“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.

Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Thought experiment: you’re organizing a marathon or a triathlon. What do you need to prepare?

First, a team of people just to keep everything straight. Thirsty participants would demand lots of water and a way to drink it quickly. Don’t forget signage and flagging so everyone stays on course. Remember all that registration paperwork ahead of time. And it would be nice to give out small ’awards’ to each participant afterward.

Multiply all that stuff by the hundreds of races held each summer and waste of marathon proportions may seem inevitable.

Fortunately, innovative and conscientious event organizers have the Council for Responsible Sport (CRS) to coach them through a comprehensive certification process for sustainable athletic events. Like a professional trainer, CRS defines realistic objectives and provides a framework for achieving them. Race organizers get guidance for reducing their events’ impact as well as a platform to promote their efforts.

“The ultimate goal is not simply to grade events on how well they’re doing, but to provide a holistic framework to measure sustainability strategies in the sports industry,” says Marisa McGilliard, Executive Director of CRS. “The greatest change will come when every member of the sports community becomes involved in a fundamental shift towards sustainability. Community partners and strong alliances are at the heart of systemic change in sports.”

Leading the way are events like the Marin County Triathlon in San Rafael, CA, which has roared out of the starting blocks with a host of innovative solutions.

Thanks to the efforts of volunteers at the garbage/recycling stations, the entire event produced just 40 pounds of landfill waste in its first year. With roughly 500 participants, that’s less than 0.08 pounds per athlete; a fraction of the average 4.4 pounds/person Americans throw away every day.

The triathlon creatively minimized the pervasive problem of single-use water bottles. Before the race, athletes were encouraged to bring their own reusable bottles. At the finish line, participants were rewarded with metal, reusable Klean Kanteens®.

All paper-based materials created for the event used recycled paper and soy-based inks. Vendors were required to follow these guidelines with their promotional materials. Online registration eliminated excess paper waste.

Excitement has rippled across the country as racing events put their competitive nature to environmental good on many levels. First, athletes and spectators see what is possible and return home inspired to examine their own lifestyle choices and then become advocates. Second, other race event organizers wanting a slice of the publicity start to improve their own practices. Finally, the certified race can power up for CRS’s ultimate standard the next year – Evergreen!

The possibilities of the Council for Responsible Sport’s mission are bounded only by the enthusiastic support of athletes and spectators. Endurance races are just the beginning; think how your favorite sporting event could become more sustainable with some vision and encouragement. However you choose to participate, just know that small choices can add up to make a huge difference. You can help change the course…and the race is on!

Ready to green your local sporting events?

Visit http://resport.org and http://dswcollective.com for more ideas.

Darcy Winslow currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Greenopolis, an organization all about doing good.  Their goal is to provide you (the user) with information and tools to:

• Help you to recycle easily
• Help to save our natural resources for our children’s children
• Track conservation through recycling and re-use
• Educate and reward conservation

Darcy recently was asked to be a Pro-Blogger on their website!  Her first blog post, “Darcy’s Trip to Antarctica,” was all about recent trip this spring along with the 10 Things You Can Do from our website.

To read the blog post, please click here.

To learn more about Greenopolis and get involved, please click here.

For the 2008-2009 school year, Darcy Winslow served as an Executive-in-Residence and Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.  She couldn’t get enough of Beantown and is back for the 2009-2010 school year and assisting with the Leadership Lab: Leading Sustainable Systems course with Wanda Orlikowski and Peter Senge.  The “L-Lab” is a unique course that blends traditional classroom learning, case studies, workshops, simulations, guest speakers, and projects developed in partnership with host companies.  The course culminates in Sloan’s hallmark Lab experience of a three-week on-site field engagement, during which students apply their systems thinking approach.

On October 22^nd, Darcy will be guest lecturing as part of the Fall Sloan Innovation Period, and again sharing her Sustainable Inspiration: Lessons from Antarctica presentation. During this session she will focus more deliberately on the student experience and how this expedition has shifted their studies and entrance into the business world. She will be joined by several of the MIT students who also joined the expedition.

Here’s to getting A’s (or 4.0), Darcy!

On Thursday, October 15, 2009 Darcy Winslow shared the 18 minute documentary about her trip to Antarctica with polar explorer Robert Swan, “Leadership on the Edge: 2041 and Antarctica.”  The event was hosted by the Portland State University chapter of Net Impact, an international organization for people interested in business and sustainability and the Center for Global Leadership in Sustainability.

The night’s conversations focused around the SustainAbility Institute’s C-LEARN module to be used this December at the upcoming U.N. Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen.  Tyler Katzenberg, the Net Impact Chapter President at PSU, said that the goal of this event is to raise awareness of environmental issues and the upcoming Summit, as well as bring people together on the issue.

“It’s not just the U.S. signing on to the Kyoto Protocol but also about me turning down the thermostat and taking shorter showers,” said Nate Young, Vice President of PSU’s Net Impact Chapter.

DSW Collective was excited and inspired by the students who showed up to the event.  We are glad to see more people getting involved in global climate change issues and are looking forward to many more conversations with Net Impact.

To check out PSU’s Vanguard article on the event, please click here.

Involved with Net Impact anywhere?  Leave us a message letting us know!

