Packaging Your Product With Social Entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurship is a field where it can pay to have some great brand recognition.  It can mean all the difference if your customer base recognizes your commitment to social values when compared to your competition and comes to you specifically because your mission speaks to them.  However, it has been often cited that to have a successful social entrepreneurial venture,  one must begin with a competitive product, regardless of the relative merit of your work.  Its often quite difficult to imagine how a social entrepreneur can compete in traditional markets; where the opposing companies have been established, have more capital, and might use whatever tactics they can to drive down cost, indifferent to any negative social impacts.

So, it is always a bit refreshing to see an instance where an innovative personality is able to bridge this gap, providing a new product or service into an entrenched marketplace that is not only price competitive, but also addresses a social problem.  Enter Shannon Boase, founder and CEO of Earthcycle Packaging Ltd., a company that aims to address the ecological impact of our produce and shipping industries by redefining the nature of the packaging material that is used.  At a first glance, it may not seem as glamorous an activity as alleviating poverty or curing disease, yet when one realizes that product packaging accounts for one third of land-filled waste in the United States (much of this non-biodegradable), the problem itself cannot be so easily discarded.    Most of us have heard stories about landfills running out of room, giant floating continents of plastic waste in the ocean, and how plastics take forever to fully degrade in landfills.  These are probably many of the things that Shannon Boase had in mind when she decided to try using excess palm oil tree fibers to construct biodegradable packaging.

Earthcycle was formed in 2005, and has enjoyed healthy growth in its startup years.  This is partially because the material that Earthcycle generates is cost-competitive with other forms of plastic-based packaging.  Additionally, the venture generates a use for palm waste that would otherwise be incinerated, an environmentally toxic process that also has health consequences for the palm workers whom inhale the smoke fumes.  Since the project relies on palm oil plantations that have already been established in Malaysia (some, sadly, as a part of mostly ill-conceived biofuel ventures), no natural habitats need to be disturbed for the packaging.  Finally, the source of Earthcycle’s raw materials is renewable on a 6 month time scale, whereas plastics rely on fossil fuels that replenish on the order of millions of years.  Icing on the cake?  You can take Earthcycle packaging and stick it directly into your garden as a compost source that will actually help your veggies grow.

All of these reasons likely contributed to Earthcycle being recognized as one of the top 6 companies in the 2009 Social Venture Network Awards.   Check out the Earthcycle blog for articles related to consumer waste, or just some good tips on how to be an urban gardener/composter.

Agriculture as Environmental Agent

Perhaps it is because there are typically so many aspects of agriculture acting as forces of environmental degradation, but I find myself powerfully drawn to stories of social enterprises that rely on agriculture to drive positive environmental change.  This week on Social Edge, Patrick O’Heffernan carried a piece on Guayaki Yerba Mate Organic‘s efforts to market a popular drink in many South American countries to the robust economies of North America.  As a drink with qualities not entirely unlike tea, mate is made by steeping the dried leaves of a species of holly tree in warm water, and can provide an energy boost that does not come from caffeine.  However, the real power of yerba mate might prove to be in it’s ability to preserve tropical forests and native species, if you believe in Guayaki’s vision.  Guayaki’s yerba mate leaves come from areas of the rainforest that are reforested as part of projects that involve cultivation of yerba mate and reintroduction of many additional native species that help to maintain the ecosystem in which this crop species thrives.

Currently, Guayaki claims to be preserving 20,000 acres of rainforest through partnerships with local farmers, supported by sales of yerba mate products.  If Guayaki achieves its goal of making mate a product with a similar market to coffee within the United States, they hope to push this number into the millions of conserved acres.

Report Highlights Need for Transparency in Transparency Efforts

This week’s New Scientist features an article highlighting the failure of consumers to correctly identify companies that are involved in environmentally conscious practices versus those who are merely “greenwashing” (or those not bothering with a green image at all).  New Scientist used data obtained from Trucost and Earthsense to estimate the environmental impact of larger companies relative to their budgets.  Public opinion of the involvement and attention of these companies to environmental matters was then surveyed, and the two data sets compared.

Unsurprisingly, there was some confusion in the perceived environmental intent of a given company and its actual real environmental impact.  However, the real surprise was in the degree of the disconnect that was discovered.  In fact, there was virtually no correlation between a companies’ actual environmental footprint and the perceived impact of those companies.  This depressing news is, at least, pleasingly illustrated in the New Scientist’s interactive scatterplot, with estimated environmental impact of a company (as a percent of their budget) graphed against public perception.

While it may be tempting to simply tsk and move on about our business, I believe that this report is an indicator of a much more systemic problem.  Namely, the movement for greater corporate responsibility (in both the environmental and social spheres), has been primarily focused on getting companies to be more transparent about their work practices and product pipelines.  This side of the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) movement is, of course, very commendable and important, but becomes wasted effort if the information that is disclosed is not reaching the public.  Indeed, this report highlights a wide gap in the movement, one that calls for new leaders and ideas in the area of translating CSR data to the public.  In essence, adding transparency to our transparency reports.

While we wait for these leaders to arise, we may take some solace in the resources that we do have, such as the recently published list of 500 companies ranked by environmental impact, released by Newsweek.