At a time when many companies are scrambling to cut every possible cost, Bellingham's Brenthaven, a manufacturer of backpacks, messenger bags and computer cases, is working with students and staff at Western Washington University to drastically reduce its carbon footprint, a project that will almost certainly take away profits from its bottom line.
It just comes down to doing the right thing, says company founder Harvey Stone.
"We really just felt we need to put our money where our mouth is, concerning sustainability," said Stone. "We needed to make a sense of environmental responsibility a companywide effort that reached into every corner of our operation, toward our ultimate goal of 'Zero Impact.' And that's where Western came in."
A chance conversation between Stone and Brad Smith, dean of Western's Huxley College of the Environment, got the ball rolling and put Stone in touch with Seth Vidaña of WWU's Office of Sustainability. As 2008's fall quarter began, a plan was in place for Vidaña, along with WWU students Jayden Williams and Corey Havens, to conduct a greenhouse-gas inventory and a climate action plan to reduce the company's impact and help it move forward toward its goal of carbon neutrality, with Huxley serving as the coordinating element between the research team and the company.
Stone said Brenthaven had already been working toward a more vague set of sustainability goals—a recent agreement on packaging with Apple Computers, for example, helped it reduce more than 100,000 cardboard containers per year—but Western's research brought the big picture more into focus for everyone.
"We had already taken steps to reduce nickel and PVCs from our products, but we needed to go deeper," he said.
One aspect that became clear early on was that some things Brenthaven does to get its products to far-flung worldwide markets, such as shipping its products overseas, have greenhouse-gas costs that can only be lowered so much - and that these types of costs would need to be negated using the process of Carbon Offsets, which involves paying to invest in "greening" such as waste-to-fuel plants or reforestation.
This type of detective work was what made the project such a challenge, said Vidaña.
"Trying to compute the carbon footprint generated by a pallet of Brenthaven bags sitting in the hold of a freighter making its way across the Pacific Ocean takes a lot of digging, but the students were up for it. They did an incredible job," he said.
Havens, an Environmental Planning major from Redmond, said it was exciting to see a local company take such an active role in the push toward climate neutrality.
"I really hope businesses across the country start to see the transition to zero impact as a necessity and not an expense," he said.
Wilson, also a Redmond native and a senior dual-majoring in Economics and Planning and Environmental Policy, said the project was a fascinating exercise in economic and environmental research.
"I think the most important experience I took away from the project was learning to work with busy people with jobs of their own, and get the information you need from them in a timely but polite manner," Wilson said.
Vidaña agreed.
"Western has really taken a leadership role in sustainability research, and hopefully this project will provide some impetus to get more local companies thinking about this topic and, more importantly, using Western to help their companies in this way," he said.
For more information on sustainability research or the Brenthaven project, contact Vidaña at (360) 650-2891 or vidanas@cc.wwu.edu, or visit http://www.brenthaven.com.