Business & Finance

In August 2011, federal marshals raided the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Tennessee, apparantly preparing to charge the famous builder of instruments with trafficking in illegally obtained wood. In the aftermath of the raid there was intense media attention on the company and its sourcing practices. Andrea Johnson of EIA was interviewed by NPR because of her previous work on Gibson's allegedly illegal sourcing practices in Madagascar.

Garrett Fitzgerald is the sustainability coordinator for the city of Oakland, and says Solar Mosaic is a great alternative for people who are passionate about renewable energy, but do not have the financial or logistical capacity to install their own solar system. He said they are a model for combining social good with economic benefit. “These kinds of companies are the future of the green economy in Oakland,” Fitzgerald said. Read the full story

Michael S. Stevens is the Co-Founder and Principal of Pioneer Mountain Group, an environmental consulting firm based in Hailey, Idaho. PMG provides a range of management, conservation, scientific and natural resource production and marketing services to clients including non-profit organizations, investment firms, and private landowners. The firm’s current projects are in the western United States, Latin America and Canada.

“The move to build sustainability into the merchandizing side of the business is a game changer for the consumer products industry,” says Tim Greiner, managing director of Pure Strategies, whose firm is working with Walmart to build category-specific evaluation tools. According to Greiner, Walmart’s aggressive move into category scorecards will have a profound effect on other retailers' programs and on the entire consumer products value chain. Read the full story

"For their corporate people to take this step is very encouraging," said hook fisherman Eric Hesse of West Barnstable. Hesse, who was among a group of five Cape Cod fishermen who sold their catch of cod to Whole Foods in the first quarter of last year, said fishermen and representatives of the chain will meet next week to look into a new agreement to buy locally landed fish. "We were able to establish a relationship with them," he said. "Now, we're in the planning stages again."

Like the Haugheys, Evan Goldsmith, founder and owner of Hope for Women, was inspired to start his business after multiple trips to India in the 1990s. He worked on a service project in the Himalayas creating pressed-flower greeting cards with local women for a group in the U.K., and said he wanted to stay connected after moving back home. “I realized the market was growing for socially valuable products,” Goldsmith said. “Flashing forward to 2003, the Fair Trade movement was starting to grow with coffee and chocolate.”

That closeness has a dollars-and-cents value. Cyclists travel at what Portland Bike Coordinator Roger Geller calls a “human-scale speed” that allows them to “stop and buy something.” Read the full story

Sustained and superior performance depends, in part, on effective measurement, management and disclosure of traditional financial metrics. There are many other metrics such as those used to evaluate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance; resource efficiency; business model resilience; innovative capacity; brand strength and corporate culture can be just as informative on how a business is creating value.