“Paper or plastic?”

Depending on your view, this once easy choice has become an awakening for mainstream environmentalism or just the latest effort of big business greenwashing. According to the Plastic Pollution Coalition “consumption of single use and disposable plastics has spiraled out of control. They are used for seconds, hours, or days, but their remains last forever.”

In 2007, San Francisco became the first of many world cities to move toward banning plastic grocery bags.  The medium-term solution -reusable polystyrene bags- is far from a true green option for shoppers.

A worldwide, systemic issue like plastics won’t be solved by swapping materials.  Framing this as an environmental issue, without considering social or economic ramifications, will not produce an enduring solution.  Businesses won’t shift their practices without clear economic benefit.  Nor will people change their lifestyles or habits without some personal incentive.  We must offer economically viable and socially supportive alternatives for the people and industries that will be affected by the environmental stewardship we seek.

On February 17^th, I had the honor of welcoming the second cohort of Willamette University’s Sustainable Enterprise Certificate (SEC) program.  Participants are exploring the intersection of environmental responsibility, economic prosperity, and social well-being; the components of triple bottom-line business practices.  Our first session focused on the dynamics of complex systems.

Limiting our discussion of plastics to its life cycle restricts our understanding of the pervasive nature of the challenge.  Systematically mapping out the unintended consequences of single use plastic reveals the magnitude of the problem.  Near the end of the first session, Prof. Bill Harris invited the students to play ‘stump the chump’ in a live system dynamics mapping exercise.  The participants chose plastic pollution – and it was game on!

Plastic is used everywhere, so it’s the responsibility of everyone.  While no one person or organization can create the needed shift, never doubt the influence and inspiration of your personal choices.

1. Keep canvas bags made from organic materials in the car, so you’ll always have them for the grocery store.  The hot “green” giveaway item of the moment, those cheap, polystyrene bags, are anything but: they are often made in China, break well before organic cotton or hemp bags, and take longer to degrade than the thin plastic bags they replace.
2. Support the movement to ban plastic bags in your area.  Make a quick phone call or write a short note to your representatives.  If San Francisco and Mexico City can do it, why can’t your community? Let’s make Portland, OR next!
3. Take the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s pledge; help create a global community and ignite a social movement to stop plastic pollution and its toxic impacts.

So it’s now in your court  – how will you carry the answer?

Our Greenopolis friend Joe Laur posted this great article on Nike’s Journey.  Great post Joe!

Nike is considered a top example of corporate social responsibility.

Back in the late 1990’s footwear and sports apparel giant Nike was hitting a rough patch. They were dogged by furor over labor practices in overseas manufacturing facilities and worried about waste in manufacturing. They were looking for substitutes for toxic solvents used to bind shoe parts together, and a new gas to fill the famous Nike Air shoes with that wouldn’t add to climate change woes. They were seeking to eliminate wasted fuel and trips in shipping.

Now, a little more than a decade later, Nike is considered a top example of corporate social responsibility. They lead the rest of the field in setting standards for ethical labor practices at overseas manufacturing facilities. They’ve reduced their ‘carbon footprint” by 75%, by finding a non greenhouse gas to fill Nike Airbags, and have dramatically reduced waste in their footwear and apparel manufacturing by adopting “closed loop” strategy of zero waste, zero toxics, 100% recycling, 100% clean energy. They are a huge user of organic cotton and helped found the Organic Cotton Exchange to connect cotton farmers with cotton users and bring more organic cotton online. They have an entire line of products — Considered Design, which considers the future, the impacts, the waste, the energy and so on of every aspect of a product throughout its life.

What fomented such a dramatic turnaround in just a dozen years? Well, a key part of it was an initiative that Nike launched in 1999 called Team Shambhala. Nike wanted to get their entire company- 20,000 people worldwide- grounded in a way of thinking that naturally took environmental and social issues into account in every decision the company made and every action they took. My wife and then work partner Sara Schley and I were fortunate enough to be part of that effort, helping to design a yearlong learning experience for 100 key Nike executives. They idea was to take a group of key leaders, networkers, and influencers across the company and build their capacity to think systemically about ‘green’ issues, to accelerate their learning path about them and empower them to take action on real time business projects and objective. This was the Team Shambhala effort — named after the Tibetan warriors who act for the common good without recognition.

There was a reunion recently of a number of Shambhala “graduates” including our friends Greenopolis blogger Darcy Winslow, formerly VP of Women’s Footwear, Apparel and Equipment for Nike, and Sarah Severn, the catalyst behind Shambhala, currently Director of Horizons for Nike.

Nike hosted the lunch to try to capture the “magic’ of Shambhala for anew generation and a new era. As Darcy summarized the experience:

“In 2000, a small team of Sustainability leaders at Nike engaged in a yearlong employee learning and engagement initiative, aptly named Shambhala. The result of this one year intensive helped transform Nike’s approach to sustainability, created 100 internal champions who launched dozens of landmark projects that continue to deliver against our 2020 goals. These 100 champions continue to influence this work around the world and epitomize the ‘genealogy of influence’!”

Nike now has a shared environmental vision, stated in their Sustainability Report :

• We design for recycling
• Consumers bring their products back to us to be recycled into new products
• Waste that cannot be eliminated is recycled
• Product is less reliant on oil and water
• We all step lighter, faster into a future low-carbon sustainable economy
• We use healthier chemistry to minimize the impact of product ingredients through lifecycle

So the work continues, Nike continues to be leader in environmental and social responsibility, and the ongoing influence of the Shambhala participants proves that organizational learning and systems thinking are two keys to unlock a sustainable future, and transform the path of companies from pariahs to prophets/profits!

Visit http://greenopolis.com/goblog/joe-laur/team-shambhala-nike-s-journey-wasted-reputation-corporate-responsibility-icon to see the original blog post.

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