New England Visits: The Environmentalist Chemist

After saying goodbye to our Tom’s of Maine tour guide Cindy, with about a dozen complimentary toothpaste tubes tucked in our bags, we hit the road again for Burlington, VT. I had connected with Jay LeDuc, Senior Vice President of Operations at Seventh Generation, by phone a few months ago. He had then offered to show me around should I ever be in town. When I emailed him to take him up on the offer, he quickly wrote back letting me know he had made appointments for me with several members of the administration. What I didn’t know at the time was that of 300,000 customers, Joe and I were the first two to ever ask to come to their headquarters and meet the people who work there.

Seventh Generation’s products are made in their “Manufacturing Partners” factories, so we were headed to their administrative headquarters located on the second and third floors of an office building overlooking the Burlington coast of Lake Champlain. I was a bit discouraged by the corporate-ness of the building, but completely and pleasantly surprised by the comfortable, welcoming vibe of the Seventh Generation’s wing. The lobby is adorned with photos of their founder participating in civil disobedience rallies in D.C., and the Design of Dissent on the waiting room table. They have separate compost and recycling bins in the bathrooms, and not a suit and tie in sight.



We were greeted by Martin Wolf, Director of Product/Environmental Technology who showed us around and then sat us in a conference room. It was clear he wasn’t really sure what this “meeting” he had been scheduled for was all about, but when he figured out we were just customers who where there for a visit, he smiled and chatted with us for over an hour. He told us all about his environmental research consulting firm, living in Boston, and coming to work for Seventh Generation seven years ago. As the company's lead chemist, he has been responsible for designing the formulas for every cleaning product they make. A Brooklyn native, it took him a few years to appreciate the slow, easy pace of Burlington, but now embraces his bike ride to work along the lake and the socially and environmentally responsible company he works for.

Two anecdotes stood out. When we were joined by Penney Tudor, Director of Quality Assurance, they told us about the company’s various criteria for forging partnerships with manufacturers. Though all were rigorous and progressive, the most surprising was the inclusion of an evaluation of how factory workers’ salaries and benefits compare to those of the plants administration.

And my favorite reality-check from Martin: he had just returned from a conference discussing Sustainability in Manufacturing. He and many other speakers focused on environmental impact, recycling and reuse, and social responsibility such as the evaluation I just mentioned. Then a rep from Lockheed Martin took the stage. They have 100 workers on their production line, and have been making great strides at lowering their injury rate to below 400 incidents a year. In weapons manufacturing, apparently, sustainability just means keeping your employees alive.