With globalisation, the world of retail has grown ever more interconnected. To keep up with worldwide demand, large companies produce more goods and ship to more places around the globe than ever before. But as the demand for goods and overseas shipping grows, so does our carbon footprint. Manufacturing and shipping release horrifying amounts of greenhouse gases into our Earth’s atmosphere, making retail one of the biggest contributors to global warming. But not all large corporations are doing business without a care for the environment. Jeffrey Swartz and his company, Timberland, are a ray of hope in this bleak situation, as they try their hardest to produce and ship their products sustainably.
Jeffrey Swartz’s sense of social and environmental responsibility began at an early age. As a child, he watched his grandfather, who started the business that became Timberland, pick up used thread cylinders from the ground to reuse. This taught him the value of reusing and recycling. Swartz thus grew up strongly caring about his impact on both society and the environment. Once he began working at Timberland, he made it his mission to help as many people as he could. He partnered with nonprofit youth organisation City Year, donating a whopping five million dollars to their social causes. He even launched Timberland’s “Path of Service” programme in 1992, which gave employees time off in exchange for doing community service.
But Swartz’s bigger goal was to turn Timberland into a sustainable, eco-friendly company. Timberland was now a huge international corporation, and Swartz saw that its global outreach would aid him in his quest to protect the environment. Large businesses, like Timberland, have “not only an opportunity but a responsibility to do good for the world by using the power of the market”, as he mentioned in an interview with the Tucker School of Business. In addition, Swartz wanted to reduce the carbon emissions his company was producing. As Timberland tried to keep up with the increasing worldwide demand for their shoes, their carbon footprint grew.
To help the environment, Swartz decided that his company would plant trees. By 2010, Timberland had worked with nonprofit organisations to plant a million trees in the Chinese Horqin desert. By 2018, this number had grown to 2.6 million. Although Swartz later parted ways with Timberland, the company kept his environment-first approach to business. Today, Timberland has pledged to plant at least 50 million trees by 2025. They have even introduced a “slow delivery” option for customers to help them reach their goal. Slower delivery speeds mean fewer plane and van trips needed to transport packages, hence reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced from such trips. In addition, Timberland plants a tree for every customer who chooses the “slow delivery” option. “Hopefully it’s a step toward making a larger impact,” the company told Reuters.
When asked what his favourite Timberland products were, Swartz talked about a line of shoes called Earthkeepers, which are made with sustainable materials such as recycled plastic and organic cotton. Much like the company itself, the Earthkeeper brand “has the potential to be the place where you tie together, explicitly and sustainably, the notion of commerce and justice,” he said. It is clear from Timberland’s example that not all global business models have to be harmful to our planet. With them leading the way, a brighter — and more sustainable — worldwide retail market no longer seems impossible.
Sources: CNBC,Forbes,Guardian,New York Times,Reuters,South Pole, StudentShare, Timberland (1,2),Triple Pundit,Tuck School of Business