with growth potential that will make them wealthy someday. Anita was just looking for a way to feed herself and her two children, while her husband, also a maverick, was away on a two-year adventure, riding a horse from Argentina to New York.

Her first challenge was to find a cosmetics manufacturer to produce her products. No one she approached had ever heard of jojoba oil or aloe vera gel, and they all thought that cocoa butter had something to do with chocolate. Although she didn’t realize it at the time, Anita had discovered a market just about to explode: young female consumers who would prefer their cosmetics to be produced in a cruelty-free and environmentally responsible manner. When manufacturers failed to have the same foresight, Anita found a small herbalist who could do the work she required.

Since Anita was not the typical entrepreneur, she saw no drawbacks in starting her company with almost no capital. To save money, she bottled her cosmetics in the same inexpensive plastic containers hospitals use for urine samples, encouraging her customers to bring the containers back for refills. Because Anita couldn’t afford to have labels printed, she and some friends hand printed every one. Her packaging couldn’t have turned out better if she’d planned it that way. With the improvised packaging, her product now had the same natural, earthy image as the cosmetics themselves.

Anita opened the first branch of The Body Shop in her hometown of Brighton, England. When she first opened, neighboring proprietors made bets on how long the store would last. Less amused were the owners of local funeral parlors who insisted she change the shop’s name. No one, they complained, would hire a funeral director located near a place called “The Body Shop.” She stuck to her guns and the name stayed.

The first store was only minimally successful. Nevertheless, Anita decided to move ahead with a second one. The bank questioned the wisdom of her plan and refused a loan. So she found a friend of a friend who was willing to lend her the equivalent of $6,400 in exchange for 50 percent ownership of The Body Shop. Today that person is worth $140 million. Signing over half of her business was the only real mistake Anita ever made. But it wasn’t the only decision that looked like a mistake. Here are three more:

• She has never advertised even when she opened shops in the United States. People told her it was suicide to enter a new market without massive advertising support.
• She doesn’t sell in any outlet other than The Body Shop stores. (Some of her Asian stores are the only exception and are located within department stores.)
• She resolved early on that her shops would be a catalyst for change, not just in the business world, but in the world at large.

These decisions turned out to be some of the most inspired “mistakes” in the history of retailing. Even though Anita has never paid for advertising, her unconventional ideas have inspired hundreds of articles and interviews generating tremendous publicity. Her first shop in New York was packed with customers from the day it opened. At one point, a thirty-five-year-old woman on roller skates threw up her arms and shouted, “Hallelujah! You’re here at last.” So much for advertising.

A new branch of The Body Shop opens somewhere in the world every two and a half days. Occasionally, Anita has had trouble opening stores in shopping malls. But having a past that was filled with challenges, Anita is accustomed to coming up with creative solutions. For instance, when one mall refused to lease her space, she organized every mail-order customer within a 110-mile radius to write letters to the management of that mall. Within a few months, a branch of The Body Shop was open.

Anita also had this nonconformist idea of putting ideals ahead of profit. From the start, Anita wanted not just to change the faces of her customers but to change the entire face of business. She envisioned a company that was socially responsible and compassionate. “I see the human spirit playing a big role in business. The work does not have to be drudgery, and the sole focus does not have to be on making money. It can be a human enterprise that people feel genuinely good about.”

Some of the raw materials for her products are harvested by groups of people in underdeveloped regions, thus generating an income for them. The Body Shop has launched campaigns to save the whales, ban animal testing in the cosmetics industry, help the homeless, and protect the rain forests. All of these campaigns have been eagerly supported by loyal customers.

Employees of The Body Shop are actively involved in these efforts. Each month, employees receive a half day off with pay to volunteer in the community. Some employees, for example, went to Romania to help rebuild orphanages. In the stores, customers are encouraged to register to vote, recycle their plastic cosmetics containers, and bring their own shopping bags to save paper and plastic. Because of all these activities, people have suggested Anita’s company should really be called “The Body and Soul Shop.” Customers emerge not only looking good but also feeling good.

“Business as usual” isn’t part of Anita Roddick’s make up. But as far as she’s concerned, doing what is not usual has made all the difference.

Action:

Anita said that what saved The Body Shop over and over was their willingness to recognize what wasn’t working and quickly identify a new way to approach a problem. This is a crucial strategy because everyone who starts a business is going to face challenges. Things never work out exactly as intended and creativity will play a key role in enabling a new business owner to conquer daily battles. If you don’t come up with alternative solutions, your dreams will die.

The first step to expanding your creativity is to clearly identify the problem you’re experiencing. Maybe you’re struggling in sponsoring people who are interested in working the business and not simply purchasing the product. Or maybe you’re having a hard time finding new prospects period. Write the numbers 1 through 10 vertically down the left side of the sheet of paper. Finally, write ten possible solutions to your problem. Make sure they are viable options, but stretch your imagination.

Remember, the solution to every problem lies within you. You may need a few minutes of quiet time to complete the exercise effectively, or you may need to brainstorm possible solutions with a friend. Feel free to do whatever you think is necessary to connect with your inner knowing. When you’ve completed the exercise, you should find that the solutions you have found will renew your sense of possibility and your commitment to your goal.

