Tena Moore, Freelance Writer

Interview with Dr. Rona Fried

Dr. Rona Fried is the CEO and founder of sustainablebusiness.com . She is also the Editor for Progressive Investor, a monthly newsletter that guides investors and advisors toward sustainable investments. She holds a Ph.D. in Social/Organizational Psychology and is known for her extensive, deep knowledge of many aspects of business and the environment. Dr. Fried has owned one of the largest eco-retail stores in the country, started an eco-distributorship to the natural foods industry, consulted with companies on environmental alternatives for their products lines, has written countless articles and given many speeches on the connections between environment and business.

EAG: Hello Dr. Fried. First of all, congratulations on creating such a comprehensive website dedicated to the sustainability initiative. sustainablebusiness.com presents a wealth of information, from ‘Events' and ‘News', to ‘Stocks' and ‘Green Jobs', to the business-relevant content of your newsletter, Progressive Investor . Can you give us an idea of how the website originated? And how you imagine your business will develop over the coming years?

RF: I created sustainablebusiness.com because I saw the need to bring the community of people interested in mainstreaming sustainable business together and saw that the Internet was a perfect way to do this. My goals for 2004 center on expanding our monthly investor newsletter, Progressive Investor , and re-vamping our Business Connections section to systematically help green businesses and investors find each other.

EAG: Which market segments make up the largest portion of your current audience? Related to this, who can benefit most from using the information provided on your website?

RF: It depends on whether people are looking for information, news, jobs or other kinds of connections. Different people use our site according to their needs. I feel confident that we provide something for everyone interested in keeping up with, or getting involved in the field.

EAG: What do you see as the main motivation, the driving force, for today's businesses to participate in refurbishing their operations to qualify as being ‘green' or environmentally intelligent? What do you think is the “value bottom line” for businesses pursuing this kind of thinking?

RF: It depends on the business. Fortune 500 businesses understand the value of investing in the future. They know that people aren't clamoring for sustainable products this second, but they can see the writing on the wall. Anyone who has a long-term view, and who cares about new regulations, will know their business will benefit and will be able to increasingly differentiate itself from competitors.

There are many, many benefits from businesses adopting sustainable practices, from finding the best employees to cutting costs, from encouraging innovation to protecting a company's brand name. Whereas Fortune 500 companies may do it because it's a smart business decision, many thousands of small businesses do it because it's at the core of their values and the reason they started the business in the first place.

EAG : Can you give us examples of large companies that have adopted a sustainable model in fields such as manufacturing, energy or travel? Do you know of companies that are slowly but surely moving in this direction, giving the business community examples to follow?

RF: Once a year our experts come together and produce a list of the top 20 Sustainable stocks in the world, called the SB 20. Companies like Electrolux, STMicroelectronics and Herman Miller are on the list because of their deep understanding and commitment to sustainable business practices. Companies like Ballard and Fuel Cell are on the list because, although they are not leaders in sustainable business practices, their products - fuel cells - are integral to the transition to a sustainable society. (Please see links below to view the list of 2003's SB20.)

EAG: As Bill McDonough and others have suggested, reinventing business and achieving lasting prosperity should partially depend on our ability to make conservation profitable. According to these thinkers, an objective of the ‘Next Industrial Revolution' should be to ‘ exceed sustainability by restoring degraded habitats and ecosystems to their fullest biological capacity. 1 ' These ideas are at the heart of the Earth Assets Group enterprise, and are no doubt also familiar to sustainablebusiness.com . In a post-911 world, do businesses pursue the Triple Bottom Line 2 with the same verve they did in the 1990s? Does government have an important role to play in bringing about this shift in business practice?

RF: Yes, things are accelerating in that direction. I think it may take 10 to 30 years, but eventually the triple bottom line will be at the core of every business strategy. My former career was management consulting, where I helped businesses get employees more involved in decision making. At that time, "participative management" was viewed as cutting edge. Now it's the way companies do business. I see sustainability as the next major change in the way business is normally done. Yes, the government should play an important role in this shift, but so far it doesn't seem to.

