A whopping 65 to 70 percent of New York City’s carbon emissions are projected to come from buildings, whereas very few examples of pre-war commercial building energy retrofits exist anywhere in the United States. That means the Empire State Building is literally clearing a path for thousands of other buildings to follow. It happens to be doing so with a visible commitment to the principles behind the sustainability movement – people, planet and profit.

In an effort to build stakeholder advocacy and encourage more commercial buildings to initiate similar energy retrofit initiatives, owner Anthony Malkin of Empire State Building Company has made a remarkable commitment to transparency.  He has decided that the company will share all of the new processes and technologies it develops and lessons it learns during the retrofit with the public. “It is my hope that people will be able to take a look at what we did here and be able to replicate the process,” he says.

During the course of the retrofit, stakeholders can gain access to behind-the-scenes information, including the models and decision-making tools used to make the Empire State Building’s green retrofit possible. An interactive retrofit puzzle demonstrates how taking the right steps, in the right order – from refurbishing the building’s 6,500 windows for maximum overall energy use, to installing energy management systems that allow tenants to access energy use data, obtain online tips and benchmark themselves against other tenants – makes all the difference when it comes to increasing efficiency. The company even updates key learning obtained during the process of the retrofit, as well as its ongoing engagements with thought partners Rocky Mountain Institute, the Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Controls, Inc., and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Thus far, the project takeaways are quite compelling. For one thing, there is the importance of taking a “whole building” approach to design. “The good work which has been done to date [in green building retrofit] has focused on individual elements – a lighting system, a cooling tower,” Malkin explains. “You have to look at how all the elements – the lights, the cooling tower, the insulation – work together. You then look for the combination of measures which creates the greatest savings with the shortest payback period.”

Taking a whole-building approach to the retrofit design was beneficial in that it allowed Malkin’s team to stay within budgetary parameters. The team started by identifying baseline budgets for 23 existing retrofit-related projects and then examined how sustainable alternatives could affect costs. For instance, the team found big-ticket cost-savings items on six projects, including a multi-year cooling and air handling replacement system, central cooling plant replacement, exterior tower lighting and mid-pressure steam riser replacement. [For an interactive model of how these technologies work cohesively together to save energy,click here.]

The Value of Green

While each one of these technologies improves the building’s environmental performance – reducing greenhouse gas emissions, chemicals and pollutants while increasing air quality and recycling – a principle motive behind the energy retrofit is long-term value. Malkin envisions green buildings as higher quality buildings – buildings that produce superior cash flow resulting from reduced energy costs and tenant’s desire for a better way of living. If only sustainability were marketed that way.

“I am so tired of the directional and qualitative nature of the sustainability effort,” says Malkin. “We need to get away from this idea of ‘doing the right thing’ without quantifying what the right thing is. There is way too much dogma and what we need to get to is dollars and cents. Watts and BTUs.”

Dollars and cents wise, Malkin expects to gain a lot more than saved energy from his retrofit project. In addition to driving down utility, maintenance and repair costs, improvements on The Empire State Building are projected to result in increases in rent and occupancy rates due to enhanced value on updated services. Further income is also expected from new tenant offerings such as chilled water.

To achieve such financial upsides in green building, one has to think holistically. Malkin swears by his systemic approach: “Green to me is a set of practices,” he explains. “It’s recycling tenant waste, it’s recycling construction debris, it’s green pest control, it’s green cleaning solutions, it’s using recycled materials in your build-outs and in your common areas. These things can be done at a similar cost in dollars and they are definitely less painful to the environment.  Quantifiable energy efficiency retrofits are different…they are energy saving and money making for the landlord and tenants.”

Malkin’s perspective is that ultimately, there is nothing “ungreen” about the idea of urban living. But in the mainstream environmental movement, green is rarely associated with towering steel skyscrapers. Changing the population’s mental imagery is a core objective of Malkin’s. That is why, as part of the Empire State Observatory visit, the company is putting together a walk-through explanation of the retrofit program, to give people a sense of how the environment they are in works in harmony with what supports and surrounds it.