About the Author:

Cynthia Kersey is a nationally-known speaker, performance and productivity expert and the author of the bestsellers, Unstoppable, Unstoppable Women and the bestselling audio program, “The Unstoppable 30-Day Challenge!” To receive a free gift worth over $100 in value go to https://www.unstoppable.net/gifts.htm

The first words out of Lawrence “Lorenzo” Gottschamer’s mouth were “I’m a guerrilla in the eco-war. Everything we do here is to repair the planet.”

Lorenzo owns the aptly-named Valhalla, an organic macadamia farm a few miles outside of Antigua, Guatemala. In 1976, he came for a three-day visit, and never left. Now he employs about 25 people on three sites, living in a beautiful forest, harvesting nuts from the trees he planted in 1978, and removing a pound of carbon from the atmosphere with every pound of nuts he produces.

The nuts fall to the ground when ripe, and are very easy to harvest. He built a sheller out of a spinning tire and some rebar, and built an equally simple but equally effective size-sorter (it looks kind of like one of those toys where marbles roll downward through a maze) so that processing plants are willing to take his crop.

The trees themselves create hundreds of new varieties, no grafting required. And Lorenzo conducts meticulous research on the properties of the new varieties.

Lorenzo is a giving kind of guy. Visitors are welcomed with a personal tour from him or one of his co-workers (in English or Spanish, as appropriate), free samples of chocolates, nuts, and the macadamia-based cosmetics he sells to companies like Nivea, even free facials. His outdoor restaurant serves macadamia butter laced over fresh
fruit and pancakes, herbal tea, and more, all very reasonably priced.

And the proceeds go to his reforestation and sustainable economic/agricultural development work with indigenous people. He has donated over 200,000 new trees, and is involved in numerous development and reforestation projects. Much information can be found at the Valhalla website, https://www.exvalhalla.net

Just back from my annual trip to Book Expo America, and one of the things I noticed was a definite shift toward sustainability–not just in the books being published, but also in attention to industry practices.

Some of these were aimed at publishers and printers, and some at consumers. One of the latter–which I learned about not at BEA but in a personal note from one of the founders–is EcoLibris.com, whose slogan is “Every book you read was once a tree. Now you can plant a tree for every book you read.”

Like carbon offset programs, this attempts to let consumers make restitution for the environmental effects of their reading habits. Starting at a dollar per tree and going down slightly with quantity purchases, the group funds reforestation projects in developing countries. It’s a for-profit business, and does retain a percentage of the donations. But it also includes all sorts of interesting environmental information on the site.

One of the pages I like best is the Collaborations page, which lists joint efforts with publishers, authors, bookstores, etc.–who are of course encouraged to spread the word and who receive customer kudos for being Green.

And while I think offset programs are only a temporary solution to reduction of pollution, greenhouse gases, etc., when I think of that convention center filled with literally millions of books and imagine a forest sprouting up with a tree for each book, it’s a vision that has a lot of appeal.

Read Shel Horowitz’s award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, for more on Green and ethical companies succeeding.

How Green is my web host? If you host with Affordable Internet
Services Online, of California, a/k/a AISO.net, the answer appears to be very green indeed. For starters, the company claims to be 100% solar powered–including the servers, the office, and tools like its shopping cart, mailing list manager, and calendar, all provided to hosting clients. The company has also switched to mercury-free (and very low-consumption) LED lighting, which is far more ecological than compact fluorescents (to say nothing of regular lighting)..

From AISO’s home page:

We have made a strong commitment to help fight
pollution and preserving our natural resources. Solar panels
run our data center and office, not energy credits.
Solar tubes bring in natural light from the outside providing
light during the day. AMD Opteron powered servers use sixty
percent less energy and generate fifty percent less heat.

And here’s the information their solar vendor gave them:

Our 120 solar panel system will eliminate the production of
– 19,890 lbs of Carbon Dioxide (CO2/GHG) per year
– 5.9 lbs of Nitrous Oxide (NOX/smog) per year
– 0.45 lbs of Sulfur Dioxide (SO4/acid rain) per year
This is the equivalent of planting 3.5 acres of trees per year

Proof that Green is good business: Client list includes the Indianapolis Zoo, the Oceanic Society, the Himalayan Institute, and Live Earth, among others. They’ve also earned a listing as a Webhost Magazine Editors Choice and membership on the Inc Green 50 and in Co-op America. Pretty cool!

Thanks to Kristen Lems of the Peoples Music Network for telling me about these folks.

I learned about this innovative and very customer-focused Irish supermarket chain in Stephen M.R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust (reviewed elsewhere in this issue), where he’s quoted: “Genuine listening ability is one of the few true forms of competitive advantage…Listening is not an activity you can delegate.”

Founding CEO (now President after the family sold the company), Feargal Quinn has earned the sobriquet “Pope of Customer Service.” Apparently a rather colorful character, he’s also a long-serving member of the Irish Senate and author of Crowning the Customer.