EAG: When dealing with measurable value from managing or investing in ecological assets (profitable conservation), it seems that value can be realized in two ways: first, by learning to reduce or eliminate costs associated with environmental compliance; second, by investing in eco-asset banks with the idea of leveraging asset value over time. Both lines of business value arise as bookable returns-vs. costs. How is the value of sustainable or green business being measured and reported back to its stakeholders? Does sustainablebusiness.com report this kind of bottom-line-value to its members or the business community at large?

RF: There are thousands of case studies where companies have measured everything from how much water they have saved, the kind of chemicals they use, how much waste and energy they have reduced, etc. Businesses can measure everything if they choose to. Each business decides what is important for it to measure based on its own business. In businesses that use lots of water, for example, they would track how much water they use and devise goals and methods to lower water usage. The Global Reporting Initiative (www.globalreporting.org) is working to standardize how Fortune 500 companies report on their progress toward sustainability in an easily comparable way.

EAG: It seems that certification agents are cropping up all over the world, offering services in many different categories. I read in an article on your website that at the end of 2002 there were over 100 certification companies in the area of travel and tourism alone. Why is that important?

RF: Certification has become the most popular way of putting an easy stamp on a company that anyone can look at. When I buy a piece of organic produce I know it's organic because I see it's certified. Every industry, from food to forestry, has a certification process.

EAG: Can you give us one or two ways certification industry methods might improve? Similarly, how could performance tracking & reporting be improved?

RF: The problem with certification is that unless you're aware of the various labels and what they mean, it is very easy to get confused. For example, in forestry the FSC ( Forest Stewardship Council) has the most stringent set of rules for certification. They are known around the world as the accepted certification, but does the average person know that? No! They don't realize that the paper and forest industry has their own much less stringent certification system. If a person goes to Home Depot and sees a certification sticker on some lumber, they may think "oh, it's certified", not realizing that it's coming from the industry's lenient certification process. Having a half dozen certification systems for the same industry clouds and confuses the issue. The average person won't know they are substantially different.

EAG: Which agency within our state or federal government has responsibility for developing or tracking sustainable business guidelines? Who are the key individuals we should be watching in this regard?

RF: The EPA (www.epa.gov) has numerous programs that help businesses of all sizes become more sustainable, such as Performance Tracks, Waste Wise, Green Lights, Energy Star etc. They are all voluntary programs.

EAG: Are there countries where the sustainable movement is working especially well, perhaps even ahead of schedule? What have these countries been doing that sets them apart from others?

RF: Every country has their problems and assets in this regard. A lot of it has to do with the role the government plays in these countries. Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland all come to mind. The UK made a major announcement last week (December, '03): they gave the green light to enough offshore wind energy to supply electricity for 7% of their population. This is an enormous plan that their government is behind 100 %. Germany is the leader in solar and wind installations because of their very progressive laws Switzerland passed a law that says, “you can no longer bury or ship waste outside of our borders”, and because of this law, recycling is up and they are finding lots of innovative ways to reduce and reuse their waste. The big difference between these countries and ours is that the government has taken a pro-active role and are thus ahead of us.

EAG: Thank you so much for your time Dr. Fried. We wish you and sustainablebusiness.com much success as you grow and prosper!

1 - McDonough, W., 1993. ‘Seven Steps to Doing Good Business.' Inc magazine, November. Available at: http://pf.inc.com/magazine/19931101/3770.html

2 - The Triple Bottom Line focuses on a combination of economic, social and environmental value brought by corporations. These criteria can be used as a framework for measuring corporate performance. For additional information about The TBL, see: http://www.sustainability.com/philosophy/triple-bottom/tbl-intro.asp.

For more information about sustainablebusiness.com please explore the following links:

Published Link: http://earth-assets.com/pdfs/profile_fried.pdf

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