From the cradle to the cradle
Good environmental stewardship doesn’t mean sacrificing the company’s bottom line
by Tom Mason
It’s one of the most ubiquitous of ocean resources, generating millions of dollars worth of sales every year, but it’s never gotten a whole lot of respect. But then again, ascophyllum nodosum — the same seaweed that litters East Coast beaches after a storm — hasn’t suffered from the same overexploitation that has plagued the Atlantic groundfishery either. One company is taking great pains to make sure it stays that way. Acadian Seaplants Limited has risen over the last 25 years to become one of the largest producers of marine plant materials in North America, grossing about $25 million annually selling the slimy stuff as value added products like fertilizers, industrial chemicals, animal feed additives and even a salad ingredient for the Japanese market.
“We believe in doing things in a sustainable manner,” says Acadian Seaplants president J.P. Deveau. “and we’ve spent a lot of money studying the growth patterns of seaweed.” That includes maintaining full-time scientists on staff who conduct long-term studies and publish major papers. “We’re very proud of the fact that we have the best-managed marine resource in Canada,” he says.
Acadian Seaplants has learned something that a lot of companies would do well to take notice of: their bottom line depends on coming to terms with the environment.
In their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart lay out a blueprint for a new business paradigm – one in which nature and industry coexist. The philosophy is the opposite of the old “cradle to grave” model where products are used and then discarded when they wear out. In a cradle to cradle world, products may change form, but they will continue to be used forever in an endless loop. McDonough and Braungart argue that industry is at odds with the environment because design has always followed the easiest road, with little concern for anything beyond the usable lifetime of a product. In the future, say the authors, products will be used, recycled and then used again. In a cradle to cradle world, a factory doesn’t work like a machine gobbling up energy and spewing toxic waste products into the environment, but more like a tree that fits into its environment organically.
Acadian Seaplants could have written a chapter in McDonough and Braungart’s book. Since startup in 1981 they have managed their resource so well that seaweed growth rates have remained completely stable, with the company’s three hundred independent fishermen taking only the excess. The company conducts regular “on-the-water” inspections and lays down strict guidelines that all contract fishermen must follow. “Think of a beautiful lawn,” says Deveau. “If you mow it regularly it will continue to grow and look beautiful. But if you cut it to close, right down to the dirt, you will kill it. It’s the same with harvesting seaweed.”
If there are two industries that environmentalists love to bash, they have to be power generation and forestry. Minas Basin Pulp & Power does both, and has been doing them successfully since the 1930s. But the Nova Scotia-based company does something even more impressive. It garners praise from those same environmentalists who criticize most of their competitors. Company president Scott Travers goes even farther, boasting that his company is one of the most environmentally friendly in the province. For one thing, Minas Basin stopped using trees to make its heavy cardboard paper products more than a decade ago. Today it only uses 100 percent recycled waste, a process that diverts about 60,000 tons of landfill waste every year. “We use only post-consumer waste,” says Travers. “That’s an important distinction. It means we’re using only paper diverted from landfills.”
Travers is keenly interested in environmental issues. A self-described nature lover, he is a big supporter of wind power and vows that Minas Basin Pulp and Power will have a wind farm in the near future (the company has already submitted one wind farm proposal that failed to clear regulatory hurdles). This year the company will throw the switch on a new technology that will trap factory waste heat before it exits into the atmosphere and send it back into the system to reheat the papermaking process. He is also proud of the fact that Minas Basin’s power has received Ecologo certification from the federal government, one of a handful of power generating facilities in the country to receive it. “We’re getting green energy out of our 1937-era hydro turbines,” he says. “That’s pretty impressive.”
He would probably be focused on the environment no matter what kind of product his company produced. But Travers admits that greening a company can have a positive effect on the bottom line as well. “A lot of what we do is out of necessity,” he says. “With the cost of energy now, we have to find ways to conserve and get the most out of the energy we use. Paper is a tough business.”