Category: Business

Food security. Sustainable agriculture. Slow food. Healthy, locally-sourced food. Whatever it’s called, Baltimore is quickly taking the lead nationwide in the movement towards local, sustainable food.

This May, city leaders appointed a new Food Czar, Holly Freishtat, to improve demand for and access to healthy foods throughout the city. For a few years now, the City Schools Director of Food and Nutrition Services, Tony Geraci, has been busy reshaping the entire food-delivery system of the BCPS. There are at least eleven farmer’s markets throughout the week in Baltimore, numerous CSA’s to choose from, and places like the Mill Valley General Store, which offers only Maryland-sourced food products, both fresh and small-batch prepared. The Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future promotes “Meatless Monday” on its website.

New job-creating and educational ventures have started up to focus on healthy, local food. For example, there’s the Hamilton Crop Circle, Real Food Farm in Clifton Park, and Great Kids Farm in Catonsville, to name just three.

What’s going on here? As a long-time advocate of and participant in the green movement, this reporter has observed that food is an excellent entry-point for so many people. We all have to eat, right? On a personal level, as well as from a business standpoint, food is hot!

Continue reading . . . .

I am a believer in the power of learning by example. I’ve discovered over the years that many businesses and organizations have similar challenges in going green, even though their core missions may be quite different. Take a look at a few recent conversations I’ve had with clients and peers. These illustrate some common themes.

Our company has had impressive results from several targeted “green” projects. Now, we have about 10 people really engaged and feeling successful. Our challenge now? How do we engage more of the smart, dedicated folks who work here?

I feel like I’ve wasted so much time – a year – building the case for green with our leadership, using both logic and emotional appeals. There’s so much potential, I just can’t figure out how to unleash it.

Greening is our organization’s highest priority, because it ties in to everything else: business expansion, office and studio space, travel, outreach and community programs. What do we have to do to make green a seamless part of our culture?

We want to be a world-class company, a leader in sustainability. Our core business – energy efficiency – certainly qualifies, but we want to go further and really look at our operations, our community engagement, and our employee policies.

Does your business have something in common with these folks? Are you:

• A mission-driven enterprise that cares about people and the earth, as well as your bottom line?
• Taking some actions to be a better steward of natural resources?
• Convinced of – maybe already taking advantage of – the tremendous cost savings of reducing waste?
• Aware of the great branding opportunities of aligning with the green movement?
• Serving people who care about the environment?

Maybe, along with these folks, you are also wondering. . . .

• How to save time and get right to what really matters to your organization;
• How to engage more green champions from within to increase the great ideas for even more cost savings or revenue-generation; and
• How to take your greening to the next level – to really unleash the sleeping green dragon in your business!

Let’s be honest here. Isn’t it frustrating to see the potential, but not know how to get there most effectively and efficiently?

Don’t we all just want to. . . .

• Walk our talk;
• Lead by example;
• Reduce costs, save time and money;
• Increase our revenue;
• Attract loyal customers and employees; and
• Do well by doing good?

Believe it or not, there is good news. Imagine what it would be like to:

• Get a quick and clear overview of the drivers and strategies that can unlock the bottom-line benefits of green for your company.
• Align around a common language to greatly improve communication both internally and externally.
• Benchmark your internal culture so the actions you are taking are in service of a big-picture strategy.

Doesn’t that sound good? The work we do with our clients helps them to go quickly from frustrated to inspired, from confused to focused. And it all boils down to two simple practices. Yes, two. Ready for it?

1. Slash waste.
2. Create something new.

That’s it. Okay, if I put it in business language, you’ll probably recognize the two top things-that-keep-business-owners-up-at-night:

1. Cut costs.
2. Increase revenue.

The only difference between the first list and the second list is mindset. Sure, you can go about cutting costs in your business in any number of ways. And, you can play around with increasing revenue using the tried and true methods. My message today is to think of going green as an ally in your business, as a strategic partner that can help you reach levels of productivity, customer loyalty, efficiency, and innovation that you never imagined.

Stay tuned for some case studies and other tips.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, 4/22/10, GOforChange presents a greening business action list with a twist! We thought we’d do it a little differently, because our job is to help people understand not only what to do, but why. So often, the top-10 lists read like a shopping list. (This year, I’ve even seen 40-things lists!) The items may be categorized, but nothing is said about what it all means and why we would choose to do certain things.

Get ready, because our list starts with the Top Four Principles for a Green Business. To make it simple and concrete for you, each principle is paired with a specific business concern and four explicit green actions you can take. Think of it as a “tasting menu” to celebrate Earth Day. It’s like four carefully crafted courses, each paired with a beautiful wine. Each of the four courses has four delicious items on the plate for you to choose from – or you can really indulge and eat them all!

