Mark Perry is a speaker at the GoGreen Conference 2010 in Seattle, WA. Join us April 21 for the conference to hear from Mark and a roster full of more amazing speakers.

If you think a convenient, cost effective electric vehicle (EV) that doesn't look like a cartoon characterization of an automobile is a thing of the future—think again. Nissan America and eTec are teaming up to deploy 4,700 LEAFs (their new electric 5 passenger, 4 door EV) to the market along with 12,500 charging stations in markets across the U.S. Mark Perry, Nissan America's Director of Product Planning and Strategy sits down with the GoGreen Team to talk about cost, range and how the availability of reliable mass market electric vehicles could change the transportation game in the U.S. forever.

GG: Can you give us a "state of the EV" report?

MP: What we’ve seen over the last couple years from manufacturers is a recognition that electrification of the transportation sector is no longer a “what if.” It’s more a question of when and people have now started using the term inevitable.  We’ve been working on Lithium Ion batteries at Nissan for over 17 years now, so when we started this project we were the first. Over that 17 years we’ve continually worked on it, but the last 18 months is where we’ve been out talking about mass production and mass marketing of electric vehicles. And now, I don’t think there is a manufacturer that doesn’t have some kind of similar program. Most of them are test and demonstration, but everybody is jumping into a change in both the fuel and the power plant that will drive transportation into the future. 

GG: We saw that both Porsche and Ferrari now have hybrid vehicles in test programs, is this the kind of trend you’re speaking of?

MP: Exactly. You know when those guys are doing this that you’ve reached a tipping point. 

GG: What do you consider some of the most exciting technologies coming out at the beginning of this decade for American vehicles?

MP: It’s a combination of the amount of investment that’s going into Lithium Ion batteries—which is tremendous—there are a lot of really good batteries out there now. My crystal ball—going out 10 to 15 years—is a little cloudy, but there's a lot of continuing research and development that will continue to go on. The batteries we’re seeing come to market now are a leapfrog in technology from where we were, even eight years ago. And then, of course, when you’re working in Lithium Ion batteries and electric motors, you’re also setting yourself up for fuel cell vehicles of the future. Even if battery technology doesn’t make a leap, we’ll still have a very efficient plug-in hybrid.  We think the end game is electrification—either pure battery electric or fuel cell. 

GG: Are Lithium Ion batteries a stepping stone to get us to that end game?

MP: We think with the hybrid technology that’s out there for a while and plug-in hybrids are the bridge technologies to electrification. Once you get to battery powered electric vehicles, you’re trying to reduce cost and improve range. With fuel cell vehicles it the combination of shrinking the size of the overall hydrogen that you have to carry, how to refine it and how to shrink the size of the entire fuel cell pack. Reducing cost, reducing size, reducing weight.  The battery pack that we have now in the Nissan LEAF, just from where we were in 2002 is half the size, half the weight, twice the energy density and one sixteenth of the cost. 

GG: What is the biggest shift that still needs to happen? Cost? Distribution channels? Technology barriers? Public perception? Where is the disconnect between where we are now and everyone driving a car like the LEAF?

MP: We think our program is a little bit different than most in that we are going into mass production and mass marketing the LEAF. It will be the first time in history that these vehicles are widely available. Second, this vehicle is going to be affordable. It’s not just for elite, but affordable for the masses. Third, you have the issue of range. The range is the range. That’s more of a marketing and behavioral issue that we’re going to have to do some education on. The technology is not for everyone—but it does cover 95 percent of your daily driving habits. But the technology just isn’t there yet to pull a boat behind it or a horse trailer or to go four wheeling. 

GG: Is technology the biggest challenge you’re facing right now?

MP: It’s one of them and obviously cost as well. When you get to mass production scale, you need to drive your costs down. We’re very appreciative of both the federal and state incentives that are available. But we also know that to truly achieve mass market success and scale, you can’t always rely on those to be there.  Our task is to appreciate the level of support that’s there to help get the market started, but long term, manufacturers have to get their costs in line to the point where you’re not paying a premium for the technology. 

GG: If you’re willing to look into your crystal ball again—how long do you think we are off until we’ve got fuel cell semi-trucks crossing coast to coast in America?

MP: Right now we’re seeing a combination of hybrid-electric—so a combination of diesel and hybrid-electric bucket trucks—come to market already. People have joked—and I can’t claim this as my original thought—that there is no silver bullet to solve our transportation issues, but there are silver buckshots. By that I mean that for some vehicle segments—medium and large duty trucks—natural gas and diesel may make some sense.

For passenger cars it’s battery electric or fuel cells at the end. For other vehicle segments it may be a combination of technology. It just doesn’t appear that there is one technology right now that solves all issues. However, we’re seeing manufacturers working on all five—improving gasoline engines, looking at clean diesel, hybrids, plug-in hybrids and then finally, electrification.

GG: Has the consumer mind set changed in the past five to 10 years? Or are proponents of these technologies still preaching to the choir?

MP: No, it’s changed. I think that the number one issue always has been and will continue to be price. It doesn’t matter the vehicle segment or the power train or the technology, the first question is always about price. People always ask, “what does it cost,” “am I expected to pay a premium,” and “is there a payback period?” What Nissan is setting out to do is to take away the cost premium issue and the payback period, so you’re better off from day one. We really hope to change the game completely with the launch of the LEAF.

