Leaders have an ironclad place in history.
Some are widely regarded as good: Marcus Aurelius, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill. Some not so much: Oliver Cromwell, Ivan the Terrible, Hitler.
Whether humanity actually needs leaders is a matter of some debate, though most fall solidly on the affirmative side. A better question is … what makes for a good one?
We would argue that excellent leadership inspires change while providing the tools to achieve it, which certainly describes the Michigan Sustainable Business Forum (MISBF) and its executive director, Daniel Schoonmaker.
The nonprofit works with both businesses and institutions, mostly in the private sector, though they collaborate with the public sector to build influence and prompt change across the board.
This year, MISBF celebrates its 30th anniversary, and frankly, there’s a whole lot to celebrate.
We caught up with Schoonmaker to learn more about the group’s evolution from a small group to 10 organizations that played an instrumental part in founding the LEED certification system to helping develop the concept of sustainability as we know it today.
There are many ways to define sustainability, Schoonmaker says. Some use the 3 Ps: people, planet, profits. Others use a different combination: environmental stewardship, economic vitality, social responsibility. Whatever the case, such definitions reflect the interdependent triangle formed by the Earth, humanity, and the bottom line.
After many years, though, MISBF wanted a better way to talk about these issues, so they reframed.
Today, Schoonmaker says, “Our mission is to advance climate leadership, social justice, and the creation of a circular economy.”
Sustainability plays an obvious role here, but the definition of resilience matters too. While the concepts are related, they are not exactly the same thing.
Resilience, Schoonmaker says, is how you prepare for disruptions in systems, doing your best to help them return to balance as quickly as possible. He gives the example of stormwater management systems implemented by a company such as Ecogardens, which make cities more resilient to heavy precipitation events while simultaneously reducing nonpoint source pollution.
Plus, he adds, it has “any number of co-benefits, such as decreased maintenance costs and lower cost of irrigation, increased wildlife habitat, reduced urban heat island effect, and reduced chance of flooding.”
In the same way, he says, if you invest in renewable energy or a closed-loop supply chain, you make your business or organization more resilient due to a decreased reliance on, say, the electric grid or international supply chains — both of which can be disrupted, to the detriment of people and businesses.
Indeed, sustainability and resilience are two terms that have heavy economic ramifications.
That’s not to say you can’t see good news on your quarterly statement, of course. But, he says, the goal is to invest in objectives that will make your business likelier to succeed for … well, is the rest of time too much to ask?
In all seriousness, such investments will help you:
At this point, let’s return our attention to closing the loop, a goal in which these elements all have a role to play.
Any organization geared toward sustainability has a welter of possible goals from which to choose, a double-sided coin if ever we’ve heard of one.
On the one hand, there exist nearly endless arenas in which you can make positive change: Yay!
On the other, humans have created just that many problems: Boo!
The Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, however, chooses to keep its eye on the prize. When we asked what their top goals were right now, Schoonmaker shared their five most important.
“Our top goal is to get methane out of landfills. Reducing it is, I think, the easiest and most impactful way for us to approach climate solutions. That includes moves as simple as wasting less food.”
~ Daniel Schoonmaker
In other words, MISBF wants to keep materials and nutrients within the supply chain, not the landfill.
Michigan is a methane super emitter, Schoonmaker explains, due to the large number of landfills in the state. While he acknowledges that landfill provides an important community service and we should never disparage them, it’s important not to overlook the significance of methane. This greenhouse gas, he says, is “more important than carbon by a factor of 60 in the first 20 years, and it’s a lower-hanging fruit in terms of what we can address.”
Their second goal, very much related to their first, is to move food products toward higher-value use.
“Instead of disposing of such products through landfills,” Schoonmaker says they advocate “keeping them in the food system by virtue of compost or animal feed or feeding people.” Of course, he adds, there’s also the option of “just not creating waste in the first place.”
