Lipscomb spotlights sustainability in business world with Expo, Summit
Janel Shoun |
The first two days of the second annual Green Business and Living Summit and Expo were a hit with green businesspeople and consumers who came together to support sustainable ways of making money and living life.
The summit and expo is an annual program of Lipscomb University's Institute for Sustainable Practice, one of the many ways the institute is promoting a move toward sustainable living in the region.
About 60 vendors featuring everything from bamboo toys to electric cars gathered in Allen Arena at the Green Expo to present products and educate about healthier ways of living and dealing.
Around 250 businesspeople came out on Friday to the green Business Summit to discuss green issues such as the dangers of green washing (the process of marketing as green but not really practicing it), how to hire green employees, how sustainable companies can get financing or entrepreneurial opportunities in the green industry.
As of Friday afternoon, around 650 people had come to Lipscomb’s campus to learn how they could become involved in making the world a healthier place. Here are some of the things they heard.
Gary Hirshberg, president and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms, the world’s largest organic yogurt company, spoke to a crowd of about 400 on Thursday evening.
“He’s one of the CEO’s who takes his responsibilities seriously,” said Dodd Galbreath, director of Lipscomb’s Institute for Sustainable Practice and coordinator of the event, as he introduced Hirshberg. “He is exactly the kind of person out economy is looking for to act our way out of this economic downturn.”
Hirshberg recounted plenty of tales in his early days in the business when he and his family had to take turns milking cows because they had no money to hire labor. But now Stonyfield Farms is a $300 million per year corporation that is the third-largest yogurt producer in the world.
He outlined four steps for any business to successfully go green:
First, it must get the facility in shape
- Every company should first make sure it meets all current compliance codes for operation, he said.
Second, it must reduce its energy consumption.
Third, it must reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas creation within its supply chain.
- This is where the vast majority of energy and greenhouse gas savings come in, Hirshberg said. Upon studying it, he found that Stoneyfield’s carbon footprint came mainly from the transportation, packaging and manufacturing processes.
- Changing from a plastic to a foil lid on Stonyfield’s yogurt cups, used 16% less energy, 13% less water and saved $1 million per year for the company, he said.
Fourth, green companies must practice a “truly restorative system of living.”
- In nature, any waste produced in one system is used as food by another system. Businesses must learn to operate in this way as well, Hirshberg says.
- For instance, his company has established an anaerobic biological treatment plant that takes waste from the farm and turns it into energy using bacteria and microbes. Since establishing the plant, he has only taken 2 percent of the waste sludge produced on that farm to a landfill.
The second annual Green Expo features hundreds of green products for both consumer use and business use.
- Some products are made from recycled materials. Such as Double Dog Studio featuring repurposed jewelry made from other objects.
- Others are made from biodegradable materials, such as Bioflex banners for advertising from Precision Signworks.
- Some products are made from sustainable materials, such as toy cars made from bamboo, which is a more renewable tree than other tree varieties.
- Other products help consumers save energy, such as a solar attic fan from Lightwave Solar Electric, which keeps the attic and thus the whole house cooler.
Joel Makower, a green business strategist and executive editor of Greenbiz.com, spoke as the keynote for the Green Business Summit on Saturday.
He highlighted many of the challenges the green movement still has to entering mainstream life. For instance, many companies don’t want to talk about the improvements they have made, because it brings attention to the other practices they are still doing wrong.
In addition, consumers have a habit of professing to want to buy green, but in practice they don’t buy nearly as often as they claim they will, he said, citing various surveys to prove the point. “We have a paradox,” he said.
At one point, Makower noted that there more than 300 “green seals” out in the market, including green seals from government agencies, non-profit organizations, trade associations, for-profit consultants and other groups.
Even today, with “green” products everywhere, there are not clear definitions for what a green business is, he noted. This make progress difficult at times because, “We don’t have a vision of what happens when we get things right,” he said.