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With businesses structured around quarterly earnings, how can they be encouraged do the long-term thinking necessary to move toward sustainability?
Photo by Sierra Club Collection

by Elisa Freeling
Visionary Solutions Session

"Sustainability in business is like teenage sex: Everyone says they're doing it, but hardly anyone is. And those who do... aren't doing it well."

So began Joel Makower, founder of the Green Business Network, by way of introduction (to his giggling audience) to the problems of getting corporations to make the right environmental decisions. Over the course of the quickly passed hour, he and two panelists, Ben Packard of Starbucks and Elizabeth Sturcken of Environmental Defense, discussed some of the progress Starbucks and other companies have made, as well as some of the hurdles that remain.

In the case of Starbucks, Packard said that the company would have made 90 percent of its socially and environmentally responsible decisions without activist pressure. So what practices was the company motivated to change because of this pressure, and what form did that pressure take? Shareholder resolutions, letters to the CEO and chairman, and small-scale protests all contributed to Starbucks' offering fair-trade coffee and organic milk. But here's the rub: Very few Starbucks customers are ordering these products in their stores. This prompted the question: Who's responsible for creating that demand? The corporations, or the nonprofits demanding the corporate change? Packard points to corporations' lack of credibility with the public, while others mentioned the corporations' massive marketing and advertising budgets. Perhaps the answer is both.

Participants went on to discuss several other questions, among them:

What is the responsibility of the activist community in acknowledging when companies do substantively good things, even when it might not be "good enough"? Sturcken wants such companies to get the credit they deserve, both to encourage further steps and to set an example for other corporations. Yet activists don't want to feel like they're compromising at the expense of environmental health. Where is the balance?

With businesses structured around quarterly earnings, how can they be encouraged do the long-term thinking necessary to move toward sustainability? It helps to have a corporate culture of responsibility, but activists can help create the spark that leads to such internal change. Still, the fundamental financial measurement—the corporate bottom line—remains a significant hurdle.

Several audience members were still lined up to ask questions when we ran out of time. The complicated issue of corporate accountability was still being debated after the session ended, as it will no doubt continue to be in activist circles and boardrooms nationwide.

-- 09/09/2005 Fri
10am