It is one thing to start a green by design eco-fashion company, and an entirely different thing to direct a ~$16B clothing retailer that employs 150,000 people to reduce its environmental impact and operate more sustainably. This is exactly the job of Kindley Walsh-Lawlor, Gap Inc’s Senior Director of Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs. I got the chance to discuss with Kindley how she landed where she is, what Gap Inc’s brands (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic) are doing to “go green”, and the ins and outs of retail corporate social responsibility (CSR). Gap Inc is a social responsibility leader, having spent 12 years working on ethical sourcing and human rights. Kindley’s task involves incorporating environmental initiatives. As she puts it: “Are we leaders right now in the environment? The answer is no. I think, is it a goal? Yeah. …The key thing that’s so important to us is it’s about really making a positive impact versus just creating a great story.”
Having grown up on a farm in Vermont, Kindley is a self-described “old time hippie and long-time environmentalist.” Kindley’s background is in product design and she spent 15 years in small-scale production. Eleven years ago she started with Gap Inc, wanting to understand what it was like to have “brand names behind you.” During her first 9 years with the company, Kindley worked at Banana Republic and Gap which gave her a “great education on what the brands were up against…day-to-day especially as we dig deeper with the brands on operational sustainability opportunities to redesign product.” Kindley has been in her current CSR role just under 2 years.
In her current role, Kindley has helped organize Gap Inc’s efforts around an environmental strategy, referred to as the ECO-strategy: “E for energy, C for cotton or sustainable design, and O for output or waste… fundamentally the basics that we need to engage in as an apparel company.” This is a way to harness all the corporate initiatives and brand level grass roots efforts into one all encompassing strategy. They also put together a sustainable design toolkit, which they were able to utilize when Banana Republic first came to corporate and said “we want to go green.” Last spring, Banana came out with its green initiative under the tagline “Greener. One Step at a time.” And while that was just one step, Kindley hinted that another core Gap Inc brand has something up its sleeve. This unnamed brand has made sustainability “one of their five key pillars as to how they make all decisions in their business. So they’ve gone after it as a cultural shift to insure that’s about more than just pleasing the customer, more than just getting the right aesthetic in the store, more than just engaging employees, but also doing the right thing when they’re doing business.”
Going forward, a key component to success will be consistent brand communication. Kindley does not want Gap to fall heavily to either the social or the environmental side of things, but to tie these two fundamental pieces together and ensure Gap’s messaging is aligned. “A lot of companies [are] either about sustainability or they’re about social and ethical sourcing or social and human rights. And so what I want to do is ensure that whatever we’re doing is connected. I want to insure that whatever we’re messaging is connected, and I think that’s something that is a differentiator and hugely important for the company.”
The exciting part is that Kindley is working with the leverage of several brands and impact on a large scale – every small change has a huge impact. For example, Gap Inc switched to using post-consumer recycled paper for price tickets across all brands and “it saves so much paper as you look across how many units we buy every season, everyday, that are shipping around the world.” On the other hand, one of the difficulties of doing this sort of work is that “everyone wants to see your ROI on every initiative that you’re doing.” Kindley explained that they’ve come up with “really creative ways to be cost neutral.”
Gap Inc is in extremely capable hands with Kindley, and I look forward to seeing how she continues to drive environmental and social change in the industry. Overall, Kindley is looking for “that sea change in the industry that we can help propel” and to partner with other industry leaders like Nike and Patagonia to “help move mills to think differently, to help factories to think differently and ultimately for the product to be made differently.”
Read full transcript and listen to the audio of my interview here.
[Originally posted on TriplePundit]
Timberland is a pioneer in corporate sustainability, corporate social responsibility or however you describe a business that cares about people and planet as well as profits. I spoke with Jeffrey Swartz, CEO of Timberland, to find out what he’s learned from his experience. You can hear the full interview at Green Business Innovators. But I ended our conversation with more questions than answers. Swartz is not convinced that doing good translates directly into doing well…yet. I discussed with him how he is trying to change that by connecting with consumers.
October 30, 2008
The future of sustainability: beyond doing less bad
Posted by ecofrenzy under Commentary, Green news & events, Personal opinion, San Francisco | Tags: Coca-Cola, Commonwealth Club, CSR, environment, Joel Makower, restorative companies, San Francisco, sustainability |1 Comment
I saw Joel Makower speak at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club last week on the eve of the launch of his new book – Strategies for a Green Economy. I did buy the book and look forward to reading it, but this will not be a review of the book. During his conversation at the Club with BSR’s Aron Cramer, Makower touched on something that has been bothering me for a while now.
Take this random smattering of corporate environmental news I found just now in my inbox:
These are all good first steps. But they are lacking something. I don’t feel good hearing this. Instead of rejoicing, I begin to wonder how bad it still is if a 15% reduction over the course of 9 years is worth a proud press release? What are Sprint’s absolute emissions? What could they do that would be good rather than less bad? All three of these environmental claims and most that I see imply that companies are doing less bad. Which begs the question – how much bad are they still doing? I’ve had a nagging feeling that we are missing something in our environmental reporting and approach to CSR.
Makower articulated these same concerns last Wednesday. He said that the future of sustainability may not be sustainability. Today’s greening efforts center on doing less bad. And that’s just the first step. The next step involves actually restoring environments to their original state, and even perhaps giving back and adding value to surroundings. For example, Coca-Cola has pledged to return as much water as it extracts.
I want to keep this short and sweet. But what I would like to see as the future of corporate (and all) sustainability efforts involves carbon negative growth, planting 2 trees for every tree cut down, treating the environment like the home of a valued host – leaving things as good or better than when you first arrived. Is that too much to ask?
[Originally published on Just Means' All Things Reconsidered Blog]