by Scott James

This month I spent time with serial entrepreneur Dal LaMagna to ask him about his new book, “Raising Eyebrows, A Failed Entrepreneur Finally Gets It Right.” He’s been called an irrepressible capitalist (among other things) which made for an interesting conversation.

Scott: In your book you suggest that you were more successful with your company than you would have been had you not followed principles of Corporate Social Responsibility.  Talk to me more about that.

Dal:  Building Tweezerman as a company that practices what I call “responsible capitalism” resulted in a team of competent, happy employees, loyal customers, satisfied vendors, and a community that supported the company as much as the company supported the community.

Scott: I see the positive upward cycle of that. How did that contribute to your success?

Dal: My definition of success is the quality of life the company provides for me and for my employees.  As the company grew my empowered employees – a critical element of CSR – took over, and my work became more strategic and less mundane. I didn’t have to sell, collect money, go to trade shows or worry about much except the strategic trajectory of the company. Had it been up to me alone I would never have grown Tweezerman to a 65,000-square-foot facility with 250 employees. When you run a business that takes care of its employees, its vendors, its customers, and its community…well, all these stakeholders then take care of you.

Scott: What were the salient CSR practices that you felt made the difference?

Dal:  Employees sharing in the profits made a significant difference; after a trial period every one of them became shareholders in the company. We promoted from within and hired from the community. When things went wrong we concentrated on solving the problem rather than pinning the blame. We provided health and job security. It took the agreement of at least two of the top three managers to fire someone which we did rarely.

Scott: And how about outside of the company?

Dal: We respected our vendor’s right to make a living and did not exploit them. For example when we were late paying bills we added interest to the payment (equal to what we would have paid our bank).  We gave back 5% of our profits to the communities we served. We had a lifetime guarantee for all our products and didn’t even charge shipping when we repaired or replaced them. Over the years we found that people cared more and more about the kind of company they were doing business with. Loyal customers, vendors, and workers made a big difference during those times over the 25 years especially when things got tough.

Scott: I’ve heard you say several times that you sold your company for much more money because it practiced responsible capitalism. Why?

Dal: The company that acquired Tweezerman paid more because our brand had a great reputation not only for quality but also for practicing CSR. We developed employees who were empowered people from the President down to the worker who cleaned the bathrooms.  We delivered a turnkey operation. The company that acquired us, J.A. Henckels, a division of Zwilling, only needed to send in two people, a CEO to replace me and a CFO to work with our existing CFO to match up reporting to the home office. Initially eight bidders were involved and through mutual eliminations we ended with the one whose policies of CSR most closely matched our own. We sold the company for about 14 times earnings and 1.5 times sales.

Scott: Would what you’ve done – establishing Tweezerman as a CSR company – work for any company?

Dal: Every company is different, but I believe that most companies can benefit from some CSR practices. Part of being a CSR company involves paying a living wage. I would think that a company that sells a commodity would have difficulty in paying this. I had the capability to pay my employees well, provide benefits, share profits, make charitable contributions, and more because I created a brand, which commanded a solid profit margin.

Scott: What about the international aspects of your company?

Dal: How your company treats the supply chain is a crucial aspect of CSR. We paid a living wage in India (of course much lower than what a living wage is in the U.S.) and operated our factory responsibly. We paid our China supplier more money so they could improve working conditions for their employees. If your business model is to exploit foreign labor you are not a CSR company. The marketplace is constantly punishing companies that have a product that can be easily replicated. If you are the kind of person who wants to get more out of your company than money, and strives to build a company that practices responsible capitalism, then avoid situations such as unreasonably tight profit margins that force you to exploit everyone and everything to make your company work.

Written by Scott James and repubilshed from Forbes

This month we have a tale of civil disobedience and the corporate response that touches nearly every household in North America.  It stretches from old growth forests of Canada to corporate boardrooms in Dallas. Oh, and a visit from Dr. Seuss’ Lorax. But first, my guest for this month’s interview, Dr. Michael Conroy.

In addition to being one of the go-to experts on product certification systems (his book on the topic stays in the short book stack on my desk for frequent reference), Dr. Conroy is a retired professor of economics, a board member of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and an established “big picture” thinker. One of my companies produces an FSC-certified product, which gave Michael and me an excuse to reconnect recently. I asked him about the CSR movement here in the States, as well as what he sees abroad.

Scott: You travel internationally way more than I do, Michael. Tell me about where we (the US-based CSR community) are succeeding in relation to the rest of the world.

Michael: I’ve got an interesting story for you that starts in 2004. Back then a group of advocacy NGOs – led by Greenpeace – began campaigning to get Kimberly-Clark to reduce its impacts on intact forests and old growth forests around the world by purchasing its fiber from eco-certified forests and/or recycled paper sources. Kimberly-Clark (KC) is arguably the largest purchaser of wood fiber for tissue products in the world; and it has some of the best established brands in the world, including Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle, and more.

Scott: I know from time spent in Texas that they’re in Dallas and have sales of $15B+ [It was actually almost $20B for 2010 when I looked this up later, but what's a billion or two between friends].

Michael: Greenpeace and company created a campaign called Kleercut to mimic the Kleenex brand.  Over the course of the campaign more than 50 activists were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience linked to KC.  The campaign focused on equating “Kleenex” with “Kleercut” and the forest damage created by the companies selling to KC.  They proceeded to drum up support across grocery stores and college campuses, and succeeded in media hits as big as CNN Money and Fortune Magazine.

Scott: Is this the Dr. Seuss thing?

Michael: Yes. You’ll remember that in The Lorax Dr. Seuss has trees speaking for the plight of the environment.  They rewrote the story to “personalize it” around KC and its suppliers, and then they acted it out, in costume, in front of the offices of KC board members!  It always drew a great local media response.

Scott: So did it work?

Michael: Yes, the campaign succeeded in bringing KC to the table and in August of 2009, KC and Greenpeace jointly announced new sourcing policies for KC fiber that included a goal of ensuring 100% of the fiber used in all its products was from environmentally responsible sources, with a clearly expressed preference for FSC fiber. It pledged by 2011 to increase its use of recycled and FSC-certified fiber in North American products to 40%, and by 2012 it would no longer use any pulp from Canada’s vast boreal forest (a principal source at that time) unless it was FSC certified.  By the end of 2010, well ahead of the target date, it had already reached 57% of its North American sourcing from FSC-certified or recycled fiber.

Scott: What implications and impact did that have on the rest of the industry, beyond the Canadian borders?

Michael: As a direct result of KC’s rewritten fiber sourcing policy, some of the largest forest products companies in the world are now actively seeking FSC certification of their supplies of wood chips and fiber.  This includes companies that had actively opposed FSC standards as too demanding and too costly to implement.

