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.

Mother's Day on "The Program"

Despite a lack of recent posts, the project does continue and slowly becomes part of the daily routine. Lunches from Body & Soul, shopping at the Coop and the Farmers Markets, and lots of Brooklyn Lager and Makers Mark, of course.

My parents were in town for a Mother's Day visit and I did my best to keep them in line with the project guidelines (or "the program" as my mother adorably calls it -- does she think I'm twelve-stepping? I guess there are similarities....). Apparently Lucali, the local pizza phenomenon that I started to get to know, has had insane press recently so when we went at 8:30 on Friday night in the pouring rain there was a three hour wait. For the sake of my "no starving, no alienation" provisos, I accepted a "gift" from my parents and went to a restaurant, Crave, across the street. Aside from that blip however, I got them to make breakfast at home, took them on a whirlwind Saturday afternoon excursion to the Park Slope Food Coop to shop for dinner and made a huge stir-fry and salad, and then got my friends together to take mom to Counter for Mother's Day brunch this morning, which everyone loved. With some careful planning, and patience, my mission to know where all my purchases come from is proving possible.

We also checked out BklynDesigns on Saturday morning, an annual furniture and craft fair showcasing local designers. I took some serious notes should I decide I need to upgrade anything this year as there was some beautiful work made right here in my borough.

Coming up this week: I'm meeting with Allen Zimmerman, Produce Buyer for the Park Slope Food Coop, and Harold Butler, founder of Brownstone Beans. Plans for a June roadtrip to Tom's of Maine's factory and Seventh Generation's headquarters in Vermont are also in the works as well.

Making an Impact | Environmentally, socially, personally

The people who work for Seventh Generation are really remarkable. In one week, I had email exchanges with Chrystie in Consumer Relations, Lee in executive administration, and Jeff and Jay, Executive and Senior Vice Presidents, respectively, of Operations. And it's not that I was getting the run-around, I was getting positive feedback on my project and attempts to get me in touch with the right people to answer my questions. I received a phone call yesterday from Jay LeDuc - SVP of Operations, remember - who spoke with me for half an hour about the company's manufacturing processes, their vendor partners and quality assurance teams, and personnel policies. He spoke with me about strict guidelines when finding factories to make their products, influencing the manufacturing standards of other companies, reducing the carbon footprint by moving operations closer to their consumers, and the pleasure of watching an industry that they helped establish twenty years ago become one of global interest.

Jay went into great detail with his responses and took the call to "just some guy in Brooklyn", as my friends put it, quite seriously. He pointed me to their annual environmental responsibility reporting, and invited me up to their headquarters in Vermont where he'd introduce me to the quality assurance team as well. Though I have yet to shake his hand and talk face-to-face, Jay certainly gave me individual attention and personal connection. The fact that he works for one of the most socially and environmentally responsible and forward-thinking businesses out there, well that feels pretty good too.

Progress | Further ahead, further apart

I've had some really wonderful exchanges with folks at Seventh Generation, Tom's of Maine, and Brooklyn Industries this weekend/this morning. It seems the project strikes a very human chord and people are willing to help me make connections. It will be great to make these associations.

It's truly been eye-opening, though, to see how the world is no longer organized in a way which this is easy -- and certainly not expected. Long gone is the possibility of going to the market and meeting the craftsmen who's labor created the goods (the city's few Farmer's Markets are the rare exception). It's now a matter of a company rep deciding whether my requests are "Press" related, or "Customer Service", and of course, even "local" goods are manufactured all over the continent. Most of my successes so far are coming from connections through friends or the neighborhoods I spend time in.

Going the Distance | Physical and emotional lengths

Challenges to complete immersion and strict adherence to its principles come in many forms.

I discovered last night that Seventh Generation, which I thought was a "local" company and was relying on for many household necessities, is actually located in Burlington, VT. Six hours away. A new strategy is to take a long weekend to drive up to their factories, then cut over to Tom's of Maine before coming back to New York. In the meantime, my own personal involvement in the distribution chain by joining the Park Slope Coop will need to suffice.

Most people I've discussed this project with are extremely supportive and I love the conversations it starts ("there are 14 Breweries in New York State"; "if you support Burt's Bees and then they get bought by Clorox, do you stop patronizing them?"). But starting this during my birthday week is frustrating friends when I suggest pot-luck: "Don’t get me wrong I respect what you are doing but it is totally crazy to try and do that with a group of people... you can do what you want, just hard to pull off when you have external factors in play like friends."