The second biggest issue has always been range. And the third thing that comes up are the positives—the economic benefits, the environmental benefits, reduction benefits and the philosophical benefits from feeling like you’re doing the right thing. But those things always come third behind the rational issues. 

GG: How will marketing messaging and branding strategy factor into educating the public on the need for electrification of our vehicles?

MP: It’s a big task. We’ve spent the last 18 months talking to people trying to get them to understand that this isn’t technology that’s 10 years away. It’s here. We’re nine months out from launch and we have a vehicle that goes 100 miles on a single charge, is affordable and you can use it everyday as your primary vehicle that you go back and forth to work in, do your chores, grab the kids and what have you. So the first piece of the launch is the education piece.

The second piece is the concern about charging. What people aren’t considering is that you charge overnight in the convenience of your garage at very low electricity rates, and wake up every morning with 100 miles in your tank. The early adopters get it, but the majority of Americans are still learning that you’ll never have to go to a gas station again. This is as convenient as plugging in your cell phone and it take a little time to get used to that concept.  The last piece of the puzzle is asking how far people really go on a daily basis. You can sit there and show the statistics—95 percent of the population goes less than 100 miles a day and 72 percent go less than 40 miles—but until people actually do that for themselves it’s a challenge. We’re actually challenging people to keep a driving log for a week to track their mileage day by day to see how far they actually go. Most people find they don’t go very far at all.

GG: When did Nissan lock on to the importance of heading down the electric vehicle path? What prompted the support in your corporate culture for that?

MP: It was back in 1999 when the Nissan Renault happened. We’d been working on the Lithium Ion batteries for almost a decade before that and were the first car company to do a Lithium Ion battery pack vehicle in 1998. That was our test and demonstration time. When Mr. Ghosn and the Renault team came and saw an advanced engineering, almost skunk works in the top part of the company, he found this electric vehicle program and a battery team working diligently without a lot of visibility in other parts of the company. He saw that as a gem or a nugget that he had uncovered.

We continued to work and in 2002 we had a breakthrough on the battery itself. Once that happened, it became a question of how we could get this to market, because Mr. Ghosn saw the combination of consumer interest, the pressure from a regulatory standpoint on things like CO2 reduction—and we see that increasing with cities like London and Paris restricting access to their downtowns to vehicles that meet a certain low or no emissions standard—and then also the sheer multiplier of more vehicles hitting the road every year in China and India with an increasing pressure on the oil supply and fuel prices. It was pretty clear what direction we needed to take. 

GG: Where there challenges you faced when bringing this technology to market?

MP: Of course. You have to have high confidence in the battery technology and its durability and reliability. Two, you have to find and optimize a vehicle platform. You’re always dealing with weight, size and cost—and you’re always trying to maneuver around those three sometimes competing variables to find the right combination.  Until we were able to get the pack down as small as we have and move beyond the flashlight and laptop batteries cell structures of the past into a format that is flat—think of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper—you’ve heard them termed as laminate, pouch, prismatic, polymer and they’re all flat structures that are easily stacked.

And all of a sudden, you don’t have to give up rear seat room or trunk room. You can have a normal passenger interior and package the battery down below the seats and you have a viable vehicle concept.  Now from a manufacturing standpoint, there isn’t an automotive company out there that has a long history of manufacturing batteries—some have played around in that arena—we probably have the longest history of research and development in battery technology internally at an auto company, but what you then have to go do is find manufacturing expertise. You can’t build a battery pack in a normal automotive factory. 

GG: Do you think people will start to outsource? And it might be like having a Intel processor in your computer regardless of whether you have a Mac or a Dell?

MP: We see a little of that happening already. Most of the major players have entered into partnerships or hooked up with different battery suppliers. Our joint venture is with NEC. They were brought to the party, because they have mass production manufacturing expertise in battery packs. So it’s our cell, but they are a big part of the equation of bringing that to mass market.  In the United States, you have A123 hooking up with a couple of auto companies. LG Chem out of Korea is working with Volt. Panasonic is working with Toyota. So the partnerships are forming right now. Will there be one battery that emerges so far superior to everybody else’s? I don’t know yet. I think the first person who gets their costs in line and has a very reliable and consistent battery pack may win the advantage. 

GG: Can you tell us about the program that Nissan is running with eTec that is building charging stations and distributing vehicles in the Seattle area and across Oregon?

MP: We were fortunate to partner with eTec, who has been a longtime partner/supplier with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE put out a series of grants back in May of 2009 looking for projects that were focused on mass scale. It was all about the charging infrastructure and how people would actually use them. We were fortunate to win $100 million out of a $400 million pool of money to build the single largest public and private charging infrastructure and electric vehicle rollout ever.  So in five regions and cities around the country they’ll be fast started. Those aren’t the only markets where we’re launching, but those markets will see the system quicker.

There will be a total of 12,500 chargers put in and 4,700 Nissan LEAFs made available. The project is all about how they people who own the vehicles actually interact with and use both the car and the charging network that’s deployed.  Especially in those markets—Seattle, the state of Oregon, San Diego, Phoenix/Tucson and the state of Tennessee—the issue of the ability to charge and concerns over not being able to find charging stations hopefully won’t be there, because there will be a fully deployed, rich and diverse charging network on the ground. 

