Jeffrey Hollender, CEO Seventh Generation

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, which was held in Boston’s World Trade Center. I spoke about “What Does Green Business Really Mean?” — a subject that is often discussed and little understood. I ended up focusing on the basics of what “corporate responsibility,” “green,” and “sustainability” really mean. Who’s doing it right, who’s doing it wrong, and is there really a business case to be made. The audience included mostly Fortune 500 company representatives involved with product innovation.

Then on to Austin, generating more CO2 in the pursuit of enlightening dialogues. I was not disappointed.

In Austin, I had the honor to be one of two invited speakers to address the Whole Foods Green Mission Congress. (Who other than Whole Foods would even hold a Green Mission Congress?) According to Whole Foods, the conference’s purpose was “to further our grass roots green mission efforts by gathering great ideas and harnessing the passion of team members working within our stores and regions. We will develop a set of company-wide green mission goals, essentially our road-map.”

Passion, commitment, and tough questions were not in short supply. There are few if any companies on the Fortune 500 list that are as willing as Whole Foods is to have an open dialogue that addresses the most difficult questions of our time. Yes, Whole Foods is Seventh Generation’s largest customer, but I’m sure that any neutral observer would have come to the same conclusion.

Then, for a total change of pace, I’m in San Francisco, speaking at the Dow Jones Environmental Ventures 2008 conference. The topics include: “Making Green by Being Green,” “From Innovating to Sustaining: Which Technologies Will Get the Green Light?” and “In The Green: How Corporations Are Sprucing Up Their Image And Product Lines.” The speakers on a panel immediately preceding me included: Ricardo Angel, SVP, Venture Capital Group, GE Financial Services; Erin Carlson, Manager, Social Responsibility, Yahoo!; Elizabeth Sturcken, Managing Director, Corporate Partnerships Program, Environmental Defense Fund; and Suzanne Thompson, VP, Research and Development, Cleaning Division, The Clorox Company. Quite an eclectic group.

I sat by quietly as Suzanne Thompson of Clorox noted that Clorox is “using the trend of green and sustainability to increase sales;” that its Green Works brand has “increased our credibility in the green space;” and “we’ve always been an environmentally responsible company, but it has been very understated. We need to be more transparent.”

I was certainly glad I didn’t miss those valuable insights!

I then, quite ironically, moved on to an interview with the McNeill Lehr Report on the introduction of the Clorox Green Works product line and their partnership with the Sierra Club.

While I have addressed this topic before, last week’s report by ClimateCounts.org, that Clorox was the worst company in the household products category when it comes to fighting climate change, only made me wonder how Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, can sleep at night.

I’m headed home. I hope that construction on our home wind turbine starts soon, to assuage my guilt over generating so much CO2.

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