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GREEN
EUGENE Eugene and Lane County have great potential for sustainable development — creating jobs while at the same time protecting the environment for our children, UO researchers found in a study last month. "There already is a decent-sized and growing sustainability sector in town," says Bob Doppelt, who led the study as director of the UO Program for Watershed and Community Health. "There's clearly a great potential for expanding." Few disagree with the idea of sustainable development. "Yeah, that sounds great," says Jack Roberts, director of the local Metro Partnership business growth group. But the devil may be in the details. How exactly to define sustainable development, how much regulatory teeth to give it and how much priority to give it compared to traditional development efforts remains unsettled.
LOCAL POTENTIAL The local area already has a strong green business sector to build on. The UO study, with work by seven graduate students, compiled information from 43 companies employing up to 2,200 people with a net payroll of $57 million. Eugene's pro-environment reputation, high quality of life, and strong customer base for green products has helped attract the businesses. The sustainable companies have withstood the recent economic downturn and even expanded. Unlike other industries, they have long, deep roots in the community and are unlikely to leave for cheaper labor or tax breaks, according to the UO study. The local natural foods industry is the largest chunk of the area's sustainability industry. The UO study gathered information on 15 natural food companies employing 334 people with a payroll of $8.4 million. Among the larger local companies are Royal Blueberries, Emerald Valley Kitchen, Surata Soyfoods, Golden Temple, and the Springfield Creamery. The study also identified 30 local organic farms on 1,529 acres of certified organic farm land in the county. "We have a good cluster of that" natural foods industry, says Roberts. "We want to try to encourage that." To expand the industry, the UO study offered a variety of recommendations including establishing a local trade association, educating consumers to buy local organics, encouraging national grocery chains to stock local sustainable products, funding a new farmers market and low interest loans. One idea was helping to market local organic food nationally by branding it as, for example, "Produced in Lane County, Northwest Leader of Natural Foods." Natural foods appear to be a strong growth industry. While sales of traditional foods are flat nationally, natural food sales are expanding at more than 20 percent a year. The UO study also examined potential growth in the local green building industry and in eco-industrial development. An education campaign for builders, public agencies and consumers on the benefits of building green, local governments leading by example with green buildings as well as strong, clear local regulations could help promote the eco-building industry. Eco-Industrial development could be expanded by promoting bio-based foods and lubricants and recruiting hydrogen fuel businesses and solar energy manufacturers, according to the UO study.
VAGUE While many agree on the value of sustainable development, fewer people agree on its exact definition. In a May speech at a Portland sustainable development conference, Gov. Ted Kulongoski said, "sustainable development resonates with people of both parties, and across all regions of the state and nation. It is a vision that most everyone can — and does — agree on." The governor told the gathering, "my commitment to sustainability is unshakable." But then Kulongoski went on to describe the state's grass seed and computer chip industries as examples of sustainable development. "Grass seed is hardly sustainable," Doppelt says of the pesticide intensive industry. "It's very harmful to water quality." The current chip industry also can be a "very damaging" industry to the environment with its huge use of toxic chemicals, water, power and lack of recycling of old computers, according to Doppelt. Although Kulongoski has called on state government agencies to take sustainability principles to heart in their operations, he himself has taken to touring the state in a huge, fuel-guzzling motor home donated by the state's leading anti-environmental lobbing group, Associated Oregon Industries. "I don't think he personally is all that focused or knowledgeable" about sustainability, Doppelt says. But Doppelt says sustainability leaders aren't muddled about the definition of sustainable development. "They're very clear about what they're doing." Doppelt says in time, the definition of sustainability will be settled. In Europe, it already is. With the movement newer in America, Doppelt says, "We're still stuck in the, 'oh gee, what is it' issue." The term sustainable development has been around since at least 1987, when a United Nations commission defined it as "development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The accepted definition focuses on reducing or eliminating pollution and re-using or recycling natural resources. But there's still a clear resistance among some to strictly defining sustainable development in terms of attaching labels to specific companies. Asked whether local chip-maker Hynix is a sustainable industry, Roberts of the Metro Partnership responded, "Part of what we have to be careful of is that there's a great dividing line, and that some are sustainable and some are not."
GREENWASH With the definition still vague for many, the biggest hurdle for the sustainable business movement may be corporate greenwash. Hundreds of environmentally questionable corporations — including Exxon, Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Weyerhaeuser and McDonald's — have laid claim to the label of sustainability in slick advertising and reports.
The public interest group CorpWatch handed out greenwash "Academy Awards" to corporations at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa last year. "'Sustainable Development' is now officially meaningless," the group complained. "There's going to be a lot of greenwash that goes on in this transition period [to sustainable development], the transition may be 20 years," Doppelt acknowledged. The solution is independent monitoring and verification such as in the certified organic food program. If a product isn't certified sustainable, "consumers shouldn't believe it," Doppelt says.