Both of the largest forest products companies in Chile (Arauco and CMPC/Mininco) which account for 80% of Chile’s forest products industry, are in the midst of the FSC assessment process, changing their practices to meet FSC standards, at a cost of millions of dollars in re-tooling and re-structuring their operations.  Both of those companies were co-founders of Chile’s competing forest products certification system, CertFor, and had resisted FSC certification for years.  But they had begun to find that markets placed little or no value on CertFor certification, whose standards were weaker and less demanding.

It has taken both Arauco and CMPC/Mininco more than a year to design and implement the changes needed to meet the standards.  And both companies, in private conversations, have told me that changes in purchasing policies of major companies like KC have made them realize that they needed to be FSC certified if they want to be able to sell to the leading branded manufacturers of wood and fiber products worldwide.

In Brazil, the pulp and paper industry, major suppliers of KC and other tissue manufacturing companies, have become so focused on FSC certification that their industry association, Bracelpa, has become a major contributor to the costs of FSC-Brazil’s office and a supporter of training workshops that inform the Brazilian paper products industry on the “whys and wherefores” of FSC certification.

Scott: Tell me more about the “whys and wherefores” and the benefits to both the forests and the companies doing business in forestry products.

Michael: Well, on the ground this means a number of important things. FSC requires respect for, and protection of, the rights of indigenous peoples, at levels often beyond the requirements of national legislation. Indigenous groups have now found that FSC is a new and powerful tool in their negotiations with forest products companies about access to, and use of, traditional lands.

FSC also has more stringent rules on environmental management, protection of biodiversity, and reduced areas of clear-cutting, greater setbacks from streams, rivers, and lakes than any other certification system, and stronger than almost any national legislation around the world.  It requires engagement with local communities, protecting them from the negative impacts of logging (i.e. roads and bridges damaged, water polluted, etc.) and encouraging active hiring of local service providers, local technicians, and local labor.

The chain-of-custody certification in the FSC system provides strong assurance that products produced in compliance with the standards can be traced from the forest, through any and all processing, and right down to the final product sold to consumers.

The number of acres certified to FSC standards in North America is now more than 135 million, about one-third of the acres certified worldwide. In terms of the effect on other industry players besides KC, demand for FSC-certified wood and fiber products is booming worldwide.  Our closest aggregate measure of demand for the FSC products is the demand for Chain of Custody certificates, required of companies processing certified wood and fiber for products taken to retail markets with the logo. These have grown from 16,000 worldwide to more than 22,500 (50% growth) over just the last 18 months.

Scott: And how did KC come out of all this?

Michael: KC rolled out its first KC Professional FSC toilet paper and other products in late 2010 (KC Professional serves hotels and other business/institutional buyers).  It began selling Kleenex with an FSC logo on the bottom of the box at Costco stores late last year, and it is now going national throughout the US, supplying “FSC Kleenex” to virtually all consumer outlets.  An amazing transformation in just two years!

Scott: Excellent. It will be interesting to watch the response of consumers to the logo. Thanks for your time, Michael!

Here it is mid August and already I have to start working on my conference attending schedule for the fall of 2011. It seems like I have to do this earlier and earlier each year primarily because there are so many LOHAS oriented conferences being added or are catching my attention that I did not know of before. I have done a post on what events I think are important the past 2 years and here is my 3rd installment of top green/health and wellness/social enterprise/sustainability/leadership conferences worth considering as you plan your conference schedule for the fall.

For those new to the conference scene, there are two seasons – fall and spring. There are associations and organization that provide 1 or 2 events a year usually during those months. This is primarily because summer is a time when many set up personal vacation time and winter has more holiday time and weather issues.

Conference strategy
In determining which event is best for you take a look at the speakers and topics that will be presented. It is also important to look at the sponsors and how the event is presented via the event website. This will give you a feel on the type of companies that will be attending the event and what type of audience the event is trying to attract. By viewing the agenda content you can get an idea on how in depth they plan on going on topics. Also look at the networking opportunities that are in the program. Some events consciously embed them in the program via receptions, meals and outings and others do not. It is really up to you to make the best of the time for your own networking purposes.

On site
I find attending events to be incredibly stimulating. However I also find them to be extremely exhausting. Make sure you eat right, drink plenty of fluids, keep to a good sleep schedule and maintain a steady energy balance. For the large trade shows make sure you wear comfortable and supportive shoes for those hours on the exhibit floor. There are plenty of after party events to attend at which you can have some great business talks. It is up to you to make sure you know what formula works best for you. Set up meetings in advance if you can. That way you have some anchors to build the rest of the day's plan around and not get too lost in the shuffle of things - especially if they are large trade shows.


Leadership
Women in Green - August 30-31st Santa Monica CA
Focuses on women in leadership positions that promote green business. Although all the speakers are women you don’t need to be of the double X chromosome to attend. This is the second year of the event and according to people who attended last year it was about 200 people. This year there should be more.

Conscious Capitalism - OCT 12-14 Austin TX
You need an invite to attend this prestigious event that brings many CEO’s together to discuss conscious leadership within organizations. It is a relatively small event with around 200 attending. John Mackey of Whole Foods co-founded this and has people ranging from the CEO of the Container Store to Jean Houston speaking on how business can drive conscious change.

Green
Green Initiatives Conference Sept 29-30th Ft Lauderdale FL
A new event on my radar that has some interesting presenters and sponsors. The event team that is putting this on look like they have a tech background and may be one of the main focuses of the event. There are larger corporations participating such as DOW, HP and Coca Cola. It looks like they will focus on sustainability within larger companies and case studies from experiences.

SXSW Eco Oct 4-6 Austin, TX
SXSW music festival looks to sing a new green tune this year with the addition of a green event. Former LOHAS speakers who will be presenting include Simran Sethi and Philippe Cousteau. This is thier first year and the B2B event looks interesting. A great idea tagging it onto SXSW.

Opportunity Green Nov 9-10 Los Angeles, CA
OG is in its 3rd year and brings together green business and sustainable design in LA. They have about 800 attendees from all walks of life – corporate, entrepreneurs, media and of course Hollywood. They hold a great green design competition and it is a high energy event with interesting sessions and booths ranging from LED lighting for studios to BMW to water filters.

BSR - Nov 1-4 San Francisco, CA
The big one for the larger corporations that has been around a long time focusing on the corporate responsibility of multi-national corporations. Last year they had over 1000 in attendance. If you are looking to connect with the bigger companies on CSR initiatives this is the one to check out.

Funding and Finance
SOCAP Sept 7-9 Fort Mason, San Francisco CA
A vibrant event focusing on investing into social entrepreneurship. This event brings together large funds and banks with social entrepreneurs. Competitions on business plans are submitted ahead of time for a competition for funding and there is great education on raising capital for the startup and social enterprises.

SRI in the Rockies OCT 2-5 New Orleans, LA
A flagship event for social responsible investing(SRI) that brings SRI funds together with financial advisors. They also bring in a mix of speakers who focus on humanitarian, social and environmental impacts such as Jane Goodall, David Bornstein, Hunter Lovins and Bill McDonough. If you want insights on SRI and where it is headed this is THE event to attend.

