Thursday, April 7, 2011

New England tech firms tout corporate sustainability

By Kyle Alspach

Corporate sustainability efforts are starting to have a major impact on how business is done in the U.S., but there are still many companies that need to get on board, speakers at the Chief Sustainability Officers Symposium said Wednesday.

Asheen Phansey, product manager for sustainability at 3D software firm Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp. in Concord, shared an anecdote about one of the company’s customers, Staples Inc. In 2008, Staples dropped supplier Asia Pulp & Paper Co. because the company’s sustainability standards were not up to par.

“That act has sent ripples through the industry,” Phansey said.

Mitch Tyson, a local tech industry veteran who is involved with a number of sustainable business organizations in the Boston area, spearheaded the symposium. It was attended by a standing-room-only crowd of about 75 at the McLane Law Firm in Woburn, and was co-hosted by the Massachusetts High Technology Council and the North Shore Technology Council.

At another SolidWorks’ customer, Proctor & Gamble, executives determined that a better environmental outcome could be achieved by designing a laundry detergent that worked in cold water, rather than by making a laundry detergent with fewer chemicals, Phansey said.

SolidWorks, meanwhile, is offering software options that allow customers to track the carbon footprint of their products as the products are designed, he said.

Tyson called the phenomenon of increasing corporate sustainability efforts “remarkable” and said that it doesn’t matter whether a company uses the chief sustainability officer title for any of its efforts — so long as the efforts are formalized in some fashion. Indeed, none of the speakers at the symposium held the CSO title.

Paul Lukitsch, worldwide energy manager at Millipore in Billerica, said the company’s sustainability efforts started in earnest in 2007.

The company does have a CSO — Dave Newman — and its goals have ranged from cutting energy use, installing renewable energy and making its products more sustainable. Since 2006, Lukitsch said, the company’s global energy use has been cut by 24 percent. Meanwhile, the company’s revenue has only grown.

“You can really have a growing company and reduce your carbon footprint significantly,” Lukitsch said. “Sustainability makes great business sense.”

Others who spoke were Sarah Hammond Creighton, sustainability director at Endicott College, and Kristine Kalaijian, director of environmental compliance and sustainability at Philips Electronics.

During the two-hour event, Tyson, chairman of Wilmington-based cleantech firm Advanced Electron Beams Inc., also shared a key conviction: you don’t have to be working for a solar or wind company to be a “clean energy” company.

“Every company, every institution can be a clean energy company,” he said. “If you want to have an impact on sustainability, working for any company can have a huge impact.”

Tyson said he and the High Tech Council are starting to plan a full-day conference on corporate sustainability for the fall. “The ultimate goal is to propagate” these sustainability practices, Tyson said after the event. “Every company in Massachusetts should have a sustainability program.”