“I had a series of museum installation designers come and present some ideas for the walk-through,” Malkin explains. “One of the elements suggested was visually projecting a “canopy of trees” on the top of the elevators, so there’s an image of green as you’re looking up. I said, “get rid of the trees!” One of the biggest problems is that people think of the environment as someplace you go to visit, and then you come back to your life.”

The refurbished Empire State Building represents a new way of urban life – a new American ideal. As President Bill Clinton recently said in a video describing the retrofit: “This project is not only good for the earth, it also makes real financial sense. If even a fraction of the buildings in the United States or our world were to carry out similar ones, the impact would be profound. More projects like this will continue to create incredible opportunities for change across America, and across the world.”

In the midst of Hollender’s widely publicized transition (and on his way to holiday in Greece, in fact), I managed to catch a few moments of his time – along with a welcome burst of inspiration.

Q: You’ve lead Seventh Generation for more than 20 years, growing the brand from a fledging start-up to a household name. What prompted your decision to step down as CEO – and what’s next for you?

A: I decided to step down for two reasons. First, to continue to lead the business to its greatest potential in a highly competitive marketplace requires a depth of experience that I simply don’t have. A business of $150 million requires more than my intuition. Second, my passion for fulfilling Seventh Generation mission “to inspire a more conscious and sustainable world by being an authentic force for positive change,” can best be fulfilled if I now focus all of my time in it’s direct pursuit through speaking, writing, educating and influencing other business. I have two books in progress, a TV show (Big Green Lies) and a significant corporate educational program that we will announce in the next 30 days – so I won’t have trouble keeping busy.

Q: Seventh Generation has set a goal to grow its annual business from its current level of about $150 million per year to over $1 billion in the coming years. That’s aggressive. What are the keys to achieving this?

A: Remain radically transparent, stay true to who we are, pursue our mission with passion, hire the most talented people we can find, listen carefully to our customers and make sure we always have more capital than we think we need.

Q: Are you concerned that, with rapid growth, any aspect of the brand will become diluted? How will the company ensure that this doesn’t happen?

A: That will always be a critical concern. So far we strengthened our culture as we have grown by investing time and resources to ensure our community remains deeply connected to our mission. Personally, I will remain directly involved in ensuring that our purpose isn’t compromised as we grow. We have also developed some powerful institutions and rituals that help ensure we stay on course, from our annual all-company retreat to frequent meetings with senior management where staff members are encouraged to ask tough questions. The success and vibrancy of our brand in the marketplace and its impact and relationship with consumers is directly tied to the investment by the very people who drive, mold, invent and reinvent Seventh Generation day in and day out – their passion and authenticity is Seventh Generation’s vitality and this directly extends to our consumers. They relate to it.

Q: What do you say to those who those who worry that by bringing in Mr. Maniscalo, a Quaker/PepsiCo executive, Seventh Generation is “selling out?”

A: Chuck is here precisely so we won’t have to sell out. Most successful mission driven companies have been sold to large CPG companies because they couldn’t scale up independently. We’re acquiring the talent to ensure our independence and commitment to our mission.

Q: You’ve had an inspiring career and are credited not only for pioneering green cleaning products, but green business practices in general. What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned — and if you could, is there anything that you would do differently?

A: I spend no time ever thinking about reinventing the past. There is much to much work to do that lies ahead of us. But the greatest lessons I’ve learned are that we need revolutionary, not incremental change. Businesses and NGO’s must cooperate more effectively. We need to move from being less bad to being truly good, and we need to recognize that the goal of sustainability is not enough. We must regenerate our planet. Human development represents unlimited potential, and anything is possible.

Amen to that.

