American Apparel<\/a>* employees are doing the work. Maybe this is done as a business model decision, but, I suspect that it was done because they couldn\u2019t find the facilities to do the work. It reflects the extremes that any brand must go through today to achieve domestic supply.<\/p>\nOur company began as a domestically produced brand. We made product in small cut and sew fabricators in California, Florida and eventually in the heart of this country\u2019s cut and sew world, near Lowell, MA (that American textile history story again) and we were the last brand in each of these facilities as they closed for lack of work. Our volumes alone could not sustain an entire company. The move to another country was not a choice for us; it was survival.<\/p>\n
What would have to change in the U.S. is a return of the entire supply chain support system. It\u2019s not a small proposition. It would take many years to replace the expertise and experience we have given up for lack of living wages. The apparel industry, of which the bag making industry is an offshoot, does not have any inertia in the U.S.. I hold little expectation that the U.S. will regain its position in this area.<\/p>\n
However, American companies like Gore (Gortex) and others with global operations still dominate the R&D of fabrics and textiles providing all sorts of technical advancements. These companies all have facilities in many countries, because clothing is global.<\/p>\n
JM-S:<\/strong> How have you integrated green business practices into other elements of Greensmart (day-to-day operations, marketing, transportation, etc… )?<\/p>\nTL:<\/strong> To achieve this, we needed to instill in the folks we work with a desire to be “frugal” in a good way. Here\u2019s a small but important example. Take something totally simple like the plastic window envelope that goes on a shipping carton that says on the outside “packing list enclosed.” These all plastic envelopes with an adhesive back are a very inexpensive commodity that are used for most shipments to contain the sheet of paper that tells the recipient what is in the box. Every shipment typically gets a 4″ x 5″ plastic window envelope. At 20 shipments per day, that\u2019s 5000 envelopes per year.<\/p>\nWe looked at those and said, “Do we really need to have 5000 pieces of trash sent to our customers every year?” So, we replaced those internally with a self-inking rubber stamp that can stamp the carton with that statement “packing list inside.” We put the sheet of paper inside the carton instead of outside the carton in this clear plastic envelope. It was not hard to conceive. We just hadn’t thought of it. We had to learn and teach new practices to folks (small though they seem) and there was risk that recipients would not find the packing list or object to the new location relative to their other suppliers. It turns out no one cared where the packing list is as long as there is a notice and it is there. The result is we save thousands of plastic envelopes, maybe a couple of hundred of dollars and the removed backing paper, all for the investment of a rubber stamp, saving a trash can or two worth of waste a year from ours and our customer\u2019s world.<\/p>\n
Believe me, I don’t think we\u2019re going to change the world with a rubber stamp, but, asking ourselves continuously “Why do we do it this way?” or “Is there some other way to do it?” drives our enthusiasm. The packing list envelope change was an experiment in human and business behavior modification. And with almost every single change, we save money or create less waste, so virtually all of our “greenness” results in a better performing company, economically.<\/p>\n
JM-S:<\/strong> Some in the environmental community argue that green products do little more than promote consumption. How do you respond to such arguments, and how do you work to reconcile the seemingly competing demands of sustainability and consumption?<\/p>\nTL:<\/strong> This is always an interesting question. Not to knock the folks who might think this may be true, but, it is an idealistic perspective to think that consumer purchases can be stopped by simply not producing products. In our case, as far back as humans have needed to carry stuff around, they\u2019ve been making baskets or bags or something to do it. For the most part, I would like to think GreenSmart is making things people find useful in their lives, not products that are used once or twice and discarded.<\/p>\nTo be more specific, we operate on a principal that we have come to call “displacement theory.” Displacement theory to us is the knowledge that every time a consumer makes a choice to GreenSmart, they make a choice that is not to a non-eco-conscious competitor. Our goal is to out-compete the virgin material guys. GreenSmart does not improve the planet if all that happens is we sell a bag instead of another brand’s eco-friendly version anymore than the planet wins any more or less when a consumer buys a hybrid car from between two hybrid cars. Our Displacement theory is to create manufacturing capacity, from the existing infrastructure, to take retail space, from the existing retail environment and create great products that out compete the existing virgin material products. In that way GreenSmart replaces virgin materials with eco-friendly materials providing a definable benefit to the planet.<\/p>\n
If we’re using a limitless material (at present that’s how the plastic bottle supply looks) or we’re significantly reducing resource usage in manufacturing, making a product that has as long a life span as is possible, we are doing the planet a favor by lightening its load, just a little. If at some point in the future, new materials are available, new processes or practices come to exist or be identified, we\u2019ll embrace them. We are very clear that our business is not resource neutral. We\u2019re also very clear that at some point in the far, far distant future, maybe bags aren\u2019t necessary. In the meantime, every time someone buys a GreenSmart bag, demand for a competitor’s non-green alternative is reduced by one. That\u2019s one less bag being made at some factory and one more bag being made at ours. From our perspective, and we\u2019d like to think most people\u2019s, that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n
It’s not an end-game solution. Walking is the end game solution to eco-friendly transportation, but, very, very few are willing to conduct their lives exclusively walking everywhere. GreenSmart is creating the path to consciousness about what can be better and what else might be possible.<\/p>\n
I’m so grateful to Tom<\/strong> for the time and thought he put into these answers… no doubts here that this is a company that’s put a ton of thinking and planning into doing business more sustainably. We’re in the process of getting Greensmart products into the Green Choices product comparison engine, so check out the current listings for recycled backpacks<\/a>,\u00a0 laptop backpacks<\/a>, and laptop sleeves<\/a>… with more to come!<\/p>\nImages<\/strong> courtesy of Greensmart<\/p>\n*Link to page in the Green Choices product comparison engine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starting a green business is tough enough… now imagine being a successful small producer of a product line and shifting to a environmentally-friendly model. Going back to the beginning on [ … ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":8331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[4559,249,4560,4561,503,4562,523,39,4386],"yoast_head":"\n
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