Slow Money OCT 12-14 San Francisco, CA
Slow Money is a network of food activists, investors and entrepreneurs who nurture a range of conversations in order to actively develop funding and investment channels for local and sustainable food enterprises. Like Slow Food, they have local gatherings and a larger main event promoting a slow and steady investment into businesses who are seeking an alternative to the conventional Wall Street type investor.  Speakers include David Suzuki, David Orr and Vananda Shiva.

Investor's Circle OCT 26-27 Philadelphia, PA
A membership organization that  support a great entrepreneurs that are addressing social and environmental issues. They look at 10-15 high impact deals that are seeking investment.  They also provide a due diligence process that starts once the event is complete. It is about 200 people in attendance who are angel investors, fund managers, family office managers, foundation executives and trustees, wealth, financial and philanthropic advisers and their clients and other accredited investors.

Industry Specific
EcoTourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference Sept 19-21st Hilton Head SC
With over 30 inspiring sessions, 50 leading industry partners, and impactful and engaging keynote presentations, the ESTC 2011 (Hilton Head Island, SC, USA, September 19-21, 2011) sets the platform for ongoing dialogue promoting innovative ideas and practical solutions, driving change in global tourism.

Expo East Sept 22-24 Baltimore MD
Attended by as many as 25,000 industry professionals and featuring thousands of exhibits, Natural Products Expo East is the largest natural, organic, and healthy products trade show on the East Coast. With the newest and best-selling products and branded ingredients available this show features the best in organic at All Things Organic/Organic Products Expo-BioFach America, offers an extensive retailer training program and provides an advocacy platform through a strategic partnership with Natural Products Association East. Natural Products Expo East is ranked as one of the top 200 tradeshows in the US.

Greenbuild Oct 4-7 Toronto Canada
Greenbuild is the green building industry's can't miss event. It's where we go to learn about what's new in green building practices through the extensive educational sessions, see the latest technology and innovation in the exhibit hall, and perhaps more importantly, where we go to do business.  Greenbuild is a one-stop shop for credential maintenance. From pre- or post-show LEED workshops to sector-specific summits, from green building tours to concurrent educational sessions, you will find the education you need at Greenbuild. Most sessions at Greenbuild will be approved for continuing education credits for LEED and other professional credentials, allowing you to maintain your credential with ease.

Beauty/Wellness
Natural Beauty Summit Oct 6-7 NYC
This is a smaller and formal event for the natural and organic beauty industry that brings together the mission driven companies such as Dr. Bronners and Weleda with the larger corporations such as Este Lauder, L’Oreal and Avon. It is more of a lecture format and a lot of presentation intake. If you are a data hound you will get your fill. If you are a networker you will need to work for it but there are good connections to be made. The group is a bit insular if you are an outsider but if you are seeking to enter the luxury skincare market it may be worth considering.

Green Spa Network - Oct 9-12 Sundance, UT
This event is made up of a group of spa resorts and products that want to go the extra mile in promoting green efforts in the spa industry. The event has about 100 passionate people who want to move the spa world in the direction of holistic and sustainable integration. They are a very open and friendly group that welcomes newcomers (and new members). Plus the events are always at pristine green resorts.

ISPA - Nov 7-9 Las Vegas
If you are in the spa industry you have to go where everyone goes which is the International Spa Association Conference. Every other year they have their annual event in Las Vegas which brings investors, products and service providers, spa techs and directors together. This is THE most well groomed event I have ever experienced with exhibitors providing facials, teeth whitening and massages. There is good data provided on the spa world and great sessions specific to spa owners and employees. ISPA provides great data on the spa market as well. 

Social Venture Network Oct 27-30 Philadelphia, PA
SVN is a membership organization of successful social entrepreneurs ranging from Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, creators of Ben & Jerry’s, to Van Jones, former Green Czar to Obama, to Tom Szaky founder of Terracycle. It mixes sustainability with community building and innovation and a ton of passion. You can’t leave this event without 2-3 bonding hugs. It is a great place to seek mentorship, collect ideas and also potential funding from successful entrepreneurs and community leaders who are interested in helping others. This overlaps with the Investor’s Circle previously mentioned.

Net Impact Oct 27-29 Portland, OR
Net Impact is a large event that brings 2500 students and corporations together. They have chapters associated with Universities all over the country with a large membership and the event focuses on social enterprise, green business strategies, and nonprofit work.

Public Events
Yoga Journal Conference Sept 18-25 Estes Park, CO
For yoga die hards and trainers interested in the business of yoga or just to improve their own yoga practice. Famous yoga instructors such as Rodney Yee, Sean Corn and Shiva Rae have taught classes here. There is a vendor area as well.

Greenfestivals
Greenfests are the creations of Green America and a designed to celebrate green and diversity in various regions. Their flagship event in San Fran pulls in 30,000 attendees and they have some amazing keynote speakers such as Dr. Weil, Deepak Chopra, Amy Goodman, Jim Hightower and many more. Companies large and small mingle together with the public selling their products and services. I think these are great not only to see what is being sold but to see who is buying and the similarities and differences each region has as it relates to green. There is always a colorful audience at Greenfestivals.
New York  10/1-2
Los Angeles  10/29-30
San Francisco 11/12-13

Bioneers San Rafael, CA 10/14-16
Bioneers is where ecology meets activism meets celebration. I could spend hours in the parking lot just reading all the bumper stickers on people’s cars (mostly hybrids). If you are into fighting injustices of the underserved, hearing the wisdom of traditional cultures and the stories of animals and unique journeys of people this is an event for you. There are workshops on business, youth, art, peace and more.  It draws about 3-5,000 who are all there because of the larger mission Bioneers embodies. Networking is great but you will need to be selective on who you connect with since there are so many types of people there.

Written by Scott James

This month I sat down with John Perkins, the author of the New York Times bestseller,  Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and many other titles, and former chief economist at a major international consulting firm.

Scott: Tell me about your work with business students around the US, particularly as it relates to Corporate Social Responsibility.

John: We talk about what’s really important for any business leader to understand today. We have moved into a new era where people understand we’ve created a failed system.  When less than 5 percent of the world’s population live in the United States and consume more than 25 percent of the world’s resources, while roughly half the world is either starving or on the verge of starvation — the only way you can define that system is as a failure.

It’s not a model that we can sell to Africa or Latin America or India.  It’s not something we want to pass onto our children.  And an awful lot of business people are beginning to understand this.  Young people are getting it, including young MBA students. Those who are going to be running our companies in the future years are waking up to these facts. I’m very familiar with this, because I’m going out and meeting with them, speaking to them in large assemblies and at much smaller gatherings, going to classes with them, and teaching classes for them.

