Blog posts by Jeffrey Hollender,
featuring posts about sustainability,
social responsibility, entrepreneurship,
and more.
Recent Posts
Does Being Ethical Pay?
Recently the Wall Street Journal explored one aspect of this perennial question. Will consumers pay more for products they believe are ethically superior to regular products or even products produced in an unethical fashion? I have known the answer to this question...
On the Road Again
I hate leaving home on Sunday afternoons. The weekend is short enough as it is. With spring in Vermont in full bloom, and my daughter home from college, I was sad to be taking off. My week began with a Monday morning speech at the Front End of Innovation conference,...
Blood on Their Hands
Recently the New York Times reviewed The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, by Steven Greenhouse, a reporter for the newspaper. The book, published by Knopf last week, examines how companies like Fed Ex and Walmart bleed workers to reap hundreds of...
The Day of Reckoning
I recently spent a day and a half in our quarterly board meeting. Many more hours went into preparing for it. I have put more than 30 years of my life into pre-meeting stress and anxiety and post-meeting exhaustion and reflection. These meetings are almost miniature...
Meeting a Remarkable Man
Recently, I spent the afternoon talking with David Suzuki, a man whose brilliance is matched only by his humility. Overlooking the St. Lawrence River in downtown old Montreal, we sat for several hours. David Suzuki is a rock star of the environmental movement in...
We Sold Our Eco-Dream to Timberland
Who wins when multi-national corporations acquire small, natural-products companies? The anecdotal evidence suggests it's not the entrepreneur. While there are a few potential success stories, such as Groupe Danone's acquisition of a majority stake in Stonyfield Farm...
Monsanto: An evil company?
I have often wondered whether a company can truly be evil. Not a company run by evil people, but a place where decades of evil have seeped right into the corporate fabric. Almost ten years ago, at a Business for Social Responsibility conference in Los Angeles, I...
It Was Bad, and It Wasn’t a Dream
It had all the makings of a nightmare: "Seventh Generation Battles Carcinogenic Chemical Controversy" "Organic" and "Natural" Consumer Products Found Contaminated with Cancer Causing Chemical!" Less than two weeks ago, I woke up to headlines bearing the type of...
Forbes’ Capitalism 2.0 article made my day
"Do corporations exist solely to maximize their bottom lines? We don't think so." Forbes Magazine, February 2008 I've made statements like that for over 20 years. I've been laughed at, ridiculed, and have at times questioned my own sanity. But that was then and this...
Responsible From the Inside Out
The most recent study from the research firm Towers Perrin showed that only 21% of employees felt engaged in their work and that fully 38% feel partially or fully disengaged. The Extra Mile, a new book by David MacLeod and Chris Brady reviewed in the Financial Times...
Trekking Through the Monteverde Cloud Forest
On Monday, February 4th we arrived in Monteverde, Costa Rica for a trek through the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest. The trip had been organized by Tom Newmark, President of vitamin and supplement maker New Chapter, and the...
Change Is Everywhere, But Where Is It Headed?
The Giants beat the New England in the Super Bowl. John McCain is leading the GOP presidential race. Lee Scott and Bill Gates are calling for a more responsible form of capitalism. In ads for Burt's Bees, Clorox takes the personal care industry to task over dangerous...
The Case for CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY:
The Economists Makes an About Face Last week was an amazing time in the annals of corporate responsibility. Bill Gates, speaking at Davos, called upon business leaders for a kinder capitalism. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve...
Unnatural Habitats and Responsible Business
A note to the Seventh Generation community as we enter a new year. The fact that 80 percent of the world’s almond crop comes from one small part of the world, a 600,000-acre series of orchards in California’s Central Valley, is a metaphor for a world where we have...
George Carlin upon the death of his wife
Isn't it amazing that George Carlin - comedian of the 70's and 80's - could write something so very eloquent...and so very appropriate. A Message by George Carlin: The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways,...
If You Look in the Trashcan, You’re Likely to Find Garbage
Now that’s a little harsh, but Ben Elgin’s Business Week cover story, "Little Green Lies", uncovered a wealth of interesting information that led to a number of erroneous conclusions resulting from a lack of context and the highly selective use of information. The...
The Wal-Mart CEO Sustainability Summit
Imagine 400 CEOs representing Walmart’s largest vendors all sitting in one room pondering the future of sustainability. Aside from representing trillions of dollars in market value, this group could change the course of history. As I observed from the third row of...
Thy Neighbor’s Cash
In the August 5, 2007 New York Times Book review of Robert H. Frank’s new book FALLING BEHIND: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, Daniel Gross the reviewer notes: Knowing that Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group made almost $400 million last year, or...
Life is Short Under the Best of Circumstances
Music drifts into our back yard from the benefit party almost one mile away and it’s only 5:00 pm. This is the land of benefits; almost every Democratic candidate for President comes to the Hamptons in the summer to raise money. Last night we attended two parties, to...
Can Anyone Live on $10,712 a Year?
Higher wages benefit business by increasing consumer purchasing power, reducing costly employee turnover, raising productivity, improving product quality, customer satisfaction and company reputation. Today's minimum wage workers have less buying power than minimum...
Blessed Unrest
I just finished reading Paul Hawken’s new book “Blessed Unrest.” It is a beautifully written, extensively researched, deeply thoughtful but in the end-unsatisfying read. While Hawken talks convincing about the conversion of the environmental/sustainability movement...