The four courses to taste today are the Four Principles for a Green Business:

• Appetizer: Aspire to be 100% good, not just “less bad”
• First Course: Act in cycles, rather than linear (waste = food)
• Second Course: Tap into an unlimited source of energy (the sun)
• Dessert: Attract and keep the best employees and customers (celebrate diversity)

The only way to make these real in your business is to taste them, to put them into practice. And, we’re going to show you how.

We paired four business concerns with each of the Four Principles. For each, the combination of flavors is subtle and unique: There are tastes that you avoid and tastes that you cultivate.

Appetizer: Policy & Practices that aspire to be 100% good, not just “less bad”

• Avoid: confusion, distraction, wheel-spinning, burn-out
• Cultivate: shared definitions and frameworks, creative teamwork

First Course: Handle materials in cycles, rather than lines (waste = food)

• Avoid: waste, toxics
• Cultivate: reuse, conservation, thoughtful purchasing

Second Course: Energy that taps into an unlimited source, the sun

• Avoid: waste, fossil fuel use
• Cultivate: savings, clean energy

Dessert: Workplace & Community that celebrates diversity, attracts and keeps the best employees and customers

• Avoid: isolation, competitiveness
• Cultivate: connection, flexibility, inclusiveness, creativity

So far, we’ve covered the why and the what – principles and specific business concerns. Now, for the how. I’m going to give you the four delicious tastes for each course on our menu. These are concrete action steps that will allow you to experience greening success in each area of your business.

Are you curious about the goodies in the appetizer course? Wait no longer! Here are four specific green actions can you take in your Policy & Practices:

• Write your green mission statement and set annual goals to move toward it.
• Establish green policies and practices. These will come in time, as you take more measures to go green. Be conscious to write them down, so you get systems in place that will outlast your current leadership.
• Measure, benchmark, and track progress regularly. This includes conducting audits of your energy and water use, and a waste audit.
• Regularly communicate your mission and progress on your website.

Hungry for more? It’s time for the First Course, Materials:

• Green your supply chain.
• Establish, revive, or enhance your recycling program.
• Avoid paper plates, foam or plastic cups, and plastic utensils in your kitchenette or break room. Instead, provide reusable cups, plates, and silverware.
• Have a no-bottled-water policy. Get a nice reusable dispenser to filter tap water and serve with reusable cups or glasses at your meetings. Some examples: Eco-Chic version from Aqua-Ovo. For us regular folk on the other end of the spectrum is the nice-looking polycarbonate model from Target.

By now, you are getting warmed up and ready for the Second Course, right? Good thing that’s all about Energy:

• Have a Smart Strip Blitz: Go around your office and plug everything into power strips and then turn off the strips with items that aren’t in use. Don’t forget that cell-phone charger! Then, sit back and count the money you’re saving.
• Find and use the Energy Star power management settings on your computer and monitor.
• Unless you’ve been time- or space-traveling lately, you’ve probably heard the suggestion to change all your incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescent. Here’s a twist on that: even if you’ve already changed over to CFL’s in the office, you can hold an employee CFL giveaway. Or, consider trying the new LED bulbs that save even more energy and last even longer. See what’s available at Home Depot:
• Energy efficiency isn’t just for offices. Your personal energy is a vital part of the picture. It is often closely associated with the metaphor of life as breath – the words ‘chi’, ‘prana’, and ‘spirit’, for instance, are all related in their respective languages to the verb ‘to breathe’. The advice here is: establish a daily energy recharge with conscious breathing. This can be very effective in the morning, combined with gentle stretching. Try using the Mindful Clock which chimes at defined intervals throughout the day, reminding you to stop and take a few deep breaths. You’ll be amazed at how energizing this simple practice is.

Did you skip to Dessert right away? Why not, eh? Life’s too short! To wrap up our delicious meal, we have four goodies for your Workplace & Community:

• Support local environmental / community groups, both financially and with volunteer time. Some great non-local ones: Earthshare and Kiva.
• Consider a telecommuting policy, ideally coupled with a program to encourage and/or reward use of public transit or bicycling.
• Hold regular Green Team meetings with broad participation and a focus on action and measurable results. (This is where your mission statement and goals from the Appetizer come in handy.)
• Provide or direct people to ongoing training in sustainable business topics. The Natural Step Network’s programs are a great resource.

We hope you enjoyed our Earth Day Tasting Menu! I know it was rich, and that you are likely feeling full and satisfied. (No food coma, though, right?) As always, we love your feedback. What’s working for you? Where are you encountering challenges?