Reference Mark and Nick, two emerging Generation Y change agents who started a London grassroots effort called Project Dirt. Project dirt is an interactive “ecommunity” that serves as a catalyst for Londoners wanting to volunteer in local neighborhood projects, but not knowing where to start. As part of Timberland’s ongoing campaign, the “Earthkeeper Hero” series, the company recently provided Mark and Nick with a forum to show the world that there’s plenty to be optimistic about in the environmental change arena:

Project Dirt – Green Reasons to Be Happy

According to Timberland, Mark and Nick are just one small piece of a widespread recruiting effort. The company is currently “calling all people who do small things for the environment, like recycling, biking instead of driving and using energy-efficient light bulbs.”  Through an international campaign called “Earthkeepers” – which is cleverly targeted towards environmentalists, consumers (Timberland has 30 million of them), employees, suppliers and even competing businesses around the world – the company intends to recruit over one million people through the ‘revolution’, as Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz calls it, of social networking, including Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, as well a strategic partnership with Changents.com and a website, www.earthkeeper.com.

The point of the Earthkeepers campaign is to inspire passionate stakeholders to become their own agents of change in their communities, using Timberland as the primary mechanism. That places Timberland in a unique position, one where the participating community relies on the company’s unique values and strengths, and where the company depends on social networking tools more than ever before.

“At the heart of the Earthkeepers campaign is the idea of becoming a sustainable brand and creating collaborative and value-creating relationships,” Swartz told stakeholders on a Tuesday conference call, facilitated through the JustMeans.com online network. “Earthkeeping demands networking on a level we have never imagined before. If we’re going to transform Timberland from a company that does green to a company that is sustainable, we need to assemble a wider network of citizens, consumers, suppliers, partners, NGOs, even other businesses. We don’t see how any one business, no matter how principled or passionate, can become an Earthkeeping business and brand on its own.”

Swartz defines “Earthkeeping” businesses as those that care about their impact on the environment, and that openly and honestly communicate their efforts in order to better manage that impact. These business, he says, are becoming forces for change in the new social media world order. Through its Earthkeepers campaign, Timberland hopes to not only to interact with a new generation of accomplished environmental heroes, but to also encourage other businesses to become more open, candid and engaged with stakeholders – particularly when it comes to environmental issues. However, Swartz acknowledges that this latter goal is perhaps an overshot.

“I think there are too many CEOs that aren’t going to get this,” says Swartz. “I don’t mean that disrespectfully. It’s just that this conversation of ‘should we or shouldn’t we be transparent?’ is a moot point because in today’s social media climate, every success is getting shared as quickly as every failure. We can pretend like we have a choice about transparency, or we can recognize the fact that almost everything that is being done is being exposed.”

With respect to what Timberland itself has to expose, the company has made significant progress of late. As of 2009, nearly eighty percent of the company’s footwear styles feature recycled content. The Earthkeepers™ product line, which debuted in 2008, contains fully organic and renewable material content, as well as solvent-free adhesives and is designed for reduced climate impact. In the crowded world of consumer retail, Timberland is one of the few businesses that sticks to the guiding principle that what you sell is every bit as important as what you say. After all, how many other pairs of shoes come in a box with a ‘nutritional type label’ about their construction?

Jeff Swartz is a visionary yet grounded CEO leading a family business that has grown into a highly successful global brand since its inception the 1950’s. His pragmatism, accessibility and personal openness are obvious to most who meet him. These traits were evident during last week’s stakeholder call, as well as during the social media interactions facilitated through Timberland’s Earthkeeper campaigns. In both cases, the dialog is kept authentic. Swartz and his team tend to speak off script. If they don’t know the answer to a question, they will say. If they miss something, they will apologize. There’s no rhetoric, no spin. This straightforward attitude melds into corporate philosophy – encouraging the business to face its challenges head-on. You can see this reflected across many of the company’s current initiatives.

For instance, Timberland’s response to the recent Greenpeace campaign to protect the Amazon from deforestation caused by cattle farming (i.e. the leather industry) wasn’t to deny culpability or ignore the problem and walk away. On the contrary, following in Nike’s footsteps in mitigating a potential media disaster, Swartz decided to admit that he didn’t fully appreciate the extent to which Timberland was having a material impact on the Amazon through its supply chain, as suitable ‘traceabilty’ mechanisms in the leather industry were not in place yet. Currently the company is working in collaboration with Greenpeace to settle this issue, and to help improve industry standards. Timberland’s willingness to work in conjunction with Greenpeace demonstrates how candor can help to diffuse difficult situations, and establish leadership positions for the companies involved.

