After watching Project Runway’s “green” episode (Tim Gunn still rocks), I was motivated to review a couple of eco-friendly books I read last month. First, Stirring it Up: How to Make Money and Save the World by Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo of Stoneyfield Farm, the story of how Hirshberg built a successful $300 million dollar business by incorporating environmental principles and practices.
I found Stirring it Up to have a few really thought-provoking ideas, like these:
- “The root cause of all this seems to be that we humans consider our versions of efficiency superior to nature’s.” Well, seeing as how nature keeps kicking our butt with some wacky weather, we all need to think about this–because it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature!
- Exxon’s company mission in 1989: “To provide our shareholders with a superior return on investment.” Nothing else mattered. And Exxon’s reaction was true to that mission when its oil tanker Exxon Valdez went aground, spilling 11 million gallons of fuel oil in Alaska’s Prince Edward Sound. True to form, it refused to accept responsibility. In the long run, though, the accident ended up costing Exxon more than $2.5 billion.
But it’s not just about being green or organic: Here are some of the tools Hirshberg discusses in the book that helped him build Stoneyfield to what it is today:
- Have a powerful yet simplistic mission statement.
- Attract free press for doing outrageous things that amuse people without insulting them.
- Organic costs more than conventional methods and involves more government regulations, but yields higher profits because customers are willing to pay more for quality products.
- Looking under the hood for ways to reduce waste by reviewing packaging materials, we ended up not only reducing waste, but our packaging costs.
- Working with suppliers instead of squeezing them brought more stability to our overall pricing.
Here are a few of the companies Hirshberg highlights as environmentally conscious:
- Patagonia
- Whole Foods
- New Belgium
- Eileen Fisher
- Timberland
- Zipcar
- Clif-Bar
Funny, I get a good feeling when I hear the brands listed above. I guess I subconsciously knew they were green so it goes to show how working that in as part of a brand can yield good will and some actual “greenbacks.”
So that was my serious environmental book. At the same time on CD in my car, I listened to Doug Fine’s Farewell My Suburu: An Epic Adventure in Local Living, in which the author moved to a ranch in New Mexico in an attempt to live “off the grid.” His four goals were:
1. Use a lot less oil
2. Power my life by renewable energy
3. Eat as locally as possible
4. Don’t starve, electrocute myself, get eaten by the local mountain lions, get shot by my UN-fearing neighbors, or otherwise die in a way that would cause embarrassment if the obituary writer did his or her research.
I could really relate to Fine’s sometimes ill-fated attempts to be green (although my green intentions didn’t involve selling all my possessions and moving to a ranch). However, earlier this year I tried to adopt my own green practices and found out that Kermit the frog really wasn’t kidding, it’s not easy being green. As you can imagine, being completely green is nearly impossible.
Fine ran into some crazy adventures, interesting neighbors and unexpected challenges. Sure, you can get a car that runs on used vegetable oil, but sometimes you have to bring it home from the Chinese joint in town in a Styrofoam container. That one contraption you really need to rig up your energy-saving device? Well, it has to be purchased at Wal-Mart. And those goats . . . will destroy all your roses and keep you up all night, just like children.
The Top Shelf Bottom Line: Read Stirring it Up for your business and Farewell My Suburu for your life, and then take a shot at looking at the world through green-colored lenses.
Addendum: Just read a blip about a new book coming out called The Green Bible, with a cotton/linen cover, partly recycled paper and soy-based ink. Hmmmm. Interesting, but is it really the most green-conscious way of publishing? I had a friend suggest that print-on-demand publishing is much greener because you don’t print up more books than you sell. But that’s a subject for a whole different post.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.7 Responses to “It’s Not Easy Being Green, But It Can Be Profitable”
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July 30th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
It’s not easy being green, but it can be profita…
Bookmarked your post over at Blog Bookmarker.com!
July 31st, 2008 at 11:16 am
Thank you for the book suggestion and the discussion. I am working with women entrepreneurs in starting new businesses - beginning and working with “green” concepts is increasingly on our targets.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Great reviews, Diane - I’ve had my eye out for Stir it Up for a while now. In terms of publishing, print-on-demand is definitely a good/green option, but often it’s not feasible for mass-produced books. The reason for this is that print-on-demand tends to be expensive (which will end up increasing the price for the book) and it doesn’t offer as many options. For example, Lulu, last time I checked, was charging almost twice as much for recycled paper options than for its conventional options. If you’re self-publishing, that means a significantly lower return on your book sales than is comfortable for most folks.
And then there are other considerations such as paper type, ability to recycle, toxicity of glues, etc. which haven’t yet (to my knowledge) been dealt with in the print-on-demand realm, but can be dealt with in more traditional publishing models. These are all important things to note when dealing with the idea of “green” publishing (although really - is any book truly “green?”). Cradle to Cradle has some great thoughts on this, if you’re looking for another book to read.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
@dani - Re: POD, the idea was that it saved more paper because one would only have books printed up as people needed them. As opposed to traditional publishers who print up 5,000 copies (and generally most business books - non A-list may sell 3,000 in their 9 month shelf life), so those extra 2,000 books get shipped back to the author or sit in a warehouse somewhere.
And thanks for the book suggestion. I’ll add it to the list.
Diane
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I also have a green related blog and I have bookmarked your blog at www.makegreenworld.blogspot.com.
Nice Article!!!
August 6th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Great ideas to share with existing large business.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
You have some great ideas here, I think it’s very important to GO Green, especially with young ones in the house.
Thanks for sharing this with us!
Ps. Project Runway - Great show:)