As a smart business owner, you are most likely already committed to a green path, and have taken action. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or lacking broad support in your organization? All of these are symptoms of an uncoordinated green program – lots of small tactics, but lacking a coherent vision that sustains and inspires everyone.

Going green requires the concerted, coordinated efforts of many different people both within your business and in your wider sphere of influence. It’s a dead-end to rely on piecemeal tactics with no connection to each other or to a big picture. Worse, relying on a few dedicated folks to carry it out is a sure recipe for distraction, wheel-spinning, and burn-out.

Want your green efforts to be taken seriously and result in a more profitable and healthy business? How can green become a core value of your business, integral to your mission and infused in everything you do?

In any change process, it’s essential to know where you are starting from, if you are to map out a plan to go in a new direction. Successful change involves three key steps: receive a new vision, benchmark your current impacts, and map out a plan of action to get there.

You should know that, without an inspired, engaging vision, it is hard to get others enrolled in your project, and hard to sustain even your own interest over the long haul. That’s one of the most common reasons why green business initiatives fizzle, or never reach even close to their full potential of benefits.

Here are three tips to help you design and implement a successful program to green your business.

Tip #1: Receive Your Vision

Why do you care about green? What does going green mean to your business, to your personal sense of mission? How is this expressed your business? What does that mean for you – your sense of purpose, your vision of the future, your values, your influence in the world?

Tip #2: Benchmark

When you start working with a personal trainer, you weigh in or get some measurements taken at the beginning, right? This is the benchmark, against which you measure all progress. Marking progress gives you an excuse to celebrate!! Which is a huge factor in keeping your focus on your goal and the hard work required to get there.

The same applies for your green initiatives. Your benchmark gives you a starting point and your progress helps you to grow the involvement of your team, suppliers, customers, and community.

What are your current impacts – energy use, materials use and re-use, water use, transportation impacts? There are several online tools to help you estimate these. Here are two to check out:

Business footprint is focused on your carbon footprint, or CO2 emissions, that contribute to climate change
Ecological footprint is more comprehensive, looking at all impacts

What are the ripple effects of a green business? How are you perceived by the media, potential employees, suppliers, customers, and your community? This is an important benchmark as well.

Tip #3: Craft a Plan of Action

This is where the rubber hits the road. What are your priorities, where do you want to focus first? Network with peers to exchange ideas, contacts, and questions. Get support when you need it, to sift through and digest information, to hold you accountable, and to keep you focused on what’s important.

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I hope these tips help you design a more orderly approach to greening your business. It’s like building a house. Sure, you can just go to Home Depot, buy a bunch of supplies on sale and start knocking them together. Or, you can work with an architect to design exactly what you want, a beautiful house that meets your needs and your budget.

Let me know how these work for you and if you need any support with it.

The final in our four-part series from our colleague and friend Lori Hill, owner of lori hill event productions. Read the first article here.

Today’s topic is: The venue (fancy word for “location”).

LEED Certified Buildings

If you choose a venue that has a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designation from the U.S. Green Building Council, you can be assured that the building is eco friendly in many, many ways, so that is half the battle! But a building can still be earth friendly without having a LEED certification. Many hotel properties are instituting green initiatives. Kimpton Hotels have been green long before green was chic!

When doing your research, check to see if your venue lists their green initiatives on their web site. An important question to ask is how they dispose of their waste. Most venues recycle these days and even better ones compost waste. If they don’t engage in these actions, ask them if they can provide the service. Some off-premise caterers will offer this service if a venue does not.

(Julie chiming in here: I just want to add a bit to the discussion of waste. It’s so important not to overlook this detail. Recycling and composting bins need to be conveniently (and obviously) located. Because it’s a special event, they need to look nice, not like big bulky trash cans marring the otherwise serene landscape of your event. It can be very helpful to have someone friendly standing near these bins, to help guests properly direct their waste items. Of course, if you’ve done your homework and absolutely everything is compostable, then it should be smooth sailing! But, just be aware that guests sometimes have their own trash, and they are likely to be confused about where to put it.)

Getting Your Guests To the Venue

If possible, pick a venue that is centrally located to your attendees and if possible, within close proximity to public transport. If you are holding multiple events – like a wedding ceremony and reception – try to hold them in one place to minimize driving for guests. If you have out of town guests, you could look into offering a complimentary guest shuttle to eliminate the need for all of them to get into their cars yet again.

Thanks again to Lori Hill, for these great tips. You can read the previous installments, starting with the first one, here.

In working with my clients, I’ve observed four common mistakes people make when greening their business. They relate to motivation, mindset, methods, and mentorship. Each mistake is costly in terms of wasted time, money, good will, credibility – it’s a long list.