Any responsible executive today of any corporation needs to understand that this is the future.  And let’s face it: people who stay with the status quo have never been the really successful ones in history.  The ones who understand future trends have always been the ones to prosper most.

When city-states became nations, very few people understood the implications, but the Medici did. They knew that their bank wasn’t any longer just about Florence. They needed to go to Venice. They needed to go all over Europe. They got it, and as a result were very successful.

We’re in a stage like that today where things are changing radically.  We’re moving from this time that was defined, when I was a young person in the ’50s and ’60s, as the time to just continually expand materialism, produce things that seemed to make life easier – vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, mass-produced food, etc.  Now we’re moving into a time when people are really getting the fact that we have to be sustainable, that that has to be the driving force.

And sustainability includes social justice. So we can’t be sustainable if people in the world are starving and being exploited. That’s not working. It seeds the roots of turmoil, even terrorism, and it creates tremendous problems for our children. We’re now finally beginning to understand these new facts of life, and our young people are waking up the fastest.

Corporate executives who understand these new trends and steer their companies in directions that recognize(s) that they are not just about making profits regardless of the social and environmental costs will thrive.

When I went to business school in the late ‘60s we were taught that a good CEO is like a good soldier – he protects the long-term interests of his employees and the communities where they live and work, as well as looking out for the interests of his stockholders. That all changed in the ‘70s and 80’s with the adoption of what we now think of as the theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. They said that the sole responsibility of business is to maximize profits regardless of everything else. They said: to hell with the long term and the idea of being socially and environmentally responsible! But today we are understanding that profits are not the sole responsibility of business.

We recognize – as our grandparents did – that to be responsible and successful, businesses are going to have to pay decent rates of return to their investors while taking into account the creation of a world that we want to pass onto our children; a sustainable world, a just world, a world where everybody can thrive on some level.

All executives – even executives of corporations that today appear extremely successful and profitable – need to understand that their corporations are very vulnerable to these future trends. They need to get on the sustainability bandwagon; the ones who do so are going to be successful in this new era.

But many business leaders who are already CEOs and CFOs, who graduated with my generation – 30 or more years ago, often take the attitude that this is their system, and that as far as they’re concerned, everything’s working just fine. They are wrong and ultimately they – or their companies – will pay a very high price for these outdated attitudes.

Scott: What does a world look like without CSR…where corporations are all simply responsible enough that we don’t need to tack a CSR department onto them?

John: We have a precedent in this country for that.  For the first hundred years that the United States was a nation, no corporation could get a charter unless it proved that it was going to serve a public interest.  Charters lasted on average for ten years.  There were exceptions – such as building a highway or a bridge –  but on average ten years.  Then the corporation had to go back and prove that IT had met the public interest and would continue to do so, in order to renew its charter.

That all changed in the 1880s when the Supreme Court decided that corporations had the rights of individuals but not the responsibilities, and we’ve been moving further and further in that direction ever since.  “Citizens United” is the most recent example.

There’s a backlash today. The general population – despite the recent Supreme Court rulings that seem to favor corporations – are really beginning to get it.  that backlash is going to increase as people decide they only want to support corporations that really are committed to creating a better future, to serving a public interest.

Scott: As this backlash is happening people are not only reacting against the negative but also moving towards the positive. What are the positive aspects within CSR that you’re seeing abroad from which the North American CSR community could benefit?

John: In the last decade, we’ve witnessed a revolution in Latin America against the form of capitalism that I call “predatory capitalism,” the Milton Friedman form of capitalism.  We’ve seen ten countries which represent roughly 80 percent of the population of South America vote during democratic elections for presidents who campaigned with the promise of reigning in the corporations.

These countries are not getting rid of the corporations, not nationalizing them, not driving them out – because they recognize that they need them – but saying to these corporations, “If you’re going to drill for oil here in Ecuador, or if you’re going to drill for gas here in Bolivia, or grow bananas in El Salvador, that’s okay, but you must share a larger percentage of the profits with our people.  You’ve got to pay higher taxes, and you’ve got to pay higher wage rates.  You must make sure that the people working on these projects are adequately compensated and that they’re not working as slaves to you. And you have to offer the same protections for our environment as those required in alaska and other states.”

The old model used to be that when a foreign corporation went into another country, it would set up a contract whereby it got about 80 percent of the profits, and the country got 20 percent. The new leaders are changing this. For example, Rafael Correa who’s president of Ecuador and has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois understands the system, he’s a capitalist. He’s not trying to get rid of corporations, but he is asking the corporations to stop externalizing the costs associate with destroying the local environment and exploiting local populations. Correa, like other latin leaders, is demanding that corporations internalize those costs and that they return a much larger percentage of the profits to the people. These presidents are not asking for a reversal of the 80-20 formula but they are asking for something that is fairer for their people.

Every one of these countries, for most of my lifetime, was run by brutal dictators often put into power by our own CIA. Now, in peaceful, democratic elections all that has changed. I want to point out that these countries are not opposed to the United States.  They’re not anti-American.  They’re not anti-corporation.  They’re just trying to say, “Listen, you’ve got to be socially and environmentally responsible if you want to work on our lands.”  And the interesting thing is that many of the corporations – the ones that will truly thrive – are getting it.

I recently was a keynote speaker at a conference which was held in Panama which was primarily CEOs and CFOs of extractive industries in Latin America, mostly Canadian companies.

Before I accepted the invitation, I asked them, “Why me?  What do you think I’m going to offer you?”

They said that policies in Latin America have changed. These elections have proven that business is not “as usual.” They told me, “We still want the minerals, and we understand we have to be good neighbors. We hear what they’re saying, and we want to cooperate.” these are very forward-looking senior business leaders saying they get it, and that they want to move forward. They want to be at the top of the curve, to continue to innovate and be the pioneers in this new and changing business environment.

That’s the real message today from all over the world – what I find in China and Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. People understand that capitalism is a very effective system to channel human and natural resources and to apply creativity in areas that result in very productive activities. Now it simply needs to redefine its objectives. Capitalism must accept a goal not just of making profits but also of serving a public interest. When it does that, we arrive at a win-win, a true partnership. Those who understand this will become leaders in this new era. They will thrive, prosper, profit, and create beneficial environments for themselves, their customers, their suppliers, their employees, and the communities in which they work. And for their progeny.

Scott: Yes, definitely a more equitable and respectful relationship, one that can be sustained indefinitely. Any parting words of wisdom?

John: Simply this – that any truly responsible businessperson has to look to the long term. Bonuses may be measured by the quarterly profit statements but true success has to be long-term. As a society, as a species, it is imperative that we understand the importance of creating a world our grandchildren will want to inherit.

For the majority of insured people, illnesses are diagnosed, codified, and approved for treatment through standard medical interventions and insurance protocols.  Since specific illnesses are typically required to qualify most expenses for eligible traditional care benefits, conscious consumers hoping to improve health before illness strikes are often left with few options.

