Madame Chair, thank you for the wonderful opportunity to address the committee and speak about SB NOW’s work, and how we and the city can work together in greening our community.

 

    To paraphrase Gary Hirschberg, President and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, business is a powerful institution, which makes business a powerful force in how we as a society live and work within our communities.  Business is an engine of opportunity, growth and development, with vast resources and expertise at its disposal.  SB NOW’s role within this business universe is to be an independent, not-for-profit organization working to tap the incredible resources and ingenuity of the private and public sectors—in partnership with community groups, non-profits, and government—to make D.C. and, ultimately, the Nation a better place to live and work, now and in the future.

 

    SB NOW works with companies, municipalities, and individuals to help them integrate environmental and social responsibility principles into their operations and strategy.  SB NOW is a community of businesses, non-profits, and individuals dedicated to educating about and then realizing a common goal:  Helping D.C. become a more sustainable place to live and work—continuing to realize as fully as possible its continued mission in being a world-class capital city.

 

    SB NOW provides area businesses, individual consumers and communities with a variety of programs and services, positively impacting the triple-bottom line.  The triple –bottom line means “corporate responsibility” focused on people, planet, and profits.  The triple-bottom line is recognized as a way for business to address these issues, realize enhanced performance at lower costs, appeal to a growing number of environmentally- and socially-conscious consumers, and positively impact the communities where they live and work.  Businesses want to do the right thing by lessening their environmental impact, but altruism needs to be accompanied by return on investment to their stakeholders.  By reducing their environmental impact a business’s bottom-line will lead to increased profitability, worker productivity, brand identification, and host of other positive effects for the business.

 

    Today, companies are aware or becoming cognizant that balancing the needs of stakeholders with the drive for profits is an essential component of building a successful and sustainable business.  There are several reasons for this:  Customers increasingly want to purchase products from companies they trust, employees want to work for companies whose values they share, and communities and government regulatory authorities, we presume, want to work in partnership with companies, and not in opposition to them.

 

    Consequently, businesses face a range of complex challenges and increasing expectations for greater corporate accountability, transparency, and sustainability.  These challenges and expectations have reverberations throughout a company or even an industry—from marketplace positioning, productivity, and financial performance, to investor return.  We are seeing companies, law firms, and others positioning themselves on sustainability matters because their customers or clients are demanding it, or in many cases are starting to use it to determine whether to buy a particular product from that company or use that company’s service because their values dovetail with those of the buyer or user company or individual.

 

    Because these challenges and expectations can be so tempting and difficult to overcome, we need to ensure that businesses do not cheat consumers and mislead them into believing something about the company or its product that is not true or is not the whole truth.  To this end, SB NOW is introducing its Green Business Program.  The Program is made up of two parts:  1) a green business guide, which will be available to interested parties so we can educate them on how to become a greener company or household.  Second, SB NOW is incubating a green audit and certification program, wherein we come to a business, at their request,, and be a neutral, third-party certifier of green practices within a company or property.  This is not a green building program; that largely comes under the purview of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program, among others.  Instead, we aim to be the equivalent of LEED for what companies and people are doing, operationally, inside those hopefully greener built properties.

 

    Our green certification program includes a review of a company’s energy and water usage; storm water runoff system, if applicable; use of renewable energy, waste reduction and recycling, transit use, pollution prevention, and a host of other issues.  We will target industries ranging from restaurants, non-profits, government entities, law firms, colleges and universities (including secondary-level schools in order to start teaching a new generation about the proper care of our planet and instilling a sense of social responsibility early in their lives).

 

    As I stated earlier, we are in the incubation phase of our certification program.  For the past few weeks, SB NOW has been working with the Downtown DC BID to hone our certification process and guide.  As we begin to conclude the initial pilot phase, we will expand the pilot to include other entities—other businesses and firms, schools, a restaurant, and a government agency.  Our expectation is we will complete the pilot near the end of this summer and rollout the certification program, first in the DC Metro area, and then nationally, starting around September and throughout the rest of this calendar year.

 

    As you can hear, our program incorporates most, if not all or more, of what the proposed legislation would require.  The bill is laudable for its efforts to be a catalyst for companies and others to undertake sustainable efforts.  While SB NOW, as 501(c)(3), cannot take a position on legislation and does not here, we will say generally this:  That  the bill, while commendable, is also premature.  The bill preempts the opportunity for market forces to exact a change to corporate behavior in a way that legislation may not.  SB NOW believes that the best way to bring about changes within the private sector is to provide a positive incentive program as opposed to a mandate.  Legislation, by its very nature and existence, is seen by the private sector as a mandate.  Mandates require the expenditure of public and private monies for companies to comply when the legislation becomes effective, which may then have a deleterious effect on employers’ ability to hire more people, invest in research and development, bring their own ingenuity to bear because too often companies do only what a law requires and not necessarily what the market may have required, permitted, or rewarded them for as a result of their ingenuity.  Legislation, in short, tends to be too blunt of an instrument, when what should be the first course of business is the market itself.  Legislation can be a positive force, but it can also have a chilling effect.  Therefore, the power of legislation should be exercised with due caution.

 

    SB NOW would say that perhaps it is best for the Council to hold the proposed bill in abeyance for a year or two, monitor whether DC businesses are in fact moving in the direction that we believe the market is taking them anyway.  If the businesses do not or are too slow in aligning themselves with the market on environmental matters, then the Council should revisit the need for this bill.  Remember this:  usually, the lower the barrier to entry for business, the more likely business will have reason to enter into the right course of action—whether that is rolling out its own program, relocating to or opening an office in DC, bringing new jobs and revenue to the city, preventing cutting back on existing jobs with that company to undertake the costs necessary to comply with the legislation, and a host of other issues.

 

    As I said at the outset, SB NOW is willing to work with the Council and DDOE to help set a positive example for businesses by showing hot the government itself is willing to help preserve the environment, starting with the greening of DC’s governmental entities.  SB NOW is also willing to update the Council periodically on the progress of our work as you assess what, if any, further legislation is needed.

 

    Thank you for listening to our perspective.  I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

 

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