GG: Are these stations for the exclusive use of the people in the program? Or if you have another brand of electric vehicle, are those stations still available for your use?

MP: The good news from a consumer standpoint or a retailer standpoint is that for once, we’ve actually gotten ahead of industries like the cell phone makers. The charging is universal. There’s an industry standard for the charging port and plug that anyone’s vehicle—whether it’s pure electric or hybrid electric—can use. It’s the same plug.  The charging network we’re building is not proprietary for Nissan vehicles, it’s just that we believe we’ll be the biggest users, because we’ll be out there in volume and scale. Though, as part of the project, there is a local 50 percent match, which can be financial in kind dollars or it can be things like land or access. Obviously if you purchase a Nissan LEAF, that goes beyond that match that’s required. So folks that participate in the program and purchase a LEAD will be supplied a home charger as long as they agree to participate in the research. 

GG: Why is this initiative so important and why are Oregon and Seattle among two of your five test markets? MP: Start with consumers. Where are the early adopters? Where are the folks who have been living green, breathing green and talking about living sustainably for a long time? In the quick surrogate you look at in the early adopter market for hybrids and what markets they took off in first. Oregon and Seattle, from a per capita standpoint, if they’re not number one and two, then they’re really high up there.

The second part of the process was supporting utility companies. So Seattle City Light, Puget Sound Energy, PGE and Pacific Power, Salem Electric, etc. are very supportive and advanced with a high percentage of renewables in their portfolio. In Seattle even, the EVs will be running around a net carbon zero power source, because even if you look back at the utility company and the amount of hydroelectric power they have, you’re net carbon zero from a source standpoint—which is fantastic.

The third component to our choice of markets was policy. So in the state of Oregon, the Governor’s Office led a task team that drove the entire state to decide that they wanted to be a the forefront of both electric vehicles and renewable energy. Oregon and Seattle are two areas of the country that are leaders—longtime leaders—in these sectors and it made a lot of sense to work there.

The Department of Energy is looking for a deliverable of information on around 100 million miles of real world activity with EVs after two years. They can use this to study how EVs are used, where people charged, how often did they charge? Did they use 50 percent of their battery on average or 80 percents? When did they look for charging? We’re also going to demonstrate fast charging in those areas where the station allows you to get an 80 percent charge in 26 minutes—and we want to know if that will change charging and driving behavior.

The program is designed to help leaders in other parts of the country who may not be quite as advanced, or who are looking at a blank sheet of paper and trying to figure out what they need to do to get started. The report will be able to help them understand what they need to plan for and how to do a deployment of public chargers. It will answer how many of them they’ll need, where to put them, how dense. And for the utilities, it will let them know what their load profile will be like and what the need to do to prepare for it. 

GG: Any other topics of interest you’d like to hit on before we wrap this up?

MP: People always ask us, “why now?” We talked a little about that earlier—consumers are demanding this, regulatory pressures are rising and the number of vehicles is sky rocketing as India and China take to the road. With a normal adoption curve on the number of vehicles we have on the road today, we could easily have two billion cars on the road in 2020. And as it stands, there just aren’t enough resources to put two billion cars and trucks on this planet.

We have to change.  The questions are how fast and when? Electrification is a very efficient mode of transportation—far more efficient than an internal combustion car.  So—why now? That’s usually the first question and then we get “how many?” It’s funny because the most aggressive study—done out of UC Berkeley—said that the top number would be 64 percent market penetration by 2030. But we also had the CEO of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company predict 45 percent of the transportation sector will be electrified by 2050. So the forecasts are there from various sides of the table and we think its going to move faster than many expect it to.

It’s coming and the good news for GoGreen readers and participants that live in the Northwest is that they’ll be right at the center of it all.  And it’s not just Nissan. At last count, there were probably 30-40 different EV projects out there. Most of those are still in test and demonstration programs, but people are moving in the right direction.

Mark Perry is the Director of Product Planning and Strategy at Nissan America and a featured speaker at the GoGreen ‘10 Conference on April 21, 2010 in Seattle, WA. To register for the GoGreen Conference ‘10, please visit: http://www.seattle.gogreenconference.net/registration. GoGreen ‘09 sold out, so make sure to sign up soon! Mark and our other 40+ eco-visionary speakers are going to rock your green world.

To learn more about Mark Perry and the Nissan LEAF, visit: http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index.jsp

When brothers Kevin and Daryl Maas founded Farm Power, there wasn't a lot of public awareness or support among Washington State dairy farmers for manure digesters. Although manure has been used for millennia as a fertilizer, proving that there was worthwhile value in cow droppings as an energy and bedding source was a sophisticated concept to develop among farmers, politicians and the Skagit County community. Luckily, this dynamic duo were prepared to fight for their cause and wound up triumphing a business model that helps keep dairy farmers increase their bottom line—and their green line too.

GG: What inspired you to start Farm Power?

KM: It was a combination of an interest in renewable interest and agriculture and wrapping that all together in with the community where I grew up. For a number of years, I’ve been hoping for an opportunity that would tie those all together, and Farm Power was it. We’re trying to support the dairy community and at the same time create renewable energy—while doing it in Skagit County, Washington. 

GG: So we have to ask, in all seriousness, what's so special about cow poo?

