Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [50]
A company that seeks to rebuild society and restore the environment starts by asking a question like, “How can we change our value proposition from ‘selling desirable products’ to ‘solving difficult problems?’ ” This mindset helped frame an innovative venture between the French food multinational Groupe Danone (owner of Stonyfield Farm) and Grameen Bank, the pioneering microfinance enterprise. Grameen and Danone have forged a partnership that twines two business objectives that are often in conflict—profitability and responsibility—to create a new kind of hybrid: the “social business.” A social business must win customers and compete in the marketplace, but it also seeks to untangle a knotty social problem. In the case of Grameen and Danone’s joint venture, the goal is to improve the nutrition of poor children living in Bangladesh.
As first reported in Fortune magazine, the two enterprises have combined to build a yogurt factory outside Dhaka. Instead of landing on Danone’s bottom line, all the revenue and profits are reinvested in the project. The initiative relies on local Grameen “micro-borrowers” buying cows to produce the necessary milk, which is sold to the factory; on Grameen “micro-vendors,” who sell the yogurt door to door; and on Grameen’s 6.6 million members, who purchase the ultra-affordable final product for their kids. If the scheme succeeds, Danone will build fifty more factories, for a total capital investment of $25 million.
Some of the dividends from Grameen/Danone won’t show up on a traditional balance sheet; but while they’re financially intangible, they’re still very real. Danone has created a brand-enhancing social dividend for its shareholders and it’s expanding into a new market. For its part, Grameen estimates that within eighteen months, two cups of its yogurt per week significantly improves the health of malnourished children. Moreover, this daring venture will provide more proof that capitalism and sustainability can prosperously coexist.
If we can harness the expertise and financial resources of the world’s largest companies to address society’s problems in a sustainable manner, the future will indeed be brighter. Much of my work, and the work of Seventh Generation, aim to bring about just such a future. Our efforts began several years ago, when we asked ourselves that same, fundamental question: what are we uniquely able to do that the world most needs?
The work we put into answering that question led to the development of our Global Imperatives, which represent the world that we dream of, the world at its very best. These objectives could take as much as a century to achieve—a time horizon that few businesses would tolerate. That’s what makes the pursuit of global imperatives so challenging. They require a complicated mix of many efforts: cooperation with other businesses and organizations, our own ongoing education and development, and the need to look systemically at everything we do.
Our foundational imperative is also our first: “As a business, we are committed to being educators and to encouraging those whom we educate to create with us a world of equity and justice, health and well-being.”
On the surface, this sounds impossibly romantic and hopelessly naïve. But it doesn’t mean that we all join hands and sing “Kumbaya.” After all, it’s an imperative—it calls us to action, and it has catalyzed some very tangible, real-world initiatives. Chief among them is Seventh Generation’s collaboration with Oakland, California-based WAGES (Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security), a non-profit that creates new jobs and empowers low-income women by organizing and incubating cooperative businesses.
Seventh Generation is committed to helping WAGES create cooperative house-cleaning