As interest in health living tips employee interest toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the research also suggests that integrative medicine has the potential to improve employee health and meet employee interest. 

Currently, integrative medicine is often paid out of pocket, despite consistent increases in interest and available research to support its effectiveness in preventing and managing whole health.  Surprisingly, even though smoking habits and obesity are linked to the top chronic ailments in the US, only about 9% of employers offer smoking cessation plans and a meager 6% offer weight loss programs within coverage.  To enhance social accountability a trend toward investing in preventive medicine and CAM  is predicted, and already more than 37% of hospitals have some CAM  therapies available.  LOHAS companies, in particular, may start looking for holistic alternatives and seeking socially responsible Investing options that improve employee health and preventive care through CAM  benefit programs.

A Slam Poet at a Green Business Conference? What's the world coming to?

The title of this article was part of Theo Wilson's poem that tipped me over the edge. Sandwiched in between Friday's session(s) "Greening the Mainstream" and "FutureTopia",  Theo's stand-up routine ended with cheers and tears, hoots and hollers, and in my case, big 'ole goose bumps. In fact, I think I felt a tear drop dribble down my cheek by the end. Not what I expected when I dragged my (slightly hungover) self to "work" that morning. What a delicious surprise.

The annual LOHAS Forum, which just ended yesterday, represents a gathering of minds that really is NOT like the rest. The event directors gather the most eclectic group of luminaries, entrepreneurs, scientists, and non-profits out there, from slam poets and Evolutionaries, to internationally-renown Medicine Hunters and award-winning authors.

Attendees come to learn. But they also come to interact. I think that's what strikes me the most about how the LOHAS conference is unique -- it's a collaborative event. I feel as if I'm amongst my tribe of people here, even though most of them I've never met before. It is a true meeting of the minds -- a place where business and soul intersect. I mean, I challenge anyone to not be just a little intrigued by a panel titled "Liberating the Corporate Soul?"

Throughout the three day event, I was curious, how will  the conversation go between the executive at Coca-Cola and The Medicine Hunter, Chris Kilham? Will the young, hopeful entrepreneur seek out advice from the Non-Profit Executive Director at Pachamama Alliance? It was fascinating to witness lively conversations between folks who seemingly would never otherwise interact.

Good on you LOHAS folks. It's time that we start talking to each other, even if we don't think we want or need to. Thanks for providing us all with a forum to do just that.

Pippa Sorley is co-founder of eConscious Market, one of the Internet’s leading online green retailers. She has 15+ experience working for both nonprofit organizations & corporations within the Natural Products, LOHAS, and Sustainable Business sectors. She lives in the Republic of Boulder, Colorado.

The below article is brought to you as part of elephant journal’s ongoing coverage of LOHAS Forum. For our complete coverage, be sure to follow elephant on Twitter and Facebook.

Green can't be cliche or a lifestyle option to work, for lack of better words. It has to be practical, cheap and easy. That's the key.

So, today is the LOHAS wrapup. I attended a bunch of sessions. There was one called "Surfing..." which talked about taking trailing advertizing dollars and using them to ramp up community efforts like making parks. So much money from the major corporations, with the right management, can be leveraged off the tube and out to your community.

Another forum was called "Following Lance" and the high point was that you don't have to sell "green," but that you could push green by talking practicality. Dollar savings, ease of use, etc. These are points that the masses respond to. Green can't be cliche or a lifestyle option to work, for lack of better words. It has to be practical, cheap and easy. That's the key.

Another speaker shared about electric vehicles and the future. Imagine car parks where your car feeds off of and into the grid! That's the future.

I also heard a new catchphrase: "greenwashing" which, as you can probably guess is what a company might do that presents itself as green but really isn't.

All in all, LOHAS gives a chance for speakers and companies to share their ideas about how to make our already rich lives richer by introducing thought, sustainability and health into the equation. It's all good.



Michael writes for Elephant Journal and founded a "dangerously organic" community called Zoobird. He loves sharing what he's learned about organic lifestyles like living off the grid and bicycle commuting. He calls it "lifestyle entrepreneurship". He's into organic gardening, mindful living, and realizes that we only have this life and each other. His favorite quote is "The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both." (James A. Michener)

Since these substances may interact in unpredictable ways with each other or water additives like chlorine, the LOHAS community may have some legitimate concerns about the trends for increased US prescription drug use.  This connects personal health choices and commitments to sustainability and environmental health to what happens when a patient enters a doctor’s office, especially among people looking for options to improve health through non-invasive, natural, and lifestyle oriented solutions.  Yet for those who inquire about stress management with the majority of conventional doctors, they may be more likely to receive advice about anti-anxiety prescription options than a suggestion about exercise or styles of yoga to try.  Though pharmaceuticals play a key role for some conditions, many people would prefer making lifestyle changes to improve their health when possible.  

The result of an exclusively traditional benefit plan may leave people opting for a lack of follow-up or no care at all if they prefer holistic alternatives.  For LOHAS companies, ideas are brewing over how to connect cost-effective benefit planning to corporate values by offering benefit plans that provide options to include types of care that employees want and need: care that focuses on preventive medicine and whole person health, like holistic or integrative medicine.  Investing in integrative medicine has the potential to capture the best of both fiscal and value-driven goals. 

elephant journal is proud to be the official new media partner with LOHAS Forum. Click here for our ongoing LOHAS coverage, and be sure to follow our live coverage on Twitter. [Our editor Waylon Lewis is honored to serve on two panels during this event.]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDkT3fPRn3U[/youtube]

elephant journal:  Tell me about your experience with LOHAS.

Marc Barasch:  I’ve been around since almost the beginning.  New age business had been bifurcated, and suddenly people were beginning to figure out how to put their spiritual ideas into business.  It started with good ol’ tofu companies, small granola businesses just beginning to advertise and act like real businesses.

elej: How have you seen it change over the years?

MB: It’s been a mixed blessing. You lose some of the authenticity of the core intent as companies sell to larger conglomerates.  It’s wonderful thatit propagates the meme and distributes the products at a scale that a small company never could have done.  There are tremendous benefits to that.  But from my somewhat outside observation, you also lose some of the integrity. For example, if you look at Ben and Jerry’s, when they were acquired by Unilever, I believe they intended to keep a very progressive business model, including a fixed ratio of how much top executives were paid. However, that model was not kept.

So the LOHAS community needs to ask:  how can LOHAS not replicate some of the disparities and discontinuities of the prevailing system that are collectively driving us off a cliff?  I think it’s time for companies to not just look at the sustainability and humanity of their organizational development, not just as a CSR add-on or a laudable afterthought, but something that’s included in the raison d’être of the company itself?  I think that’s the question that we need to be asking. What does the company do?  What is the product?  How can we ensure that it’s not increasing consumerism?