TEETH Much of the discussion of sustainable development focuses on voluntary efforts by corporations to do right by the environment. Re-using waste and having to buy less water, power, chemicals and natural resources saves money and provides an economic motivation for sustainable development, the theory goes. But entrenched, traditional companies too often don't see it that way, according to a 2000 paper by Doppelt. In those cases, numerous studies show government regulation can provide an important nudge, he wrote, by stimulating better environmental management which will result in eventual cost savings to companies. But companies often resist such regulation. In Eugene, businesses opposed to regulations have complained in surveys that the city's rules have made the area bad for business. Sustainability "has to be done in a way that sells it as voluntarily to business," Roberts says. Companies will oppose, "anything that smacks of a new regulation." Roberts is already lobbying for opening the local urban growth boundary to sprawl and revoking Eugene's Toxics Right to Know ordinance. But while traditional polluting industries may complain Eugene is bad for business, the UO's survey shows the opposite is true for sustainable businesses. The study found that 93 percent of sustainable businesses surveyed reported that the area was a good place to do business, mostly because of the strong environmental values of local residents. Eugene really isn't any more onerous in terms of regulations than anywhere else, Doppelt says. But the two conflicting surveys do show the core advantage of sustainable business. "Most of the companies we surveyed don't use toxic materials," Doppelt says. "If you want to get out of the onerousness of regulation, then simply stop using materials or doing things that require regulation." The UO study points to an earlier study by UO business professor Michael Russo showing that Fortune 500 companies with good environmental records were more profitable. "Good environmental citizenship is great for the bottom line," Russo found.
PRIORITIZE With all the advantages, you'd think sustainable development would be a top jobs priority. But that hasn't been the case. Kulongoski and state economic development officials remain focused on recruiting high-tech plants with tax breaks, a strategy that cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1990s and contributed to Oregon leading the nation in unemployment. The governor has donned a clean room "bunny suit" at Intel and schmoozed with CEOs in Silicon Valley. The Eugene City Council has had "sustainable development" as a major goal for years, but recently voted to give Hynix another $2 million in tax breaks, even after the corporation cut jobs and laid off workers for six months. Roberts, who the city pays to recruit businesses, has staunchly defended the old approach of luring high tech companies to town, even after Sony, HMT and Hynix have closed or laid off workers. "I think we're going to see a comeback," Roberts says. Doppelt says Eugene can't afford not to go green. "It is important to set sustainable development as a top priority." Studies show that the most successful economic development builds on local strengths and clusters of existing local businesses rather than trying to go out and recruit new industries that don't fit in well with a community, according to Doppelt. "The industrial model has rarely succeeded." "We'd be wasting a good deal of time and money if we were not building on our existing sustainability sector," Doppelt says. "Where do we get the greatest bang for the buck? It's going to be building on our existing strength." Roberts agrees that Oregon and Eugene do have a green reputation that could attract businesses. "We'd be crazy not to take advantage of that." But Roberts says sustainable development must stand or fall by itself on its own economic merits. "I don't believe we should give a preference to sustainability because of a political priority." Cities like Portland and Seattle have already made sustainable development a top priority and Eugene risks being unable to compete for existing and new businesses, Doppelt says. "If we don't make it a priority to support and grow the sustainability sector, we may see it leaving." he says. Doppelt says he already has talked to one large natural foods employer who decided to expand elsewhere. According to Doppelt, company officials complained, "you're giving all this money to Hynix, we haven't gotten a penny from local government, so we're going to go where we think there's some local support." "If we're late to the game, all we're going to get is leftovers or nothing at all," Doppelt says. "We got a great opportunity here. It would be a real shame to not capture that if we're still looking in our rearview mirror thinking that the jobs of the future are going to look like the jobs of the past."
SUSTAINABILITY
SYMPOSIUM The free seventh annual Sustainable Business Symposium at UO Nov. 14-16 is one of the longest-running sustainability conferences in the Northwest. This year the symposium will be held in the newly completed Lillis Business Complex and will feature a products exposition, panels, workshops and speakers. The programs will provide concrete examples of how businesses can simultaneously increase profits, decrease ecological impacts and increase investment in the social capital of our communities.
Speakers include Donna Wilson (11 am Friday) speaking on "People and Profitability: A Triple Bottom Line Approach," Carsten Henningsen (5 pm Friday) on "Investing for a Sustainable Future" and John Cusack (11 am Saturday) on "The Case for Sustainability: Maximizing the Benefits for All Society," and Alan Durning (4 pm Saturday) on "Aikido Politics, Green Taxes and the Northwest." Michael Shuman of Green Policy Institute is scheduled to debate Jack Roberts of Lane Metro Partnership (7 pm Friday) on the topic "Global vs. Local." More information on the speakers, films, workshops and special events is available at www.uoregon.edu/~sbs/or see the program insert in last week's EW. Sponsors of the symposium include Eugene Weekly, ASUO, Sustainable Industries Journal Northwest, The Rachel Carson Group, Lundquist College of Business, Pomegranate Design, The Aldo Leopold Group, The John Muir Group and numerous others.
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