Greening from the Outside In
SF consultant sees sustainability evolving toward the middle
By Bill Picture
Published: April, 2007
The undeniable effects of more than two centuries’ worth of environmental neglect is prompting more and more companies to search for ways to minimize their impact on the planet while continuing to grow their businesses. But many CEOs are finding the commerce/conservation tightrope a difficult one to walk on their own. So, to help these teetering suits find their balance and maintain it, a new kind of consulting business has emerged, one with profit-generating ideas that also help clients do right by the planet and consumers.
According to Jeff Slye, the founder of one such consultancy firm, San Francisco-based Business Evolution Consulting, greening a business, — that is, trading out a business’ Earth-unfriendly business practices and procedures for more environmentally sound ones — is largely a matter of common sense.
Frankly, maybe all of it is common sense, Slye says. The challenge is figuring out where to start.
Sadly, the beginning and the end of the greening process are one in the same for some businesses. Most business owners recognize going into it that a program’s success is going to require from them an ongoing commitment to the planet. But for others, financial obligations quickly eclipse the desire to be a zero-impact business, as the costs associated with green business practices generally tend to run higher than non-green ones.
What the latter fail to recognize, Slye says, is that green business practices are more than a moral responsibility; they’re also smarter business practices, as more and more consumers are choosing to spend their hard-earned dollars with companies whose business practices reflect their own commitment to conservation.
I think the majority [of consumers] do care, Slye explains. Right now, I don’t think the majority will go out of their way or spend more money to support ecologically responsible businesses. But that figure is changing, and fast. One restaurant in New York said they saw a 10 percent increase in business within weeks of advertising and posting their green commitments.
Until recently, this shift in consumer spending was largely confined to urban centers like New York, San Francisco being near the very top of the list.
But Slye predicts that consumers in rural America will soon catch up with big city shoppers, at which point he says a company’s willingness to implement green business practices will determine whether or not it survives in the marketplace.
I believe that, in five years, it will be very difficult to differentiate yourself in the market as a green business [because most business will be a green business]. It’s the businesses that don’t have green values that will suffer. For example, Kimpton Hotels contacted one of its coffee suppliers and requested an organic [coffee] or they’d have to take their business elsewhere. They got [the organic coffee].
Kimpton Hotels is a poster child for green business-doing and one of Business Evolution Consulting’s star clients. With Slye’s help, the San Francisco-based boutique hotel chain, which includes the ritzy, Union Square-adjacent Sir Francis Drake Hotel, implemented its comprehensive EarthCare Environmental Initiative in 2003.
A complete green overhaul of existing business practices and procedures, which included training all hotel staff to think and act green, eliminating toxic cleaners, using recycled content paper and installing low-flow toilets, has resulted in both high marks from critics, deserving nods from green organizations and fewer vacancies.
According to Slye, Kimpton owes the success of its program to the shared commitment off all levels of management.
Executive sponsorship is critical for these programs to work, he says. But my approach is to engage middle management as well. For example, with one of my hotel clients, a lower-level manager noticed that uniforms were being sent out every day in plastic bags. They suggested instead using a washable and reusable bag that the laundry company could return. By doing that, we eliminated the use of thousands of plastic bags each year and the employee feels they’ve made a difference. In Kimpton’s case, we asked the staff, ‘What should we call our environmental program?’ The name ‘EarthCare’ came from an employee.
Kimpton’s EarthCare program was more ambitious than most. But Slye urges all businesses to start somewhere, no matter how small the first step.
Slye was a business development professional who worked for a number of high-tech firms before founding Business Evolution Consulting. His own interest in conservancy was first sparked in 1999 on a trip to Guatemala.
I visited this small village, and I watched these women dumping their trash off a bridge into a river. That really stuck with me.
Upon his return home, Slye says he began exhibiting green tendencies. But it would be another four years before the idea for Business Evolution Consulting would be hatched.
I did all of the things that typical San Franciscans do, he explains. I recycled; I changed my light bulbs, that kind of thing. The ‘ah-ha’ moment was when I went to my first green conference. What blew me away were all the amazing products they were demonstrating and discussing, yet there were no mainstream companies attending or represented at the show. That is when it dawned on me that what our business world needed was someone to connect these groups and make green really happen.
While caring for his, now, four-month-old son, a duty he shares with his wife Kristin, co-founder of Slye Marketing, has proven to be exhausting, Slye insists it has fueled his passion for preserving the planet.
It’s going to take a while, but we can fix this, he says. We won’t see the results in my lifetime or maybe even in my son’s lifetime. But we can do it. I have faith in the power and the capabilities of humankind.