KM: Well, it’s an unrecognized resource. For thousands of years cow manure was used as a fertilizer. It’s only recently that we replaced it with commercial fertilizers, but people have already forgotten that purpose it held. The added advantage that there’s also energy locked in it is pretty cool. It’s an interesting discussion to talk to farmers—who view manure handling as kind of an issue for them—and then go to people with more of an urban perspective who see manure as something they just want to go away. That’s why we have waste water treatment plants that make our waste just disappear—or so we think. Farmers are typically less interested in manure just disappearing, especially when we can make energy out of it and kick some of that back to them. 

GG: How far do you think we can take this concept of making energy out of waste products like manure or methane sourced from landfills? Do these resources have potential to be major players in the bio-fuels and bio-mass markets?

KM: It’s not a simple answer, but the reality is that if you took all the manure in the United States, and turned it into energy, you’d only make up a couple percent of our energy needs. So it’s never going to solve all our problems. There is a lot of manure out there, but we also need an enormous amount of energy. So it’s a viable component, but it’s not a silver bullet. I like to call it a silver bee-bee and then you go out and find other bee-bees to collectively power the country.  The thing that needs to work for more energy to be extracted from manure is the spread of models similar to Farm Power's. Right now we’re working with two farms on our first project and the reason that we’re there at all is because neither of those mid-sized farms would be able to put in a digester on their own—it’s just too expensive. But if the organization to bring farmers together like this spreads or if the technology gets cheaper, it can happen on a broader scale.

You mentioned landfills. There’s definitely a lot of opportunity with landfills, but I think we have to ask ourselves how far into the future we want to keep using the very 20th century approach to waste—just piling it all up into landfills. Yes, we can get methane out of our landfills, but I’m hoping we find better ways to meet our energy and waste needs. If you look at the Europeans, they handle their municipal waste much more aggressively. They separate things out, digest some of it and compost the rest. It would be really cool if we could get there. 

GG: On your website, it says that Farm Power believes in farming that is both economically profitable and sustainable. How does your business model help achieve this goal for them?

KM: One of the things we’re attempting to do is make a medium sized farm more viable by extracting extra value from manure and providing the farmers with value. We separate out the solids from the digested manure and that actually becomes the cow bedding.  So in all, we’re saving the two farms we’re working with almost $10, 000 a month just on bedding costs. That's on top of the energy created and fertilizer that comes out of the process. And that helps—it doesn’t make up for low milk prices or other bigger issues, but it’s a noticeable help.

The farms we work with are spending at least a couple of million dollars a year. And we might shave their costs by only one or two percent, but they operate on really think margins. For most of 2009, dairy farmers in Washington lost vast sums of money. So while we can’t give them more value than their milk does, we can help their margins a bit.

As far as sustainability goes, there’s quite a bit of talk about the impact of livestock on the climate and we’re trying to operate ahead of that—before regulations get put in place and force farmers to make changes. We would like to do this now, so that when the inevitable climate regulations come, the farmers can say, “Hey we’ve already got a digester. We’re processing our manure and reducing the methane emissions from it, we’ve got our own renewable bedding source and natural fertilizer.” By the way, the liquid is still a fertilizer that can be used by the farmers as well for their pastures. And it’s actually easier to work with and easier for the plants to benefit from this year as opposed to several years down the road.

GG: How important is the component of collaborative community action in terms of sustainability and profitability.

KM: It’s pretty vital. We spent the first year and a half that we were in business, going through the smaller community of Northwest Washington, just north of Seattle, making sure that everyone knew what we were doing and that we weren’t going to frighten anybody. We enacted the concept of no sudden moves, because the last thing that we wanted to happen with a project like this is that people would get surprised and start to feel the, “not in my backyard” syndrome. We wanted to reach out to people and explain what we were doing.

That worked well when we started and also when we needed to change some legislation. Former legislation recognized that there was manure and there was compost, but there was no category for manure that has gone through a digester. But because we had spent a lot of time talking to people and community leaders and politicians, when the time came for us to make the changes we needed to happen in order to continue our business, we had a lot of support.  If you’ve looked at the Farm Power blog, you’ve seen pictures of the ribbon cutting that we did a few months ago. That was the result of keeping our community relations strong and we had a couple hundred people out for the fun.

Kevin Maas is the co-founder of Farm Power, a collaborative organization that provides and runs manure digesters for mid-sized dairy farms in Northwest Washington State. Kevin is also a speaker at the GoGreen Conference 2010 in Seattle, Washington.

GoGreen 2010 Seattle is a full-day sustainability conference geared towards businesses seeking actionable steps to greening their operations. The conference takes place April 21, 2010 at the Olive8 at the Hyatt (LEED certified Silver). Early Bird tickets are on-sale now through April 1, 2010. Tickets are $175 each for single Early Bird Full Day Admission and $150 Early Bird Full Day Admission for Groups of 2 or more. More information can be found at: http://www.seattle.gogreenconference.net/registration/

For more information about Kevin Maas and Farm Power, please visit: http://www.farmpower.orghttp://www.seattlegreendrinks.org/

Join the GoGreen Conference on Twitter:@gogreenconf. We’re also on Facebook!

