Download audio file (Cause-Capitalism_Aseem-Das.mp3)

World Centric evolved from a nonprofit to a nonprofit with a revenue-earning component to a for-profit social enterprise. Today, World Centric makes fully compostable household products including utensils, plates and cups. You can find the brand in Whole Foods and Cost Plus World Markets and when you take out from your sustainable deli. It’s a profitable company rooted in a strong social mission. It’s a terrific story to profile this week on Cause Capitalism as I’ve been focusing on social business ventures.

Aseem Das founded World Centric as a nonprofit organization with “a mission to reduce economic injustice and environmental degradation through education and community networks.”  He knew he didn’t want to take the rote nonprofit funding approach–donor solictitations and grant proposals–so he looked around for a revenue stream that was aligned with World Centric’s mission.  He dismissed mattress recycling and wind energy in favor of selling fair trade and compostable products online.

In the process of applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status (501(c)3) sales of fair trade compostable products picked up; the organization was earning too much revenue to easily earn 501(c)3 status.  So in 2009, World Centric fully converted to a for-profit enterprise selling compostable products. “It clicked that we could still do what we wanted to do as a for-profit,” says Aseem.

The company is still focused on its social and environmental impact. It works toward being a model for sustainable enterprise and to influence consumers’ consumption and waste behavior.  Aseem feels World Centric is able to reach a larger market segment than it would have as a nonprofit.  But the current challenge is using this opportunity to educate consumers about the environmental and social issues core to the company’s mission.

Aseem decided against taking funding and has been able to grow the company through sales. “We’re 100% in control of what we do with the business.”  The tradeoff for independence is lack of resources, which adds to the challenge of balancing a social mission with profitability.  Aseem now spends more time growing “the business side of things” than running the educational programs on which World Centric (.org) was founded.

But it seems Aseem’s constant juggling of mission and financial sustainability is working. World Centric’s social mission helped the enterprise win larger accounts and gave it more room to build up operations and test the market as a nonprofit. The company has a carbon-neutral supply chain and operations, gives 25% of pre-tax profits to grassroots groups annually, heavily discounts products for schools and nonprofits, powers its offices with wind and solar energy, and offers employees a $250 monthly transportation stipend. Now, its new retail line opens up the opportunity to educate and influence consumer behavior through packaging and marketing.

If you like this interview you should thank Aseem on Twitter like this. You can follow World Centric at @WorldCentric.

About World Centric Products

World Centric products are made with annually renewable resources like corn, sugarcane and wheat straw fiber. Sugar cane and wheat straw fiber are also discarded by-products of the agriculture industry, and it uses this discarded fiber to make sustainable alternatives to plastics and styrofoam.

Download audio file (Cause-Capitalism_Beth-Holzman.mp3)

With a deep background in sustainability and corporate accountability, Beth Holzman brings an appreciation for impact evaluation and stakeholder involvement to Timberland as the company’s CSR Strategy and Reporting Manager.  I invited Beth to Cause Capitalism to talk about how Timberland engages its diversified stakeholders, why the company moved to quarterly sustainability reports, what the strategy is behind its microsite Earthkeeper and whether businesses are focusing too heavily on the consumer-facing side of CSR.

Notes on Timberland (read more on Timberland’s CSR strategy)

Timberland has a historical commitment to social and environmental sustainability, reflected in the company’s initiatives, some of which are listed below.  Timberland’s corporate responsibility programs are focused around four pillars–energy, product, workplace and service.

• Timberland began its partnership with City Year more than two decades ago in 1989 and has donated more than $10 million to help City Year expand its service programs to 13 cities nationwide.
• In 1997 through its Path of Service Program Timberland began offering employees 40 hours of paid-time off to volunteer annually.
• The Timberland “Nutrition Label,” aimed at communicating the environmental impact of the product to consumers was introduced in 2006 and viewed as one of the first efforts at educating and engaging consumers in a products’ sustainability.
• CEO Jeff Swartz holds live quarterly CSR Stakeholder calls. You can download a recording of each call here.
• This year, Timberland is on track to meeting an aggressive 50% emissions reduction target over a 2006 baseline.

Like this interview? You can thank Beth on Twitter like this and follow her at @CSR_Beth and Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz (who returns tweets!) at @Timberland_Jeff.

