LewisPerkins

Jean Spencer, Camera Staff Writer
Thursday, June 18, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. — The annual Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability Forum — which once targeted small, green-business entrepreneurs — has this year drawn the likes of Facebook, eBay and Walmart.

Those are among the 260 businesses represented at the three-day sustainability conference at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder.

The forum, which was created in 1996 in Boulder, is a worldwide conference that aims to combine top-level business leaders with “green-minded” investors to expand an already-rapidly growing marketplace for sustainable business models.

Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, or LOHAS, refers to the $209 billion international market segment of consumers and businesses focused on health and fitness, the environment, personal development, sustainable living and social justice.

The forum, which began Wednesday and continues through Friday, includes panel discussions about corporate strategy by industry leaders; exhibitor booths displaying a range of green-friendly products from acai berry-based Veev alcoholic beverage to green vacations; and even free yoga.

Fortune 500 companies attended this year’s forum looking to learn and share eco-responsible business practices.

“We haven’t been sustainable for a long time, but we have a vision to be zero-waste,” Candace Taylor, Walmart’s director of strategy and sustainability, said in a speech about the company’s sustainability goals. “It’s a lofty vision, but it’s there.”

Taylor, along with April Crow of the Coca-Cola Co. and Lewis Perkins of The Mohawk Group, was featured on a panel Thursday that discussed small steps big corporations are making in the world of sustainability.

Ted Ning, the LOHAS director for the past six years, said the increased interest by big corporations reflects a changing dynamic characterized by consumers demanding more environmentally aware businesses. More companies are beginning to seek business partnerships that allow for growth in their sustainable business plans, he said.

“It was a huge learning experience for me,” said Kate Alini, marketing communications manager for Mini USA, a division of BMW.

Alini said because she represents the automotive industry, she thought she would be “ostracized by tree-huggers,” but she found a unique cross-promoting network at the conference.

“The automotive industry is not moving fast enough sustainability-wise,” she said. “I thought they were going to think I was the plague, but everyone wants know how they can help each other.”

At its inception 13 years ago, the LOHAS forum was a “small, sleepy natural food conference,” but it has since grown to a worldwide phenomenon dedicated to promoting relationships among companies targeting the conscious consumer, Ning said.

For Debbie Williams, vice president and co-founder of GreenSmart — a company that transforms recycled bottles into products such as laptop bags — it is those relationships that drive the expanding sustainable marketplace.

“Everyone comes here with the shared interest to better ourselves and better the planet,” Williams said. “Nowhere else is there a place where we all want each other to succeed.”

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.

This month seems to be the season for corporate gatherings, particularly in the sustainability world. Perhaps the “green” enthusiasts prefer to gather when the weather is warmer. Two weeks ago, I participated in the Sustainable Brands (SB) ‘09 conference in Monterey, Ca. This was my third SB conference and I noted a very big transition from those that I had previously attended.

In prior years, the SB community was sometimes susceptible to hosting a series of sessions where big businesses spouted out about their current “green” strategies and highlighted the one or two socially responsible initiatives they were spearheading. The sessions could almost be mistaken for corporate green washing. However, it was also obvious that many companies were still figuring out how to maneuver in this new, greener space.

This June, the entire conference had a much different feel as the session content shifted toward greater transparency and authenticity. I was very impressed as thought leaders and corporations presented real life examples of changes in their companies.

One extraordinary example was from Kaiser Permanente who shared with us how it has created organic farmers markets outside of its medical centers. To date it has developed 30 of these markets, which promote not only the growth of the local farmer, but also demonstrates Kaiser’s understanding of the relationship between healthy food and the prevention of downstream disease.

After all, don’t we need our customers alive and healthy in order to create wealth and purchase our products? That is a simplistic capitalist view of things, but reality.

This week, at the LOHAS Forum in Boulder, Co., I look forward to hearing author Robyn O’Brien discuss her book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick - And What We Can Do About It, and her thoughts regarding why big businesses need to understand the importance of growing healthier and more sustainable consumer bases.

The next wave of sustainability is around the social/ community component of how corporations operate and the stakeholders they influence.   We will soon add a system to track our social initiatives.  Programs such as Pharos Lens (Healthy Building Network’s rating system for green/ sustainable building products) have already begun to not only include the social / community meter as a component of a corporation doing good business for the planet, but they even weigh it as heavily as other categories (such as fiscal and environmental) of green. http://www.pharoslens.net/.  

As I am watching the landscape evolve, I see that our data tracking for carbon, energy, water, etc.  is soon to become an issue of government compliance.   There are many carbon tracking and reporting systems out there today, but those who are evolving to help companies maintain volunteer hours, or in-kind contributions, or other social initiatives will be the ones who have a leg up on the competition.   I recently met with the president of a company called MetricTrac, who is doing just that - creating a user friendly reporting system which captures all of the environmental variables the government will soon be expecting us to report (above and beyond current EPA regulations) and moving more swiftly into the area of tracking social compliance.    While MetricTrac is currently in beta, they expect to launch in early 2010 with their full suite of environmental and social / tracking reporting tools. 

What this means is that we are evolving to a greater level of expectations of our products and services.   The “good for me, good for others and good for the planet” filter I have described before is a reality.