Writing Your Sustainability Plan was one of the most popular sessions at GoGreen 2009—and for good reason. Not only is a sustainability plan a crucial step in achieving your green goals, but James Curleigh/KEEN, Clark Brockman/Sera Architects, Mark Morford/Stoel Rives teamed up to be wildly entertaining as well. They left us with several key takeaways:

• Every industry and business is different. To achieve success, outlining a list of goals that are relevant for your situation is the important second step (the first being to decide you want to pursue a more sustainable path).
• Sometimes making sustainable decisions is easy (switching to paper with recycled content, purchasing more energy efficient equipment, etc.). Other times it's not—like when Stoel Rives removed trash cans from their lunch room in an effort to get their employees to rethink their habits. But we adapt and change to fit our environment, and most times your talent will be energized by green ventures. There is no shortage of people out there who want to work for a sustainable company.
• Have fun with going green! You're doing good things—enjoy the journey, even if it's challenging at times.

Kettle Brand Foods produces all-natural and tasty potato chips--but they've also built an impressive array of sustainable components into their business model. Now they're delving into social media to share the details of their story on the consumer's turf. Vice-President of Marketing, Michelle Peterman Hunt shares her take on social media and how to use it to engage consumers where the conversation is already taking place. She reminds us that social media is not a silver or a green bullet, but that it can boost traditional communication in ways we've never seen before.

GG: Can you give us a brief overview of how a company can use social media to engage and grow a tribe? MPH: Social media is one component of how to grow a tribe. The primary vehicle we use at Kettle Brand Potato Chips are the chips themselves. It’s the wonderful flavors that people experience through our chips that ultimately grow the biggest tribe. Beyond that, social media is an area where we’re just starting to dip our toes in the water. We know our tribe is already out there on Facebook and on Twitter, because we’ve been watching and listening to them for a while. We know that it’s really important to have a two-way conversation with them and to be where the conversation is already happening.  Mainly, in the last couple of years, we’ve relied mostly on traditional marketing tactics: The chips in the bag, the bag design, traditional PR. That’s a conversation generated from us to the consumer. The transition for us is to be where that conversation is already taking place. That requires a build up of tools to be able to do that in a good way. I always challenge my team to do whatever we do in the marketplace very, very well.

GG: How can social media be used to spread the word about green programs and initiatives?

MPH: At Kettle Foods, we do a lot of little things that aren’t necessarily worth writing a press release about. For example, we have a wetlands at our Salem, OR facility where we’re always watching the return of the birds every year. It’s not something we would write a press release about or on the back of the bag, but social media gives us a forum to say that. Now, we’ve also mentioned the birds at the wetlands on our website, but that requires the consumer to find us. Being engaged in social media allows us to join the conversation where it’s taking place and bring our story there.

GG: Do you think social media has the capability to boost the bottom line?

MPH: The bottom line isn’t driving our commitment to social media. It’s about relationships with our customers. The degree to which we can increase engagement with our brand, ultimately can have an impact if people buy more chips because of it. But that’s not the calculation we go through to drive initiatives with social media. If you’re talking about the “green line”—from an environmental standpoint—then I think that if the work that Kettle Foods does inspires people to minimize their impact, then that’s a bonus.

GG: Can you tell us about a few of the green initiatives you have going on at Kettle Foods?

MPH: The way I frame our sustainability commitment is less about initiatives and more about the way we run our business. Specifically, a potato plant we built in Wisconsin in 2006 was the first Gold LEED certified food-manufacturing facility in the nation. That’s more than just an initiative. That’s sustainability baked right into the product—literally.

Similarly, the way we power our potato chip plants is increasingly sustainable. We have solar panels built onto the roof in Salem. When it was built, it was the largest solar array in the Pacific Northwest. We have wind turbines on one of our facilities. We offset all of our electrical purchases with wind credits. We recycle all of our waste chip oil to bio-diesel. It’s built right into the business and these are practices we would do regardless of whether we talk about it. We have a very high threshold for what we will choose to announce and that’s press-worthy. Sustainability is built into this work and we certainly don’t want to be accused of green washing. That’s the last thing we want to see happen, because this is a commitment to the way we run our business—it’s not initiative lead.

GG: Other than treating “green” as business as usual, how do you rise above green washing by others in the industry?

MPH: Authenticity is what you should focus on. Authenticity is paramount to our brand and it should be to any brand. It’s at the root of everything that we do. Authenticity, if you do it right, comes through in any marketing program that you do, social media or otherwise. What that means—speaking back to the standard that we hold for ourselves—is that we want to talk about things from the standpoint of investing in the marketplace first, as opposed to overloading our fan base with every single thing that we do.  Social media is a form where you can introduce some of the smaller things that you’re doing. Such as, “Kettle Foods just learned how to improve our waste water impact by 5 percent!” There might be people out there who want to know that. It’s not something we would tell national press about, because that would smack of green washing. But for the dedicated fan base who are interested in hearing about that, social media is a fantastic forum to discuss things along these lines.

GG: Does that provide an amount of leverage against the competition?

MPH: Kettle isn’t about “going green”—it’s about doing business in a sustainable way. From my standpoint, corporate sustainability needs to be part of core business principles, not just a marketing initiative. We go up against the competition by making fantastic, tasty and all-natural potato chips. That’s how we compete in the marketplace. We wouldn’t bring our sustainability story as a tactic to compete, necessarily. We would also never go out and say, we’re doing something better than someone else. We cut our own path. We do this work because it’s the way we run our business. If people want to make comparisons, that’s for them to do, but that’s not the way we run our program.

GG: How would you advise a business to engage consumers in social media?

