PSU Business and Sustainability Conference

Written By Damen King
Thursday, November 05, 2009

I arrived at 7:55 at the Governor Hotel feeling a bit underdressed. I loaded up on complimentary danishes and found my seat.

The first speaker was Mark Brodeur, the director of environmental sustainability for Nestle’s Purina brand. Mark's presentation detailed the environmental challenges and priorities of Nestle, the largest food and beverage company in the world. Nestle's focus is around nutrition, water, and rural development and they work towards making improvements on sustainability practices throughout the entire supply chain life cycle of their products. This involves areas they can directly control such as manufacturing and packaging, to areas outside of their direct control such as inefficient farming practices and consumer waste. An interesting example of this was the switch from paper pet food bags to plastic bags. Apparently this switch has drastically reduced their waste by decreasing the chance of damage to their products. The problem however, is that while the plastic they use is completely recyclable, the infrastructure doesn't exist in most of the country, let alone the world, to recycle it. Improving packaging, and engaging government and recycling organizations to recycle this packaging is one of their strategies for improving sustainability both in the realm they have direct control over and the realm they do not.

In case you didn't know, the Oort Cloud is a ring of small objects, mostly ice, that creates a sort of cloud outside our solar system. It's massive, invisible, and sometimes things come out of it (like a meteor) that can have a big impact. Richard Seireeni talks to us about his book, the Gort Cloud, a green network consisting of NGOs, trend spotters, advocacy groups, social networks, business alliances, certifying organizations and other members of the green community that spread the word for companies that can make or break new green brands. After his experience interviewing and researching numerous start up green companies, Seirreeni has come across this network which allows these businesses to survive prior to them hitting main stream media. Small companies like Southwest Windpower, which provides small wind turbines to people to help power their homes and offices, rely on this support because they often have no budget whatsoever to spend on marketing. He also discussed the commoditization of the products and services these companies provide once late entrants come into the market. He tells us that differentiation is the key to maintaining success. Larger companies will attempt to compete with successful start ups or buy them out. Take a look at this chart from Michigan State which shows us how quickly organic grain producers have been bought out lately http://www.espp.msu.edu/images/howard_organic_chart. Green is generally not a driver of consumer choices, so companies must continuously work to differentiate their product and use the Gort Cloud to market it in order to be successful.

The next presentation got off to some technical difficulties so she ended up doing the first part of her presentation without slides. The funny thing is that many of her end slides had formatting issues so they were totally blank. Meredith is the Sustainable Seafood Initiative deputy director for the WWF. She describes the efforts of the WWF to create strategic partnerships with the entire supply chain of companies supplying seafood from the farm to the store. Apparently half of the seafood we eat comes from farms and they are trying to increase public awareness on their certification saying that the fish being purchased was supplied through sustainable means. In doing so they hope to get people looking for their logo on seafood products which will encourage companies to participate in their program in order to attract consumers who are concerned about sustainable practices. This is part of a trend of organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, whereby they put greater effort in working with the private sector to meet their goals.

LUNCH: Chicken, mashed potatoes, asparagus. Very fancy and delicious.

During lunch the keynote speaker, Victor d'Allant, the executive director at Social Edge, gave his presentation. This started off poorly because of the low sound, difficult to understand French accent, as well as the sound of over a hundred people eating and clanking silverware. After everyone finished their food and I figured out what he was saying the presentation got interesting. He provided a wealth of information on social media, and his website, socialedge.org. He explained how the message produced by his website, has become popular over the internet and elaborated on the image of the organization as it is seen on Google, YouTube, and Twitter, the evolution of these relationships, the success and failures of others and the network of communication that Social Media brings between entrepreneurs. He discusses the potential impact of social media in leveraging positive social change but also addresses the limitations. What I got from it is this: social media is good for getting your message out 'there', but bad for getting people to actually do something. You have to broadcast your voice over many different forums, especially the ones where you feel nobody is interested in your cause. You can't effectively do it alone, so ask for help.

Walmart's Bill Wertz was by far the dullest speaker. He was extremely monotone in outlining Walmart's plan for environmental sustainability which wasn't anything very exciting. That isn't to say that reducing shopping bag waste by 33% and packaging waste by 5% isn't good, but it wasn't exactly the most riveting presentation. Walmart's ultimate sustainability goals are to be 100% supplied by renewable energy, produce 0 waste, and sell products that sustain resources and the environment. The idea is that all their sustainability efforts are made in an attempt to reach these lofty goals and achieve profitability through sustainability. To the guy’s credit, he was apparently filling in for his partner who was supposed to give the presentation and is more knowledgeable on the subject matter. I was expecting some more hard hitting questions afterwards but unfortunately most of the questions from the audience were quite broad and had already been answered in the presentation.

Said hello to my former business ethics professor, Jeanne Enders.

The last presentation (that I saw) came from B Corporation and Sustainable Harvest Coffee. B Corporation is a company that is trying to increase the brand power of a sustainability certification. The certification addresses the need for standards for sustainability by creating benchmarks for corporate stakeholder conscientiousness in a way that allows for tax preference from the IRS. According to Stephanie Ryan, they are trying to "Drive social and environmental impact through standards." Sustainable Harvest Coffee is certified from B Corporation and the presentation detailed how the company practices corporate social responsibility through the entire supply chain and works hard to make sure their stakeholders are being treated fairly and ethically.

To relate all this to the ISSA I will say that one of the common things I saw today was that technology was involved in almost all conversations. Sustainability and good business is all about doing more with less and that is exactly what technology allows us to do. It is going to be critical for reducing waste at a Walmart store, improving recycling at Nestle, increasing efficiency at a fish farm, and allows you to advertise globally for your start up or non profit at basically no cost. In a lot of ways information systems is all about improving business processes to reduce waste, and creating sustainability through efficiency.