Be honest – why do you want to go green in the first place? Are you worried about the state of the environment? About those poor polar bears and their shrinking ice floes? About toxic materials accumulating in the soil, water, and your body? About running out of resources?

Well, guess what? That’s the first mistake: to start from a motivation of fear, scarcity, anxiety, even anger. These can be excellent short-term motivators, as in the case of a medical emergency or a mugging. But for the long-term work that is sustainability, they are wholly inadequate, even exhausting. Not the foundation for the creative, joyful project of greening your business.

These gloom-n-doom environmental messages are the WORST way to try to stay motivated for the challenges of greening your business. They actually keep us in a state of separation from the very natural world with which we seek to reconnect, causing us to overlook potentially lucrative ideas and opportunities.

It is far more effective to move towards something we want, than to rail against something we don’t want. Think about it. When you are cold, you don’t get angry and struggle against the cold; you light a fire, you put on a sweater. You do something in the positive. When it’s dark, the way to change that is to turn on a light, not to complain and push against the darkness.

In the face of all the negative, disempowering messages we get about the state of the environment, how can we tap into a positive motivation and a deep sense of connection with the natural world? It’s really a practice, requiring continuous awareness and feedback. It’s also a call to be gentle with ourselves as we walk this green path. As Maya Angelou said, “You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.”

Here are three rich practices that work for my clients. They will help you tap into this inner awareness, sense of connection, and positive motivation. Try them and let me know how they work for you.

Practice 1: Gratitude

Here’s something we did in a recent “Green in 15” class. Treat yourself and go for a nice walk. Enjoy the springy weather, all the glory and abundance of the natural world as it is beginning to awaken from its winter slumbers. When you come back inside, make a list of everything you’re grateful for, right here, right now, today.

This is an excellent practice to draw your attention away from seeing only problems, challenges, things that are broken and need fixing.

Practice 2: Mission

Why do you care about green? What does going green mean to your business, to your personal sense of mission? How is this expressed your business? What does that mean for you – your sense of purpose, your vision of the future, your values, your influence in the world?

When a recent client did this, their Green Charter became infused throughout the company, marshalling creativity and accelerating their results. These include tremendous energy and water savings, dramatic reduction of CO2 emissions, reduced nitrates going into the Chesapeake Bay from their operations, and a popular employee challenge program to take similar actions at home.

Practice 3: Networks

Nature is organized in networks of networks, and we are a part of that system. Think of one aspect of your business and make a list of relationships – the people, systems, and technologies that you are connected to. Now, answer these questions:

1. For systems or technologies, how did this get here?
2. What did it take to get it to me?
3. What is it made of? (Or, In the case of relationships, how did I meet this person?)
4. What has this connection brought into my life?
5. What have I brought into this person’s life?
6. What has this connection led to?
7. What might it lead to in the future?

What was your experience in trying these practices? I would love to hear from you.

Third in a four-part series from our colleague and friend Lori Hill, owner of lori hill event productions. Read the first article here.

Today’s topic is: The decor.

Floral and Plants

Make selections based on what is in season and work with a florist who utilizes local growers (support that local economy!). If you can, choose organic options – it’s better for the workers and the environment.

Candles

Traditional candles are petroleum based (there’s that evil word again). Choose beeswax or soy-based candles instead. These days, you can get them in tea light and votives sizes.

Linens, tables, chairs

Renting linens, tables and chairs is eco-friendly because items get used over and over again and these days, companies are offering eco options for the equipment they rent. Most rental companies I know have limited options when it comes to eco friendly table linens. Why? Because these companies re-use linens on such a large scale that they need a fabric that will hold up through multiple uses and washings. Don’t despair. Ask your rental company if they have chairs or tables made of eco friendly materials like bamboo or reclaimed wood. Also, check if they rent recycle bins and see if they provide fabric bags in which to place your soiled linens (vs. using a plastic trash bag).

(Julie here: I’ve been working with the Greening Committee at my son’s school to green their events. We have a big holiday fair in December, and serve lunch to about 500 people. In the past, they used plastic tablecloths to cover the tables, which was so incongruent with the values and image of the school. We started asking around and were able to find a catering company that graciously donated some of their old, but still very serviceable, cloths to us.)

Lighting

Lighting can make such a big impact on an event and doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, but if you use it, talk to your lighting vendor about using LED (light emitting diode) lights. They use less energy (which makes them very eco!) and are safer to use because they are light to the touch and not hot. Also, they can change colors throughout your event which really adds to the ambiance of any event!

Read the final installment: the venue.