How does this push forward a new emergent model, without pushing forward the parameters of a dysfunctional system?  How does it value and push forward what needs to be done in the world?  And quickly?  We need to step out of the matrix and look at this from some zero point and reverse engineer it.  What does the world need, and how do these entities—businesses and corporations—directly serve that need?

In an era where money is de-realized into nothing but bits and bites, a fictive system based on number magic, the priests of the numerate have always worked abstract magic on the masses, and become the elite through magical hand gestures—in this case, tapping on keyboards.

I’m very personally interested in complementary currencies.  Look at Switzerland, for example.  One reason that they’ve been so stable economically is not just because they are neutral, but because they have some very sophisticated complementary currencies to meet social needs, as well.

elej: What do you think we need now?

MB: I think it’s time for radical experimentation, we need hybrid or fusion companies, with nonprofits using the profit system and businesses founded with a social mission first, such as Patagonia.

How do we take on the really large social mission of true transformation, and not just nibble around the edges of real change?  I think that’s not just grandiosity.  It’s necessity.

How do we model as organizations that meet emergent civilization?

elej:  How are you modeling an organization that meets the emergent civilization?

MB: This might sound pretentious, but I really took a cue from something Thomas Keating once said, something to the effect of, “I get up every morning, and I decide what will do the most good.  This simplifies things tremendously.”

6 years ago, when Field Notes on the Compassionate Life came out, I thought, “If I’m talking about compassion, I need to enact it.”  So I stopped my entire career trajectory from that point forward, and asked how I could do the most good and accept whatever answer I was given.  I asked myself, "what does the universe want?" And I’ve followed that question pretty loyally for these last 5 years.

That lead to a lot of coincidences, that eventually led me to planting trees in Ethiopia, to start.  I started the Green World Campaign, and watched it grow into a mostly volunteer-driven organization that’s now operating in 5 countries (Kenya, Ethiopia, Mexico, Philippines, India).  We’ve planted close to 500,000 trees.  We’re involved in regenerating communities.  We’re restoring the economy and ecology of the world’s poorest places, doing work that serves people and planet.  In the model of agroforestry that humans and nature have been co-creating since the beginning.

The idea that our relationship to the natural world is to avoid keeping our own destructive hands off it, is inadequate, completely. We’re supposed to work in an integral way together. Renew communities as we renew the environment.

How do we take the holistic model that we all ascribe to philosophically and apply it in the real world, particularly at the bottom of the pyramid, with the people and places that our collective fate is inextricably entwined?  Collective enactment of the global village.

As a critique, we’re very good at created “enlightened, green-gated communities”.  But how does this affect the poorest of the poor?  Trickle down economics.  Everything is connected.  Everything should be seen as interactive parts of a whole.

Reforestation is a quantifiable healing strategy.  We are using interactive new media and new technologies.  It’s part of the DNA of GWC.  We have an alliance with Digital Globe, the largest satellite imaging company, to be able to show donors over time degraded areas turning green.

A tree is a deeply embedded meme in the human psyche.  We’re a tree-planting species.  We always have been.

We’re operating in many domains, whether it’s carbon credits for eco-stoves, creating social enterprises by sourcing commodities like herbs and teas, non-timber forest products, how to partner with indigenous communities in a way that empowers them and also introduces appropriate technology and new agronomic strategies that are harmonious with their traditional agricultural practices.

We are not only providing environmental education, but also working on linking that up with schools in the US, so kids can get a sense of the global village.  I’m big on creating positive feedback loops in a way that empowers global citizens. Doing good doesn’t have to be only through large corporations and large environmental groups.  How do we self-aggregate and do something that we can see that benefits all of us?

How do we all learn from each other?  I’m taking pains to pick and search partners that are mission-aligned and have a real global citizen mindset.  Some sort of understanding of the spiritual underpinnings of human existence, if you will. We’re not aiming to be USAID.  We want to work with the LOHAS community.  We’re propagating ideals in the context of the developing world that are really building global community that includes the poorest of the poor.

Our model is infinitely scalable.  With proper funding, we could scale this up almost immediately.

I call this work Green Compassion.  And the movie “I Am” also relates to this.

elej: Tell me about I Am.

MB: I got a call from Tom Shadyac, who wanted to make a film about the book.  A large part of the film is based on the book.  Here’s a guy who had earned about $2.1B dollars gross for the studios thru his Jim Carey and Eddie Murphy movies.  As much as possible, I want Green World Campaign to be congruent with the ideals presented in the movie and the book. Everything I do is informed by my own healing work and experience, and my background in Buddhism.  It all stems out from that.

Interviewer's note:  And that's what it's all about.

by Fred Haberman

What if five percent of the $500 billion in global ad spending was instead
invested in making this a better world.

Each year, companies worldwide spend $500 billion in advertising. Corporations enlist talented advertising agencies and brilliant marketers to present their products as boldly and creatively as possible – often at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per second.

It’s an astounding amount of money. $1.7 million per 30-second spot for the Academy Awards. $3 billion spent on political ads. $12 billion spent by U.S. tobacco companies. $3 million for a 30-second Super Bowl ad – many of which are violent, degrading, or sexist.

As a marketer and parent, it’s given me pause to ask, what does all this money really do to add to our society?

What if these brands could redirect some of these ad spends for for good causes? Could a fast food brand unleash its best creative marketing minds to raise awareness that many Americans have no access to fresh produce? Why can’t an athletic apparel brand run an entire ad encouraging us to donate shoes to the citizens of Haiti?

It’s not just charity, it’s smart marketing. Research suggests consumers want this type of commitment. According to Cone Communications, 79% of consumers say they would be likely to switch from one brand to another, when price and quality are about equal – if the other brand is associated with a good cause. This means that campaigns that add value to our world can also add value for a brand, resulting in the same (or better) increase in sales that an advertising  campaign may offer. Two iconic examples are Pepsi’s Refresh Project and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.

It’s time to begin a deeper dialogue about where and how the companies whose products and services we support spend their marketing dollars. My company is seeding this conversation with a grassroots program we call “ADD or DELETE” that asks fellow marketers, “Could the $500 billion projected to be spent on advertising in 2011 be put to better use?” We hope that ADD or DELETE inspires chief marketing officers at Fortune 500 companies, creative directors at global advertising agencies, designers toiling at boutique shops and struggling copywriters entering the workforce to consider their legacies: do we want to be known for lavish ad shoots or for creating campaigns that positively impact our world?

We’ve created a website, www.ADDorDELETE.com, to provide a forum for all consumers to identify advertisements that ADD value to society vs. merely being “ads” that consumers would rather DELETE. Our video shows why. Please follow us on Facebook to join the conversation.

Our vision is that consumers will inspire business to leverage at least five percent of their advertising or marketing assets to solve social issues. If all were to agree, that would equate to $25 billion the greatest minds on Madison Avenue and creative shops worldwide could devote to stemming the rise in diabetes, fighting cancer, curbing unwanted teen pregnancies, eradicating food deserts and so much more.