Dozens of similar examples abound. Swartz is presently working on a quest to rid the company of bottled water, and despite backlash from the all-mighty bottled water industry, he presses on. He is also having the roof of Timberland headquarters painted white instead of black, cutting energy costs by an estimated 20 percent. And through Timberland’s Path of Service program, the company is offering its employees paid time off to volunteer on environmental projects across the country.

“These are concrete things that we’re working on, but we can’t simply cobble them together,” says Swartz. “We’ve got to make them a vibrant and integrated network of engaged consumers and stakeholders. We’ve got to get to this goal of becoming a sustainable for-profit business.”

Call us crazy, but it seems like Timberland might be further along than Swartz himself acknowledges.

This article was co-authored with David Connor, a corporate responsibility and sustainability consultant based in Liverpool. E-mail David at david.connor@coethica.com

Patagonia. The Body Shop. CREDO Mobile. Seventh Generation. Equal Exchange.

At first glance, these might seem like quintessential examples of the corporate left-wing. From human rights to environmental conservation and animal protection, each supports a worthy cause in a radical way. But take a closer look, because irrespective of the particular issues these companies take on, their impact is undeniable and their business formula is highly relevant to today.

Most businesses now support a philanthropic cause. But at Patagonia, The Body Shop, CREDO Mobile, Seventh Generation and Equal Exchange, cause transforms into forceful crusade. These game-changing companies give people something worth fighting for.

“Someone needs to be the loud voice out there, banging the gong. We want to be that,” says Eve Bould, Patagonia’s director of communications. “We can’t be taking the traditional corporate stance when we’re trying to give voice and legitimacy to vital environmental issues that deserve attention.”

As Patagonia rightly points out, there is no business to be done on a dead planet. “We believe we have no choice but to take strong positions,” Bould says. Nevertheless, certain people would clearly prefer that activist voices remain muffled, and many have grown incensed by Patagonia’s determination to be a loudspeaker for issues like forestry protection, corporate pollution, marine conservation and species extinction. In response to one of the company’s recent ads, an irate citizen sent this letter:

Patagonia –
Greetings from Grants Pass, Oregon. Saw your ad in The Daily Center. I have a suggestion: Why don’t you bastards keep your nose out of our business. And our lives!! Come around here and we will take care of pukes like you! YOU LIE AND YOU WILL BE STOPPED. STAY OUT AND STAY HOME. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

According to Patagonia, for its support of various environmental causes, the company received thousands of similar letters along with boxes of customer’s returned Patagonia gear. One retailer in California reportedly stopped carrying Patagonia merchandise after heavy pressure from a lumber company, while another in Maine cancelled its order after Patagonia supported the creation of a national park in the New England state. But like all the companies featured here, Patagonia never stood down.

Over the past 10 years, Patagonia’s environmental positions have only grown more extreme, articulate and impassioned. At the same time, sales have increased, creativity within the company has flourished (see eco-fabrics lline), environmental impact has diminished (see The Footprint Chronicles),and stakeholders have become fiercely loyal to the brand (see The Cleanest Line).

“We’re not out to make everyone like Patagonia,” says Bould. “Our founder, Yvon Chouinard, often says that he’s perfectly happy if half the people hate us, as long as the right people love us.”

What Bould describes amounts to a critical leadership trait that is somewhat lacking in the vanilla world of corporate philanthropy: fearlessness. The companies that fight fearlessly for worthy causes break through barriers and ignite people’s inner fire.

“You have to be vigilant and brave,” the late Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, told me back in 2004 when I interviewed her for my first book. “There are risks involved in taking a stand, but unless more companies do, we have little hope of evolving.”

Like Patagonia, The Body Shop realized early on that one of the most effective ways to get people emotionally invested was to outrage them, so many of the company’s campaigns have called attention to the awful truths about business. The most pivotal of these unfolded during the mid 1990’s, when The Body Shop shed light on the plight of the Niger Delta’s Ogoni people, whose way of life had been been ravaged by social repression and environmental degradation. US corporations, including Shell, were part of the problem. After protests broke out near a Shell refinery, a group of local Ogoni tribespeople, including Ken Saro-Wiwa,

Mass Movement

As Bould and Roddick make clear, the challenges the world faces now require bold actions and loud voices – not political correctness, temperance or candor. Alongside the public’s mounting intolerance for injustice, there is a heightened sense of urgency for finding answers to looming social and environmental problems, and a great attraction towards companies that can offer such things. The mass change movement is broader in scope and deeper in consequence than most people realize. It is global, classless, unquenchable and tireless. Paul Hawken calls it Blessed Unrest.