MPH: Well, we’re still learning. We hope that in the future we’ll be able to share some of the things that we’ve been able to do and use it as a platform for people to think about a new way of communicating—not only their core business composition, but also communicating their environmental impact. I should also note here that Kettle Brand isn’t necessarily an advocacy brand. Sustainability is a part of our overall philosophy and core principles, in addition to great taste and being all-natural. Again, it’s not initiative lead. In engaging people through social media, it’s been our experience—and it’s a limited experience—that this has been a transition between traditional marketing and this new space, and we’re trying to do it really well. I would say the success that we’ve had is connected to the product that we make.

Specifically, we had a social media campaign on Facebook when we launched a product in 2008 called Death Valley Chipotle. Just to give you a little background, Death Valley Chipotle was selected as the brand to launch for Kettle Foods in 2008 as a result of our People’s Choice Campaign. The People’s Choice Campaign is a traditional online campaign. People had to come to our website and select a flavor from a list of five that we were thinking about and Kettle Foods went on to make the winner.  With the Death Valley Chipotle launch last year, we also had a Facebook application where people there could download a thermometer. We had a contest through Facebook, where once the temperature in Death Valley National Park reached 120 degrees, people could enter a sweepstakes to win chips for an entire year. What that required was going to that Facebook application everyday to see if the temperature had reached 120 degrees.  We had approximately 15,000 people download that application.

That event was also a fundraiser for the Death Valley National Park’s Death Valley ROCKS program, and we raised $5,000 for them in two weeks.  Death Valley Chipotle then went on to be released in the more traditional manner—with a press release, etc. What social media added was a buzz factor. The benefit of that is having a conversation directly with your consumer base. We didn’t need to wait or go through the traditional media channels—where you have to appeal to an editor and a writer and they have to decide to write about it. Going to the consumer directly has an advantage in that it’s very efficient from a time standpoint and a cost standpoint. The challenge in that is to come up with something creative enough to capture the mind share that’s available. There’s a lot of competition for eyeballs and for time. Your program has to be something that is really compelling.

Michelle Peterman Hunt is a speaker the GoGreen ‘09 Conference, October 7th, 2009 in Portland, Oregon.

To hear more from Peterman Hunt and our other 40+ eco-visionary speakers on embedding your business with a sustainable commitment , register today at www.gogreenpdx.com/registration. Tickets are $175 per person or $150 per person for groups of two or more.

For more information about Kettle Brand Foods, please visit: http://www.kettlefoods.com/

To get the latest Go Green ‘09 news, green news and innovative ideas join us on Facebook (Go Green Conference) + Twitter (@gogreenpdx)

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Close your systems, open your business practices, lower your footprint and above all...collaborate. These are just a few of the key insights we gained in our interview with Sustainability Wonder Woman Darcy Winslow last week.  Winslow, a 21-year executive with Nike, now spends 100 percent of her time advising companies and organizations on how to get green with her own company, DSW Collective, Designs For A Sustainable World.

Struggling to start the sustainability process? Fighting to even get the leadership in your organization to listen to your eco-minded arguments? She's been there, done that and facilitated a major shift in focus at one of the most famous corporations on the planet. Lucky for us, she'll be speaking at the GoGreen 09' Conference in October--but if you can't wait to hear her tried and true advice (we can't blame you!), we've got you covered. Below is a teaser of Darcy's incredibly effective steps for getting your company on the path to sustainability.

GG: What is your personal philosophy on sustainable business and how were you able to align two seemingly unrelated areas (athletic footwear and sustainability) under that common goal.

DW: That’s a big question.  My personal philosophy on sustainable is, if I can borrow a line from Nike, is that there is no finish line.  I’m not sure that there will ever be something that is completely sustainable, but I think there are different levels of sustainability and how organizations approach it.

The first effort should be around mitigating the negative aspects of a business. After that, starting to adapt to some of the shifts we’re starting to see in the world around us from resources—finite natural resources—and the impact we have on climate change. And then ultimately, to start to redesign business models that create much more resilient communities and organizations, and THEN we might start getting close to sustainable businesses.

In terms of how I reconciled the business I was running with sustainability, was starting from the grassroots and understanding what the long term impacts of our business were. At the time I got started, I was running our advanced research and development division, which is where we make the long term investments around technology, chemistry and design features, etc., and to understand what impact they have when they play out two to ten years down the road and were we asking the right questions. And when we looked at it through that lens it started to frame up our long term goals around sustainability.

GG: Why are sustainable practices and values so important in the business climate and why is there "no time to lose," so-to-speak?

DW: If you look at any business, and I’ll use the sporting goods industry as an example, and at their supply chain and the resources that they draw upon, natural resource ecosystems are in decline—such as water. The apparel industry, not just Nike’s apparel business, but the entire apparel industry is incredibly water dependent. It’s very water intensive and the amount of water we have is finite. When that water is diverted from what is required to support a community to products, well how do we reconcile that? How do we begin to make investments in apparel innovation that reduce the dependency on water?  Same in the footwear industry—it’s heavily petroleum dependent. How do we make investments that will ensure that we are not dependent on a finite resource and one that has a heavy footprint? So it’s really about redirecting your investments based on the inputs into your product. I think every company needs to sit down and really understand: Are they drawing on a finite set of resources, or are they creating products such that they can move into a closed loop system and keep it in neutral balance?