Don’t get me wrong. I love humor in marketing, in the workplace and in life. I love ads. But when customers demand better from the companies they patronize, it’s an opportunity for all of us to use our influence, power and resources to help those in need. So, let’s start ADDing more to society.

Demographics Are Gross   Lumping people together according to their age, household income, or education level was fine in the heyday of mass marketing. But demographics aren’t a fine-enough filter in our multi-channel media-saturated world. It’s not enough to know, in the broadest of terms, who your target audience is. Now you need to know how they are and, most importantly, why they buy. And if you don’t know, you may be watching your competitors eat your market share for lunch.

Technology Converged    Personal computer plus Internet plus social networks plus mobile phones equals a convergence of technologies into one massive, uncontrolled, 24/7, global communications platform. At least two things happened: it empowered consumers to talk (or talk back) to brands. And it created new inter-connected means for brands and consumers to connect.  Five years ago, we didn’t have to consider how our big branding ad was going to play out as a streamed Internet video linking to a geo-targeted 2-fer coupon accessible via smart phone! The accelerating number of possibilities is enough to keep any savvy marketer awake nights.

Mad Men Meet Joe YouTube   You gotta love Don Draper. After a night of drinking, smoking and fooling around, he can show up for a major campaign presentation, pull a single concept out of his fedora, and have the client eating out of his hand. From the 60s to the 90s, big splashy ad campaigns reigned. Did they work? Sure, many did, especially when advertisers threw a ton of money behind them. Especially the funny ones. But then along came YouTube. Now any bloke with a slightly warped sense of humor, a flip camera and a log-in can generate as much buzz as a multi-million dollar Super Bowl ad. That can give marketers heartburn as they re-think how to allocate their budgets.

Consumers Rule   Marketing used to be easier. You created a product, you advertised, it you sold it. Back then, it didn’t matter much who bought it as long as enough bought it. It didn’t matter how it was made as long as it didn’t break before it got home. It didn’t matter if the means to the end were sustainable as long as the bottom line was. But in today’s world, consumers’ peer-to-peer influence on your top line is unprecedented.  What they don’t like, they don’t buy and they don’t hesitate to yelp their reasons why. And, by the way, most of those consumers controlling the cash are women. Well, three-quarters of it anyway, even when spending is down.

What Now?

The future is now and you can’t afford to wait. Visionary companies are searching for new ways to step up their marketing and engage new consumers using new technology. Here are five things you should consider.    

Consumer Centricity   Make your business revolve around the consumer not the other way around. Your product is not the centerpiece of your brand. Your customer using your product is.

Know Your Consumer Inside and Out   To build your marketing around your consumers, you need reliable, actionable intel. Research tools like Roberts Worldview Assessment, for example, provide psychological insights into various consumers’ values and behaviors and direction on how to engage them.

Total Consumer Engagement   Every consumer touch point becomes part of the brand. From the product itself to the ways the consumer can learn about it and interact with it to the retail or etail service experience.  Your internal and external support teams need to understand that entire experience and make sure every part of it delivers your brand effectively.

Brand Response    Before the Internet, tracking results was a bit sketchy. But with online analytics, the guessing is over. That’s why all advertising roads need to lead to the Internet. We call it Brand Response, the blend of brand ads to get attention, direct response to drive the action and online interactivity to make the sale. Great advertising and accountability ARE possible.

Change the House Rules   Look at your corporate culture. Are there any fresh marketing ideas being generated? If not, a more holistic process and a less silo’d organization can help. Sharing best practices to engage consumers should be a full team effort. 

If you know me you are well aware that I have a bit of a hectic travel schedule and go to a variety of conferences oriented around green business, social enterprises, health and wellness and everything in between. Yes I am an admitted conference junkie. But there is a reason for my addiction and I will try to explain them rationally as any junkie in denial will do. For me, my reasons are to keep on the edge of what is happening in the various spaces that comprise LOHAS. I enjoy attending conferences not so much to hear about what someone is saying on stage but rather what is being said in the hallways. I feel that getting into the candid conversations at dinners or over drinks really gives me an up close and personal view point into various market sectors with various market leaders. The presentations on stage are an added bonus and if I am lucky they are indeed worth listening to. But I am a critique on a variety of levels. My preference is someone who not only provides a picture of the problem but also presents a vision and solutions to it. If I want gloom and doom I can just watch the news. No need to tell me more about it. I think we are all aware that we are all in deep s#!@ and in it for a long while. I want inspiration and something that speaks to me at a deeper level. I also don’t want a sales pitch. I know that corporate presentations tend to have specific parameters on what they can and cannot say. But getting those people off the stage and into a conversation in the hall is great. That is when you can get to the heart of burning questions and have them give you more in depth answers that they can’t when in front of an audience. I also need imagery. I’m a visual person and a visual learner. If someone presents something with multiple bullet points and is reading them off – that immediately sends me to checking my email on my smartphone. Yawn! But is someone has a well thought out presentation and integrates examples and lead ins using images it is magic. Presenters don’t always need to have images behind them on a large screen. They can take the audience on a wild ride just with a compelling story that has colorful detail and elements that the audience can relate to. After all we are a society of storytellers. They also must have that connection with the audience that a few have and others do not. Hard one to teach but when it is there you can feel it. I also run into some of the most interesting people I would not expect and allow myself to do so by being open to whomever or whatever manifests in front of me. By attending various conferences and hearing different thoughts and ideas both on stage and off I begin to weave together trends and similarities I hear repeated in various LOHAS sectors. I also try to integrate new ideas and concepts that may be fresh to LOHAS. This process constantly reminds me of the fable of Stone Soup. The fable goes like this:
Some travellers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travellers. The travellers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travellers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with just a little bit of carrot to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travellers again mention their stone soup which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.
This is in essence how the core content of the LOHAS Forum is developed. We then add additional speaker applications into it from those who submit presentations and we adjust a bit here and there but that is how it is contrived. It may not be perfect but the mix is a work in progress and I hope that you are able to enjoy some of the nourishment that the LOHAS soup provides by attending the LOHAS Forum, attending LOHAS regional events, subscribing to our e-newsletter or our various social media groups such as Facebook, Twiiter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

by Scott James

This month we took in a conversation with David Batstone, whose current job titles include Professor of Business & Entrepreneurship at University of San Francisco, President and Co-Founder of the Not For Sale Campaign, and Managing Partner of Just Business Fund. Let’s hear what David had to say:

Scott: What country should serve as a model for the U.S. community of CSR professionals and why?

David: Norway. I’ve been impressed with both their government and private sector initiatives. Their largest telecom company – TeleNor – was the 51% investor to bring launch Grameen Phone, the very successful mobile telephone company in Bangladesh. I wish our own country’s administration could begin encouraging business models and investments like this. We’re missing the boat in the U.S. to create local enterprises in other countries which offer both better return and a better chance of success because they are locally embedded. There are real business opportunities for – and with – the bottom billion. Let’s not lament the troubles involved; we must rethink who our market is and expand it to include this group.