Jim Ure, a participant at Go Green 09, emailed his reflections from Darcy Winslow’s panel “Eco-Visionaries: Creating the New Sustainable Business Landscape” to us at DSW Collective and we wanted to share them with our blog readers.

I thought the Eco-Visionaries panel as one of the most thought-provoking sessions of the day.  Your panel members [Sheri Flies, Costco, Sarah Severn, Nike and Joyce Lavalle, Interface] all brought good reflection and preparation.  Most importantly, all 4 of you used it as a forum to present ideas and models for action.  Your point that we have a lot to do and a long way to go was a welcome and appropriate message.

Some of the other observations Ure made included:

1. Leveraging market presence for change: Organizations can leverage their market presence to affect real business practice change with suppliers, competition and customers.  This was Ure’s biggest takeaway from the whole day.  The examples discussed showed results with real impacts (Costco & product pricing, Nike & competitors + Green exchange).
2. The power of ideas & their expression in mantras:  Mission Zero, Get off oil, Closed loop products, Eliminate VOCs, Paul Hawken and Ray Anderson.
3. Valuable Wisdom: We can only be as sustainable as our suppliers and our partners (Darcy Winslow).  If you don’t hit bumps, you aren’t going hard enough or fast enough (Darcy Winslow).  Stay true to your highest intentions (Sarah Severn).  Meet people where they are (Joyce LaValle).  The person who disagrees with you is your best teacher (Sheri Flies).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Jim Ure!  Did you attend Go Green 09?  Post your thoughts below!

On October 7, 2009 the DSW Collective team (Darcy Winslow, Jenna Forstrom and Inbar Morag) attended Portland’s second annual GoGreen 09.  What a great turn out of dedicated people, all sharing the stories of what their organizations are doing in the field of sustainability.  Portland continues to set the bar high, as we heard from 2 members of the Eco-Visionaries panel, moderated by Darcy, who joined from Atlanta and Seattle.  Did you know that Portlanders drive 4% less than the average city dwellers nationwide?

Darcy Winslow led a panel called “Eco-Visionaries: Creating the New Sustainable Business Landscape” which featured some close friends: Sarah Severn (Nike), Joyce LaValle (Interface) and Sheri Flies (Costco).  There were some great take-a-ways from this panel, including:

• A new reading list, check out DSW’s recommendations here.
• Interface’s Seven Step Plan towards sustainability; Interface plans on being “off oil” by 2020. For more information check out MissionZero.org.
• “Systemic change happens only through seemingly insignificant shifts in habit.” – Molly Baldwin, ROCA.
• Sarah Severn stated “We have the technology, we need the political will power now” around climate change to make a difference.
• Right now the average US citizen lives approximately a 19-ton/year carbon lifestyle. Scientists estimate that if we are to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at a safe level, the global population would need to average 2-ton/year carbon lifestyle.  What would that look like?

When asked what their personal piece of advice would be to those in the audience these ladies said:

“Stay true to your highest intention,” Sarah Severn.

“Meet people where they are,” Sheri Flies.

“Way more collaboration,” Joyce LaValle.

“Check your ego at the door,” Darcy Winslow.

We loved the other panels as well.  Our team checked out the 2009 Most Sustainable Business Showcase.  Elephants, Sokol Blosser Winery, EPSON and Refind Furniture are all local companies making positive impacts.  Scouted the competition in Improving Your Sustainability Credentials, where our friends Carrie Farrar and Mike Mercer were panelists.  Listened to James Curleigh’s “give a hoot, don’t pollute” mantra in Writing Your Sustainability Plan.  Researched our Carbon Footprint Analysis.  And learned about Social Media and Your Sustainable Message, got DSW Collective on Twitter now!  (Follow us @DSWCollective).

Did you attend Go Green 09?  Let us know what you thought of the conference!

When I was graduating from high school, I viewed my ticket out of Oregon as my college acceptance letter from Bentley University (nee College).  Needless to say, I didn’t look at or apply to any college in Oregon.  But if I had, Willamette University would have definitely been on my list.

Lucky for me, Darcy Winslow recently accepted the position of Program Manager of the Sustainable Enterprise Certificate (SEC) Program at the Executive Development Center, which is an extension of Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University for the 2009-2010 school year.  For more information on this collaboration please click here.

Willamette University was recently named one of the nation’s greenest universities by Sierra, the official magazine of the Sierra Club.  The only Oregon university ranked 17 out of 20 schools based on Willamette’s recognition as a green school.  This adds to the 2008 recognition from the National Wildlife Federation that named Willamette first in the nation for sustainability activities.  Click here to read the article.

On top of this, Forbes Magazine named Willamette’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management a “Best Business School” for 2009.  Willamette was the highest ranked school in Oregon and one of only three programs in the Northwest the make the list, which recognizes the top 75 schools in the U.S.  Click here to read the article.

DSW Collective is so excited to be working with Willamette University this year and is proud be part of such a prestigious school that is in our own backyard.  They clearly have their head in the game from their gold LEED certified buildings, purchasing and energy efficiency policies, and student run Bike Shop.  We are also excited to announce that Drew Jones and the Climate Simulator will be a part of the program!  Want to learn more about the Atkinson Graduate School of Management and their Sustainable Enterprise Certificate please click here.

What is your school (or organization) doing to be more sustainable?