In his own words,

If you look after getting repeat business, profit will largely take care of itself. When faced with any business decision, any call on your time or resources, you need to ask, What will this do to help bring the customer back?”

This philosophy has generated consistent innovation since the company’s founding in 1960. The firm has a strong environmental consciousness too, and was an early pioneer of reusable cloth shopping bags designed specifically for maximum customer convenience (and which make even more sense since a tax was instituted on plastic grocery bags in Ireland). The store was also a pioneer in loyalty reward programs and online shopping, among other areas.

Perhaps the coolest innovation is a hand-held scanner program that saves time by letting you check yourself out as you add items to your cloth totes in your shopping cart (note the trust factor there), and keep a running total for you. When you’re done shopping, your bags are all packed and you go to a cashier to run up any items you couldn’t scan and make your payment. This could easily shave 10 or 15 precious minutes off the typical shopping trip, and it sounds so much more pleasant than the horrible automated checkouts at my own local supermarket (which hardly anyone uses).

By Shel Horowitz

How many companies did their first environmental impact report in 1953?

That’s when the well-known office furniture company Herman Miller began reporting its environmental progress. The 100-year-old company came to my attention through an article by CEO Brian C. Walker in Harvard Business Review, on Greening the Supply Chain. And this is remarkable in itself; while most companies are just beginning to grapple with sustainable measures within their own confines, Herman Miller has not only made a huge effort to get its vendors –both domestic and international–in line, but is teaching other companies.

Going to the company’s website, I see good links on the home page:
What we believe (with eight subsections, some of which have another layer as well)
The environment (11 subsections, including Green buildings, cradle-to-cradle and LEED certification, and even a recommended reading list!), and diversity, among others.

The environmental section notes,

Our values are the basis for Herman Miller’s corporate community. One of the nine things that matter most to us is called “A Better World.” For us, contributing to a better world takes many forms–environmental advocacy, volunteering time and contributing to nonprofit groups, acting as a good corporate citizen.

It also lists nine separate corporate teams involved in Herman Miller’s environmental responsibility activities.

In his follow-up comments (same URL), Walker points out that he and several competitors have joined forces with the Michigan Department of Corrections to train inmates in a furniture component recycling pilot program, and is looking at technology to better monitor chemical content, and to replace more toxic materials like PVC with more environmentally friendly alternatives.

For more business ethics and sustainability success stories, please see Shels award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First

Web 2.0 is a lot more than social networking sites. Here’s a great example: LaborFair.com uses Amazon-like Web 2.0 features to build a database of service providers based on reputation. Founder Jenna Raby started the service as a kind of domestic arm of the fair trade movement, with a specific stated goal of helping people in the lowest economic strata pull themselves up out of poverty.

Her site plays matchmaker between consumers and often-underpaid workers such as housekeepers and gardeners (as well as much higher paid specialists such as web designers and event planers).

Hiring through LaborFair, a consumer pays a living wage, directly to the service provider–a much greater wage than typically paid by an agency, although less than the consumer would have paid that agency.

So…the consumer saves money, the service provider gets paid more, and the choice is made on the basis of trust-building features like reports back from actual consumers about the quality of service.

LaborFair supports itself by charging the service provider a small fee: either $5 per job accepted or $25 per month for unlimited matches.

Fairly well established in the Bay Area, the service has just begun expanding into Las Angeles, Presumably, it will spread organically to other parts of the country.

(My thanks to my friend Kare Anderson for steering me to Jenna)

Positive Power Spotlight: Chelsea Green Publishing

Today, I had a reason to get very angry with a large New York publisher–and it got me thinking about how lucky I was to work with Chelsea Green for my fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World.

There are of course many highly ethical publishers, but I’m profiling Chelsea because I have personal experience. Maybe I’ll profile others in the future.

Some of what I like:
* Every book they publish tries to make the world a better place. Their line emphasizes environmental sustainability, social change, viability of small agriculture, and eating well
*  They’re not afraid to take on very controversial topics and aren’t intimidated by the political climate of the day
* They are nimble enough to scale up quickly, as they did with George Lakoff’s bestselling Don’t Think of an Elephant in 2004
* It’s easy for an author to reach senior executives, even the publisher–and that stayed true even when the publisher who’d bought my book stepped down and was replaced
* Contract negotiation was remarkably painless, despite my requests for some very nontraditional clauses–and even the original contract draft (before my changes) was among the most author-friendly I’ve ever seen
* As an author, my input was valued at every step, and the company was very open to suggestions such as awards to enter
* The design and editorial staff worked very collaboratively with each other and with me, and gave me their best work even though I was far from a superstar (something that did not happen with other publishers I’ve dealt with)
* Chelsea keeps the book in print almost eight years after publication and has become my only US publisher to pay me royalties beyond the initial advance
* Every single person I’ve ever met, phoned, or e-mailed, including people staffing a book table at a conference where I wasn’t even speaking, has been gracious, friendly, and helpful

Ah, if only all publishers were like this! If I ever publish the work of others, I’ll use Chelsea as my model.