To this end, their third area of focus is helping industries of all scales recycle better, as well as design and sell products that are recyclable. Moreover, they encourage companies to incorporate more recycled, organic, or bio-based content in their products wherever possible.
Goal number four is a big one, Schoonmaker says, and it goes beyond MISBF’s specific means to accomplish on its own: “We want to do our part to ensure that the business community is helping to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from our state.”
Naturally, coalition-building and cross-border influence are required, but those are two things the organization does well. They do some work in Illinois and Indiana, as well as collaborating on national initiatives, but they don’t try and reinvent the wheel.
Rather than try and become a new National Resources Defense Council, Schoonmaker explains, “Our goal is to create something that serves the industries and stakeholders in our state. Ideally, we can position our state as a community of practice that other states can learn from.” As such, they hope to play a complementary role to organizations working at a national or global scale.
These are big goals, to say the least. Getting methane out of landfills, moving food products toward higher-value use, helping industry recycle, and playing a leadership role in Michigan’s greenhouse gas elimination efforts is … a lot.
Like, a lot a lot.
But Schoonmaker has hope. Each of these would make a huge difference in returning to a circular economy, one in which valuable materials saw a long lifespan rather than a single-use, one-way trip to the landfill. After all, he says, it wasn’t so very long ago that humans lived that way: “We’ve had a regenerative economy within the past 150 years. There are still modernized and industrialized cultures and indigenous cultures that carry this idea forward.”
And Goal No. 5 will go a long way toward helping us get there as well.
Today, we see a sharp divide between urban and rural, between rural and wild. To some extent, those divisions will always exist, but it’s possible to blur them far more than we do and to bring much more nature into our cities.
Moreover, we need to do so, which is the fifth goal they’re currently pursuing.
Hard surfaces in cities — think streets, sidewalks, driveways, parking lots, and rooftops — give water nowhere to go. The result is that heavy precipitation or snowmelt ends up sheeting across these hard surfaces, carrying disease and pollutants with it into our waterways.
But there’s a better way.
There are some limitations to this, of course.
“Obviously, if you’re renting, you can’t start tearing out sidewalks or switching up roofs,” Schoonmaker acknowledges, “but there are plenty who do have those spaces.”
Many homeowners and businesses could utilize often-barren spaces for green infrastructure and natural stormwater management systems. You can put a green roof on a garage or a warehouse, or a rain garden into a side yard or on an abandoned lot. Anywhere you see hardpacked dirt, neglected lawn, or asphalt, ask yourself: Could it be something more?
“One of our largest priorities is to help businesses understand their impact on the watershed and to address their hardscape impacts by investing in the solutions Ecogardens offers. Everybody should be cutting their curb,” Schoonmaker says, referring to the idea of ripping out impermeable sidewalk, “and they should be putting in an ecogarden.”
Honestly, we couldn’t agree more.
One of the most powerfully heartening aspects of our chat with Daniel Schoonmaker was learning how apolitical change can be.
Yes, some parties lean more toward green infrastructure than others, but the Michigan Sustainable Business Forum sees no need to wait around for their approval or funding in order to get things done.
“I think the federal government has an opportunity to help remake our economy, advance decarbonization, close the loop, and help local communities gain wealth while reducing the impacts of environmental injustice,” Schoonmaker concedes. “It’s a generational opportunity, and I think it’s being cut short right now without a great reason.”
But this is where MISBF rolls up its sleeves and gets to work.
No company that has really invested in this work is going to slow down on it due to a change of administration, Schoonmaker says. Simply put, endeavors such as getting methane out of landfill or prioritizing green infrastructure and stormwater management are good for business, so people want to make them happen either way.
A lack of political help at the national level, therefore, doesn’t have as great an impact as many people fear it will, because the progress is taking place either way.
We don’t know about you, but that’s definitely helping us sleep better at night, and we have organizations like the Michigan Sustainable Business Forum to thank for it.