Cleaning-products brand method applied its five values to launch its new laundry detergent last month. Partnering with Goodwill Industries (collaboration), method toured the streets of New York City in a glass-walled truck that contained a mobile laundry room (innovative, weird).  During the three-day “Wash Smart, Give Smart” campaign, the mobile laundromat stopped at different locations to collect, wash and donate used clothes to Goodwill (caring).  The campaign encouraged passers-by to spontaneously donate an item of clothing that they were currently wearing (does MacGyver encourage stripping?). The first 200 to do so were rewarded with a 25-load bottle of method laundry detergent.

“Wash Smart, Give Smart” is part of method’s larger Laundry Smarts campaign to encourage people to re-think and improve the way they do laundry.  The campaign captured attention, put a new product in people’s hands, encouraged giving, benefitted charitable partner Goodwill and strengthened method’s identity as a functional green brand with hip properties.

No word on how the mobile unit was powered or if carbon offsets were purchased for the transportation and laundering, but a clever campaign all the same.

Photo credit: Mia in Manhattan.

Click the player to listen to my conversation with Ted, which goes into detail about how he launched operations oversees and why he choose to become incorporated as an L3C.  Right-click and save for the MP3.

Prosperity Candle is a for-profit social venture with L3C legal status (a Low-profit Limited Liability Company combines the financial advantages of an LLC with the social advantages of a nonprofit).  Ted Barber and his co-founder Amber Chand spent several years exploring the optimal product or service that could be used to create a business model they called Shared Prosperity, which gives every woman a regular and transparent share in profits.  They settled on candle-making (after extensive at-home tests) because it’s a highly scalable craft that requires only incremental investment in low-cost equipment (in this case, the wax molds).

For $140 an Iraqi woman can purchase a kit complete with the materials and equipment for candle-making, as well as an extensive entrepreneurship guide that covers record keeping, steps for starting a business and attributes of a successful entrepreneur.  Working with its core partner Women for Women International, Prosperity candle subsidizes the cost of the kits and additional wax molds; a new partnership with a microfinance provider now enables the women to buy materials on credit.  The entrepreneurs are paid $5 for every exportable candle when they bring their products to their local collection branch, run by Women for Women.  The entrepreneurs can produce one candle per mold per day, which, at one $5-candle per day, allows a woman to receive more than double the average hourly wage.  After selling eight candles, a woman can invest in a new wax mold and double her output and income.

On Prosperity Candle’s signature components is the interaction between consumers and the entrepreneurs.  ”It’s a rare instance when [an entrepreneur] is able to sell her product across the world and have a [consumer] talk directly to [her].  It’s had a tremendous impact on the women’s…sense of self esteem, of being connected to the world, of not being isolated in Baghdad…. It’s a powerful experience for them to realize that this isn’t just a project taking place in Baghdad, but that it’s a long-term opportunity for them and that they now have customers,” says Ted.

Like this interview?  You can thank Ted on Twitter like this and follow him at @WomenProsper.

Your next pair of Levi’s might come with a clothesline or shoebox-sized dryer.  After a recent lifecycle assessment, Levi’s realized that 60% of the climate impact of a pair of jeans comes after the jeans are made and sold; nearly 80% of this is from drying the jeans in a dryer.  The presumed and easy response to this would be for Levi’s to say, “Not our problem. We abide by fair labor practices, use recycled and organic fibers and run fuel efficient trucks to transport our jeans. What happens after we sell them has nothing to do with us.”

But Levi’s didn’t.  Instead, it launched Care to Air, an awareness campaign and contest to shift consumer behavior in favor of the environment.  In partnershihp with Myoo Create, Levi’s will award $10,000 for the world’s most innovative, covetable, and sustainable air-drying solution for clothing.  This isn’t a money maker for Levi’s.  You don’t have to buy jeans, or even own Levi’s products, for the campaign to be a success.  And since Levi’s has chosen the environment-at-large as a beneficiary, it doesn’t get to leverage the credibility or press that a nonprofit partner would bring to bear.

So why do it?  Is it just about being viwed as a socially compassionate brand?  That’s part of it–and it’s not taboo because the Levi’s actions consistently reflect a commitment (rather than lip-service) to sustainability.  Part of a company’s responsibility (I know, I task them with a lot) is to educate and involve its consumers in making more responsible choices and to pressure their competitors to raise their responsibility game.  Influencing consumer behavior also happens to be one of Levi’s commitments: “To reach far beyond the boundaries of our company to influence not only what people wear but the way people think and act.”

This is exactly what Levi’s is doing with Care to Air, and it’s brilliant because as much as you register the brand behind this campaign, it isn’t about the brand at all.  It’s about what I do with my clothes at home and how I understand this to affect the environment.