Scott: Where are we (the US-based CSR community) succeeding?

David: Our private sector green protocols and investments are working. They represent cost savings, but also bring alternative energy and waste reduction to Corporate America in ways that you are not finding in other regions of the world. For example, last year Intel bought 1.4 billion kilowatts of renewable energy. Think of what that does for both new and existing renewable energy companies in terms of capital flow and attraction of investment dollars.

Intel is just one company; imagine if we were to see 10% of the Global 500 match Intel’s commitment! This is much more encouraging to me than any type of government compliance work around climate change. The private initiatives coming out of a strong CSR commitment are making much more headway than is our government.

Scott: How about our failures, where we are not succeeding as much as we could?

David: There is a real sense of ambivalence about CSR right now. It’s like a trip to the dentist; you know you have to do it but it’s not a pleasant experience. It does not provide inspiration and vision for most companies. But there is hope.

There are a selected few companies that are taking CSR to the very core of their business and corporate identity. It’s beyond starting a soup kitchen here or a HIV clinic there, although those are very important things. It’s about how our employees care and engage with this on a daily basis. They’re not just making widgets but tied to something bigger.

Stonyfield Farms (now owned by Dannon) used to do a lot of diverse philanthropy, but they’ve focused their CSR investments now to help farmers transform their dairy businesses from hormone-based to organic farming. And the small farmers are core to Stonyfield’s supply of high quality healthy products and brand identity.

Scott: Tell me about a company doing something in CSR that is a model for our future.

David: The G-III Apparel Group, which owns the U.S. license for Levi’s jackets and other name brands. As they are converting their supply chain, they’re thinking well beyond just CYA to create a story behind their product. They are reshaping what it means to be a retail brand by enhancing the lives of everyone who comes in contact with their product. G-III is sourcing organic cotton from an area in the Amazon heavily afflicted by human trafficking.

They are working with the Not For Sale Campaign to source from that region specifically to benefit the producers and communities, bringing the material to a Cambodian manufacturer also committed to a fully transparent supply chain. This enables retailers to communicate an authentic supply chain story, creating an emotional link for the end purchaser of the apparel. The new driver is consumer experience, not just price point and distribution.

Scott: What question are we not asking ourselves that we should?

David: Most of CSR today is derivative. We look for the easiest path, the plug-and-play CSR solution for our companies. Instead, we should be asking ourselves, “How do we become the Apple of social innovation?”

LAGUNA BEACH, CA – “FORTUNE Brainstorm Green” is probably the number one environmental business conference in the world. A host of top CEOs, heads of NGOs, and a variety of consultants, private equity investors, venture capitalists and journalists descend upon the spectacular Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel each April — this was my third annual event — to examine the state of green biz.

There was still optimism in the room on April 4-6, but with a strong dash of reality check. As in, many of these guys are not making the returns they expected by now, and a lot of them have tens if not hundreds of millions invested in “Greentech” companies. That said, they still seem confident that their investments will ultimately pan out, even without federal energy legislation.

Many of the firms represented are major, well-established corporations who seem to be making sincere and in many cases effective efforts to operate sustainably. It is impressive that more and more major companies are adding the title “Chief Sustainability Officer” to the C-Suite, as CSOs from dozens of firms were on the attendee roster.

Not surprisingly, a dominant underlying theme was that unless they’re good business, sustainable policies won’t pass muster with management or shareholders. “The key is cheaper. Sustainability is nice but it’s not the driver,” observed Bill Joy, a founder of Sun Microsystems, now a partner and leading greentech investor with the ubiquitous Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins. This sentiment was echoed throughout the conference by various speakers in sessions ranging from “The Future of Climate Policy,” with Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp and James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy; to “Sustainable Seafood, It’s Not A Fish Story” featuring Greenpeace USA Executive Director Phil Radford and Bumble Bee Foods CEO Chris Lischewski, among many more over two and a half days of speeches, round table discussions, networking and even entertainment.

None other than the Allman Brothers and Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell performed with his band, although he was not just the musical interlude. Leavell has written no less than four significant books about the environment, his latest being Growing A Better America, which examines how we can balance population and business growth with the need to offer everybody clean air, water, plentiful food and adequate natural, open land.

A session of particular interest to me was “Urban Green,” which aired out the tremendous population explosion expected in major cities by 2050 and what we can do to keep some semblance of green in the face of crowding and gridlock. “We expect 80 percent of the world’s population to be city dwellers by 2050,” said legendary architect, urban planner and sustainability expert William McDonough. “Beijing will double in size within five years from 20 to 40 million. How do we provide sewage plants? How do we give everyone the basics of clean air, fresh water and adequate food?”

Laura Turner Seydel, Trustee of the Turner Foundation and yes, daughter of Ted, said Atlanta has become a model of the sustainable city. “It takes a concerted effort from government, business and non-profits. Atlanta received matching funds from Coca-Cola and the Turner Foundation, got Atlanta airport to recycle, now the whole city recycles.” This was echoed by Cindy Ortega, Senior Vice President of Energy and Environmental Services for MGM Resorts, developer of Las Vegas’ City Center, the country’s largest LEED-certified development. “Green is being embraced by corporate America, because waste of natural resources is not good for the bottom line.” The overall thrust was that with skyrocketing urban population growth, only a true partnership of city government, NGOs and local corporations will be able to maintain a sustainable way of life.

Security was tight at this green conference, and rightly so, as luminaries such as Richard Branson, former Siebel Systems founder/CEO Tom Siebel (who is now doing a green startup, C3), Wal-Mart EVP Leslie Dach and NRDC President Frances Beinecke, among many others, appeared as speakers and panelists. Even Theodore Roosevelt IV (yes he does look like his great great grandfather) was on hand, he is Chairman of Barclays Capital Cleantech Initiative.

The conference closed with motivational words from pro surfer, fitness expert and all-around-athlete Laird Hamilton, who is otherwise known as the “Force of Nature,” also the title of his book, which chronicles the way to a truly healthy lifestyle (no you won’t look like Laird even if you follow the diet and exercise plan). When asked how the average person can follow his program and achieve true fitness, Hamilton reminded us that the old tenet, “no pain, no gain” is really the answer. “My food often tastes like crap, the workouts are hard, they hurt. But you have to push yourself to the next level if you want to improve your results. Potato chips in, potato chips out … you need to eat jet fuel to do these workouts.”

Indeed, our path to a truly sustainable future will also follow his edict: no pain, no gain. It won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, and it will take sacrifice on everyone’s part. The conference left me with a feeling that we do have the talent, capital, entrepreneurship, science and dedication necessary to make our society — and the developing world — a sustainable environment with adequate natural resources and energy to meet the needs of all citizens.

Here’s hoping I’m right…