GG: What was the tipping point for you? What inspired you to mount a dramatic sustainability program at Nike?

DW: For me it was two-fold. One was on a personal level. In 1996, I read a book called Living Downstream. And it talks about chemicals that get into our water system, our air, our land, downstream from chemical plants. And it answered two questions for me. Why did I have six miscarriages? And what was the cause of my husband’s cancer? It was literally because of the use of chemicals, that at the time were deemed safe. Then they found out that they had really horrible, long term impacts on human health. So that, in combination with running Nike’s advanced R+D Division and asking longer term questions—what are the long term impacts?--it forced me to think differently and in longer terms.

From a business perspective, it was at that same time that I met Bill McDonough for the first time. He was the green architect who designed and built our European Headquarters. He came into Nike and sat down with ten of us from the footwear division, one of whom is now the CEO of Nike, and said—very politiely—do you know what’s in your product? And we said, “well yes, we do.” He and his partner, Michael Braungart, had run a gas chromatagraph analysis and showed us all the different chemicals that were in the shoes, that were introduced by suppliers, by the manufacturing process, etc. That, for me, sealed the deal. That was the tipping point for me and the reason why I got involved in sustainability and why I’m doing it 100 percent of my time with DSW Collective now.

GG: Selling new projects and ideas to corporate leadership can often be challenging. How did you win support  for a shift in focus toward sustainability at Nike? What were the key selling points?

DW: Well it happened slowly. It was also quite a learning process, in terms of the language and the approach you use to engage people and to build the business case. In the very early days, before many people understood what sustainability really meant, including ourselves—this was in the late 1990s—it really wasn’t in their lexicon. To enter into the conversation from more environmentalist or activist perspective, that just did not work in business. Talking about the toxicity of products or their negative impact on the environment was a very difficult way to engage, especially the senior leaders and those who were in charge of the financial aspects.

It wasn’t until we began to shift our language to business language and focus on the positive impacts it would have on our business, that we began to really engage them and get their support. It wasn’t their full commitment, that came over time, but when we started assigning dollar values to both the investment and the return, combined with the growing consumer interest at the that time—because again, back then it was different, we had lots of survey data and trend data from both the U.S. and Europe, and environmental aspects never even made the top 15. Today that’s completely different. We had to build a business case around something that we thought would be true at some point in time and then be persistent about the message—but always show the return on investment. And also show the potential negative aspect about brand reputation if you do not adopt more sustainable business practices.

GG: Can you tell us about a few of the specific changes that were made and goals that you set, which other companies could learn from?

DW: Every company has to set their own goals, based on what their business model, their product, their service is. There are some that are common, regardless of what it is that you produce. One of those is your carbon footprint. Everyone needs to assess their carbon footprint. For Nike, back in 1999, I set the footwear goals to be zero waste, zero toxics and 100 percent closed-loop systems—which are still in place today. The closed loop business system has actually taken precedent and has become one of the most important aspects of how they make decisions at Nike.

The waste aspect, I think any company can look at that as well. And that’s waste in the broadest terms. That’s where you can really find dollars to support some of the other investments that need to be made. The other thing that companies really need to look at, in terms of opportunities and credibility around the actions they’re taking, is transparency. That’s something that is very difficult for some companies to open the doors and share information about their company. [Information about ] the supply chain and supply chain partners, that’s crucial, especially for a company that creates a product. Upstream, downstream, there are impacts all along the way. If you adopt a goal of closed loop systems or zero waste, you have to engage [your supply chain].

Finally, going back to your question about the economic climate and the state of natural systems around the world, we have to achieve an unprecedented level of collaboration both within our own industries and across industries, if we are going to achieve rapid integration and acceleration of sustainability into our businesses.

For more information on Darcy Winslow and DSW Collective: Designs For A Sustainable World, please visit: http://dswcollective.com/indexSplash.html

Darcy Winslow is a featured speaker at the GoGreen ‘09 Conference in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday, October 7th. Join us for a day of sustainability inspiration and education! GoGreen ‘08 sold out, so get your tickets soon to get serious about greening your business. Visit http://www.gogreenpdx.com/registration to register.

Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown has come a long way from the days when her friends used to tee-pee her lawn to get under her already eco-conscious skin. Now Brown is Chair of the Oregon Sustainability Board and oversees a multitude of projects, initiatives and policy-driven goals within that role.

For Brown, a lawyer turned legislator, it's surprisingly the first time she has been able to directly put her environmental expertise to work in her public service--but that hasn't stopped her from making waves, tackling big challenges and working tirelessly to spread the word about Oregon's leadership in sustainable enterprise to the world.

Before she keynotes at The GoGreen '09 Conference, Secretary Brown sat down with us to give you a sneak peek at what's going on in Oregon's sustainability-focused Capital.

GG: When did you develop an interest in environmental conservation and sustainability?

KB: [Laughs] You’re kidding right? Well I got my undergraduate degree in environmental conservation back in 1981. And I went to Lewis and Clark Law School and got my environmental certificate in 1985, so it’s been a life long interest. 

GG: Was it something that growing up, as a young woman, you were interested in?

KB: Yes. Totally. My girlfriends used to throw their trash out at my house and toilet paper the house because they knew it would drive me crazy! My parents thought it was really funny, believe me. But I wanted to be an environmental lawyer for many, many years—since I was a little girl. 

