Business leaders who made great strides for the environment?

November 6, 2009 12:05 PM

I am trying to come up with names of prominent business leaders through history who took major steps forward on environmental stewardship/protection. These should be industry titans who went against the grain in emphasizing environmentalism as part of their business model. Extra points if the person saw unexpected or un-predicted success as a result of their decision to "go green."
posted by carrolldamian to science & nature (9 comments total)

Laurance Rockefeller, spent a great deal of time and money working for environmental conservation.
posted by French Fry at 12:13 PM on November 6

No time to research, but Church and Dwight, the baking soda people, have a very long history of environmentalism.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 12:19 PM on November 6

Ben and Jerry.
posted by vito90 at 12:26 PM on November 6

Ray Anderson
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:26 PM on November 6

I just remembered where I'd heard about Ray Anderson --- he gave a TED talk
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:28 PM on November 6

Yvon Chouinard, of Patagonia.
posted by Madamina at 1:00 PM on November 6

Also John D Rockefeller, Jr.....

From Wikipedia:

He had a special interest in conservation, and purchased and donated land for many American National Parks, including Grand Teton (hiding his involvement and intentions behind the Snake River Land Company), Acadia, Great Smoky Mountains, Yosemite, and Shenandoah. In the case of Acadia National Park, he financed and engineered an extensive Carriage Road network throughout the park. Both the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway that connects Yellowstone National Park to the Grand Teton National Park and the Rockefeller Memorial in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were named after him. He was also active in the movement to save redwood trees, making a significant contribution to Save-the-Redwoods League in the 1920s to enable the purchase of what would become the Rockefeller Forest in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
posted by weesha at 1:51 PM on November 6

Stonyfield Yogurt's Gary Hirshberg built a multinational dairy business and worked with Wal-Mart to stock his product, which has helped convince Wal-Mart to go more deeply into organics. He's an interesting guy whose entire business model is based on life cycle analysis and results in some counterintuitive decisions that are demonstrably better environmental choices than their alternatives. But he is an unabashed pro-business dude interested in moving a lot of product and making a lot of money at it. Here is his book.
posted by Miko at 2:21 PM on November 6

If you want a list of people doing good stuff now, one place to find them is on the Board of Director and donor lists for major environmental non-profit organizations. Most Board members offer some combination of money and time, particularly time making political connections that link the activists to the people with power.

E.g., from Weesha above, "He was also active in the movement to save redwood trees, making a significant contribution to Save-the-Redwoods League in the 1920s." Well, Save the Redwoods League is still around, and Rockefeller would probably be either on the Board or the wider Board of Councillors or maybe listed as one of those Honorary Councillors in their Annual Report (PDF).

For another example, take a look at NRDC's Board of Trustees list. I know a few people on that list (though I don't work for NRDC) who are/were part of the corporate world and are now really doing lots to make good stuff happen. Here is The Nature Conservancy's Board of Directors list.
posted by salvia at 6:36 PM on November 6