By its nature, Blessed Unrest gives rise to High-Purpose Companies.

Clorox brags about helping people lead “healthier lives,” even as it deploys its scientists and marketing mavens to develop a chemical-laden product that is just this side of legal…Clorox can still claim that it’s a responsible company, if you define “responsible” as reluctantly complying with the letter of the law. But an authentically good company is one where all of its works live up to its (good) words. Selling natural-based products (Green Works™) with the one hand while contributing to indoor-air pollution with the other shows that Clorox is neither completely good nor completely bad. It’s just a poseur.

As with the previous examples, Hollender’s emphatic post demonstrates the importance of standing for something concrete and unwavering. Seventh Generation stands for human health and environmental integrity. The company fights for these things on a regular basis – through everything it says, does and especially sells. But as Hollender points out, not all companies use the same approach. Clorox, it would seem, stands for human health and environmental integrity only partially.

Half-hearted approaches to corporate responsibility are prevalent in many industries, and only serve to bait protagonist leaders on. Take the coffee industry, for instance: “Many large corporations claim to be committed to Fair Trade when they’re only offering 5, 10 or 20 percent Fair Trade product. They are trying to sell to everyone, and therefore can’t take a strong stance in any portion of the market,” says Equal Exchange ‘Answer Man’ Rodney North. In contrast with larger corporations, 100 percent of Equal Exchange’s line of coffees, teas and chocolates are organic and Fair Trade certified. “We take the position that small farmers are the heart of Fair Trade. We get push-back from the agri-business crowd, and also from others in the Fair Trade category, but that only makes us think that we’re on to something.”

Since its inception in 1986, Equal Exchange has plunged full-force into the task of challenging industry convention and changing a broken food system. As North explains, what started as a political statement has steadily grown into a thriving business. “We launched our company by challenging the US government’s embargo on Nicaragua. (Seehttp://www.equalexchange.coop/story). As the US was by far the number one market for Nicaraguan exports, this had devastating consequences for Nicaraguan farmers and farm workers,” explains North. “To challenge the embargo and to launch our fledging company, we introduced “Café Nica: the Forbidden Coffee.” We got around the embargo by exploiting a loophole. In 1988 the Bush administration closed the loophole and would have bankrupted Equal Exchange, but we fought a PR and legislative battle and – just barely – came out victorious and with a stronger following than we would have without it.”

Like all brave brands, Equal Exchange never wastes time or money trying to woo everyone. “Of course not all customers are equally excited by our work. Some simply like the taste of our dark chocolate, or want an affordable organic coffee,” says North. “But a healthy number do care deeply about what we’re trying to do.”

By taking an unwavering stance and a targeted approach, Equal Exchange has literally incited a religious following. The company has established partnerships with eleven faith-based organizations, through which it generates about 20 percent of its annual revenues. “We are sometimes asked to address congregations from the pulpit, and are regularly endorsed by the local priest, pastor or rabbi,” says North. “When people tell one another “this is the coffee Jesus would drink,” that’s about as enthusiastic as it gets.”

If brand enthusiasm is the goal of any worthy corporate initiative, then Patagonia, The Body Shop, CREDO Mobile, Seventh Generation and Equal Exchange should give marketers pause. Brave brands like these demonstrate an important business truth: unless a company’s social and environmental positions present a worthy fight and cause some backlash, then they are probably not worth taking (let alone promoting) in the first place.

Nobody cares when companies say they are “committed to behaving in a socially and environmentally responsible manner” because nearly every company in the world says the same thing. To be truly meaningful to people, to win people’s hearts and loyalty, more businesses need to answer the pressing question: “So what?”