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Not so Novel Approach
By: Matt Morrissey 

Caring is in. It’s chic. Large corporations now care more about their environment and community. It’s kind of like when you were in high school and some new, cool, hip thing became all the rage. For a company like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream though, this is just business as usual.

Ben & Jerry’s is the creation of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They first began serving ice cream in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont. Their growth was quick but as they grew, they felt they were getting farther away from making ice cream. They actually considered leaving the business.

 “We stayed with the business to make it something supportive in the community.” said Greenfield during a September speaking appearance at Penn State Altoona.  About their thoughts as the business grew, Greenfield said, “If we want to grow our business, we want to do it in a way that is consistent with our values.”

According to Greenfield, to stay true to their values and supporting the community, Ben & Jerry’s offered stocks only to residents of Vermont. The money raised was for a new manufacturing facility, but they also felt it was a chance to help their neighbors in Vermont. Then, in 1985, the Ben & Jerry’s foundation was established. Each year, 7.5% of the company’s pre-tax profits go to the foundation.

Greenfield and Cohen swiftly realized their potential to give back to the community. This led them to wonder why other companies couldn’t do the same. While on a retreat with other CEO’s of large corporations, the answer came to them. It wasn’t that these CEO’s were bad people and didn’t care; it’s just that their success was strictly measured in dollars and cents. About this, Greenfield said, “Look, if the problem is how we measure our success, why don’t we just change that. So that’s what we started to do. We decided to redefine the bottom line.”

And redefine the bottom line, they did. Starting in 1988, Ben & Jerry’s created two company reports. One details their financial growth. The other covers social and environmental issues. It details how much they give back to the community through their foundation, and other donations.

Their environmental friendly initiatives are fully explained in this report . Ironically, it is probably not very environmentally friendly to list everyway that they have gone “green.” The list is just simply too long to list, but here are a few snippets according to Greenfield and their website:

• Spoke out against Bovine Growth Hormone back in 1989
• Use sales of Rainforest Crunch to benefit the rain forest
• Introduced ice cream industry’s first eco-friendly container made of unbleached paperboard
• Use only paper companies that have history of sustaining depleted forests
• In 2008, pioneered a new kind of freezer that does not aid global warming

Ben & Jerry’s have a reputation of staying at the forefront of economic, community, and environmental issues. They did it before the green movement was popular. Though this mentality is new to some, to Ben & Jerry’s, it’s a not so novel approach.  

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