GG: Well you’re obviously very passionate about the issue. How has that passion manifested itself into your work with the State of Oregon?

KB: Well that’s a really interesting question, because this has actually been my first opportunity to work directly in environmental policy through two areas—one being that I chair the Sustainability Board. For whatever reason, it just didn’t happen during the 17 years I was in the state legislature. I became caucus leader fairly early during my tenure in the State Senate and ended up working, sort of conducting issues. For instance Brad Avakian was chair of the Environmental Committee or Charlie Ringo was chair of the Environmental Committee, so I didn’t really work those issues directly. This has been my first opportunity to work in policy, so I’m chairing the Sustainability Board. And for me, that job is to continue to fill former Secretary Bill Bradbury’s role or rather his very big shoes.

The first piece is that the Sustainability Board develops sustainability plans for 24 of the State agencies. So I would see next steps for them as performance evaluation—how are [agencies] complying with the sustainability plans and are these plans making a difference? And the other piece is that DAS (Department of Administrative Services)—which is kind of like the pie crust--has just sent out a draft for a policy on resource conservation and I think what you will see the State Sustainability Board do is assess how well State agencies are complying with this statewide manual on resource conservation.

GG: What’s been the greatest challenge for you, since coming into office, in pushing this front of sustainable business and an ecological focus for the Oregon economy? 

KB: I have to tell you—even on the Sustainability Board—we have no funding. So I have an 11-member board and we don’t have the resources—people are just doing this out the goodness of their hearts and their commitment to environmental policy for the State. 

GG: Can you describe some of the creative ways the Sustainability Board gets around having little funding? Because a lot of businesses are in the same situation these days… 

KB: Well, for example the Board traveled to Enterprise in June—and I wasn’t able to go—but they went to meet with a number of folks and toured the Zumwalt Prairie in Wallowa County and all the board members paid for that out of their own pocket. We’re basically on a shoe-string here. So we’re having to be very creative and folks are willing to donate their own personal time and resources to participate. It takes a lot of creativity and ingenuity on the part of the board members to implement projects.

GG: Are there any projects that you have a great desire to see accomplished in 2009? Any personal goals?

KB: There are a couple of things. One is, we have typically done an awards presentation in combination with the OEC (Oregon Environmental Council) Business Conference in December, and I’d really like to leverage that into and opportunity for businesses to—well let me give a really specific example: In the 2007 and 2008 years, one of our vineyards, Sokol-Blosser, got an award for their sustainability practices and I want to leverage that award process for encouraging sustainability cluster wide. I want to make sure that we are meeting our statewide sustainability goals and I want to make sure that we are implementing one of the bills we worked to pass for eco-system services while I was in the State Senate: Senate Bill 513. Those are my three goals for the year.

GG: It sounds like you have a lot on your plate—and on a “shoe-string” budget as you said—which is where a lot of business in Oregon seem to be at. What are some of the important action steps for Oregon businesses to take in order to take them to the next level of sustainability?

KB: I think for Oregon, we are developing both a national and international reputation for our sustainability practices and our green economy, and I think it would be leveraging with other businesses and collaborating with other businesses in your cluster area to make sure you’ve implemented best sustainability practices. So replicated best practices, and I think we’ve got to do better at marketing communications. So if we’ve got a business cluster where everyone has great sustainability practices—that’s great, but the next step is to ensure that there are good marketing practices in place so the general public knows how well we’re doing. Oregon Country Natural Beef is a really great model.

Let me also give an example from the public sector. In the late 1990s we passed legislation, Senate Bill 1149, which provided for a conservation fee on utility bills in the Pacific Power and PGE (Pacific Gas and Electric) service areas. Those dollars are going into what I would essentially call a trust fund—an energy trust—and I think there is about $100 million in there. I don’t there’s been a good enough job done of marketing that those resources are available for certain types of projects. So that business model works very well, but we have to do a better job of marketing and communicating—which is a tough challenge in today’s over-messaged world.

GG: Are there any recent success stories in terms of projects taking off that you’re really excited about?

KB: You know, I would talk about Senate Bill 513,but we’re meeting with Senator Devlin because it’s become sort of a three-way partnership with the Natural Resources Institute at Oregon State University and the Oregon Sustainability Board and now, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. What I see with Senate Bill 513 is the breaking down of agency silos and moving forward on environmental sustainability projects. What’s exciting, initially, about the proposal is that you have one state agency, one higher education institution and a state board all working together to implement this proposal. It’s a partnership of an odd conglomeration of folks. And I think folks are going to have to remember that politics makes strange bedfellows and they’re going to have to look at unusual partnerships.

GG: Do you see that happening in the private sector as well? 

KB: That I don’t know, but I think it needs to happen. 

GG: If we can pull this off—that is interweaving sustainable and economic goals into the foundations of our businesses—where do you see us going?

KB: I see Oregon as being a leader nationally and, hopefully, internationally in the green economy.

Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown is a keynote speaker at the GoGreen ‘09 Conference in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday, October 7th. Join us for a day of sustainability inspiration and education! GoGreen ‘08 sold out, so get your tickets soon to get serious about greening your business. Visit http://www.gogreenpdx.com/registration to register.

If you would like to learn more about Secretary Brown, visit: http://www.sos.state.or.us/bbook/state/executive/secretary_of_state/secbio.htm