The owner and employees of Hot Lips Pizza, a Portland firm with two outlets,
figured out how to reduce the business’s emission of carbon dioxide, a
"greenhouse gas," while making their pizza stand out from the competition’s
as a more sustainable dining choice.
Nike, Inc., a global sports and fitness company headquartered in Beaverton,
integrated sustainability goals into its operation. The company began replacing
petroleum-based adhesives and primers used to make shoes with water-based solutions.
To date the replacement level has reached 87 percent and eliminated the use
of an estimated 1.2 million gallons of toxic material, improved the safety of
workers and saved the company millions of dollars.
The employees of Progressive Investment Management, founded in Eugene, studied
2,000 companies around the world and picked 40 for a new mutual fund designed
to contribute to a more sustainable future. Investments in the fund are up to
about $8.5 million and growing.
You just read about a few achievements of three of the 140 or so companies spread
around the state that pay up to $500 a year to belong to the Oregon Natural
Step Network. The educational network, which helps businesses, organizations
and individuals integrate economic, environmental and social goals, was established
in 1997 by the Northwest Earth Institute, a non-profit organization in Portland.
The Natural Step didn’t start in Oregon. It started in Europe in the 1980s.
A Swedish physician and cancer researcher, Karl-Henrik Robert, was alarmed by
a rapidly rising rate of skin and pancreatic cancer in children. Robert suspected,
based on his research, that the cancer was connected to environmental factors.
Frustrated by debate on what should be done, he sent 50 leading Swedish scientists
a paper that talked about what it would take to make our planet sustainable.
After 21 rewrites, the scientists reached a consensus. Major corporations helped
deliver that information to every home and school in Sweden. The Natural Step
was launched in 1989.
Since then, more than 60 Swedish corporations have implemented The Natural Step.
These include Electrolux and IKEA, the world’s largest manufacturers of
appliances and furniture, Swedish Railways, major supermarket chains, the country’s
largest hotel chain and McDonald’s of Sweden.
The movement has spilled beyond the country’s borders. Hundreds of companies
and municipalities in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand
and the Netherlands now follow The Natural Step principles. Interest is growing
in other parts of the world.
The Natural Step is based on nitty gritty science—laws of thermodynamics
that say matter can’t be created or destroyed, that wherever you put something
it will spread, and that green plants’ cells, which use solar energy, are
essentially the only net producers on our planet.
The Natural Step lists four "systems conditions" required for a society
to be sustainable:
1. Nature must not be systematically subjected to increasing concentrations
of substances extracted from the earth’s crust (for example, burning fossil
fuels or mining metals at a rate that will cause them to systematically increase
in the ecosphere).
2. Nature must not be systematically subjected to increasing concentrations
of substances produced by society (for example, substances such as DDT, PCBs
or freon that persist in the environment and cause health and other problems).
3. Nature must not be systematically subjected to physical displacement, overharvesting
and other forms of ecosystem manipulation (taking more than can be replenished
by natural systems, which damages natural functions of the planet such as the
recycling of nutrients, pollination and climate control).
4. Resources must be used fairly and efficiently in order to meet human needs
globally (for example, if a billion people lack adequate nutrition while another
billion have more than they need, this will damage social stability and threaten
the global cooperation needed to address the other three systems conditions).
The fourth system condition—fairness in resource use—may be the greatest
challenge because it reaches far beyond the traditional scope of most businesses,
some observers say.
There are regional networks throughout the United States, and the Oregon Natural
Step Network is one of the most active.
Collins Pine, a 145-year-old wood products firm headquartered in Portland, was
the first Oregon company to work with The Natural Step framework. The company
has timber and manufacturing operations in California, Pennsylvania and Oregon.
Its largest manufacturing facility is in Klamath Falls.
"It (joining The Natural Step) was kind of an addition to what we were
already doing," said Wade Mosby, the company’s senior vice president.
He explains that in 1993 Collins Pine was the first U.S. company to have its
forest lands certified through the international Forest Stewardship Council.
"We did that mainly because we saw what had happened in federal forests
and felt the public had lost trust in the government and in industrial companies,"
Mosby said. "We felt we had to have a third party come in and verify our
forest practices."
The company received the President’s Award for sustainability in 1996.
"But our manufacturing operations were sort of left out of the loop,"
said Mosby. "We heard about The Natural Step and thought that might make
sense for them.
"It’s been great," he said of training more than 600 employees
in the principles of The Natural Step. He offers examples of the accomplishments
of employee teams at the Klamath Falls division such as "fine-tuning every
motor in the place" to increase efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions,
identifying water leaks and cutting back water usage substantially.
Overall, The Natural Step seems to have helped Collins give its employees new
purpose and motivation, improve efficiency and reduce waste, and create stronger
partnerships with its customers. The company has saved more than a million dollars,
too, Mosby estimates.
"I would tell you that a lot of people on this planet are in denial,"
he said. "There’s an unwritten cost to what we do to the environment,
and we need to be better environmental stewards. You get people involved and
they’ll find ways to do that. We think we have much more production efficiency
now because of The Natural Step, and it’s a great story to tell your customers."