{"id":1829,"date":"2018-05-18T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2018-05-18T12:39:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T16:39:52","slug":"maximizing-positive-social-impact-and-minimizing-environmental-impact-by-cory-skuldt-and-katie-ellman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/2018\/05\/18\/maximizing-positive-social-impact-and-minimizing-environmental-impact-by-cory-skuldt-and-katie-ellman\/","title":{"rendered":"How Burton Embeds Sustainability and Female Empowerment in its Products and Leadership–by Cory Skuldt and Katie Ellman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republished from GreenBiz<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost impossible to upcycle used snowboards. Because their components\u2014metal, wood, plastic, resin\u2014are tightly fused during manufacturing, the best end-of-life outcome is usually chopped scrap that can be downcycled into fill. Which is why Burton<\/a> is working with a new recyclable epoxy resin. ReRez<\/a> allows used snowboards to be disassembled, and each material input to be recycled into new life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ali Kenney, VP of Global Strategy and Insights at Burton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This focus on end-of-life innovation is just one of the ways that Burton is meeting its ambitious 2020 sustainability goals<\/a>. From 100% Fair Labor Association<\/a> compliance in its factories, to the carbon-neutral Burton US Open<\/a>, to Chill<\/a>, its youth development program, the company believes that succeeding as a business means succeding at sustainability.<\/p>\n

The Bard MBA\u2019s Cory Skuldt spoke with Ali Kenney, VP of Global Strategy and Insights at Burton, for The Impact Report. Kenney proposed and built Burton\u2019s Global Sustainability Department and currently drives the sustainability strategy and platform for the company\u2019s portfolio of brands.<\/p>\n

The following Q&A is an edited excerpt from the Bard MBA\u2019s <\/em>May 18th <\/em>The Impact Report<\/em><\/a> podcast. The Impact Report brings together students and faculty in <\/em>Bard\u2019s MBA in Sustainability<\/em><\/a> program with leaders in business, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BARD MBA: COULD YOU GIVE US SOME BACKGROUND ON BURTON?<\/p>\n

Burton was started in 1977 by Jake Burton Carpenter at a small barn in Vermont. He wanted to make prototypes for what have become snowboards, so he really was the pioneer of what we now know as snowboarding. It wasn\u2019t just about making the product prototypes\u2014he really had to build the entire sport.<\/p>\n

Fast forward, and snowboarding is now a global sport and in the Olympics. We\u2019re still based in Vermont as a privately held company owned by Jake and his wife Donna, who\u2019s our CEO. We\u2019re a global company with offices all over the world. Half of our business is in snowboarding hard goods, and we\u2019re also doing soft goods\u2014fleece, jackets, hats, socks, hoodies\u2014as well as creating experiences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BARD MBA: WHAT ARE THE FACTORS THAT PLAY A ROLE IN YOUR SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve always tried to set goals that are meaningful across the company. I didn\u2019t want to create a bloated sustainability bureaucracy, so it\u2019s all about getting the internal experts we already have to continue to be the experts and execute on the goals. Our sustainability team is really set up to guide everyone and set the vision, set the strategy.<\/p>\n

We tend to get the credit, but it\u2019s our product teams who\u2019ve done a lot of the work. For example, we have a 100% organic cotton goal by 2020, and 50% of all the polyester we use has to be recycled. They\u2019re the ones doing a lot of that work and finding new sources and factories.<\/p>\n

Our sustainability team itself is more focused on newer tasks that didn\u2019t yet live within the company, like social responsibility and fair labor. Now we have a group managing that. We also have a sustainable chemistry expert who\u2019s a chemist. So those are the roles that actually fit within the sustainability department.<\/p>\n

All the rest of the stuff, from packaging goals to product to quality, waste reduction and carbon\u2014those are all spread out across the global company. Everyone who\u2019s an expert is executing on those within their own departments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BARD MBA: WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST GENDER EQUITY CHALLENGES RIGHT NOW, AND HOW ARE YOU TACKLING THEM?<\/p>\n

Our biggest gender challenge isn\u2019t an internal one at this point. I can\u2019t say that historically as a board sports and sporting goods company, but things have changed dramatically over the last fifteen years here. With Donna at the helm, it\u2019s part of everyday business, and women are respected as equals. We have almost equal levels in leadership, and at different levels there\u2019re more women than men.<\/p>\n

I honestly don\u2019t feel that we have an internal issue so much as a larger issue in the sport, the industry, and then all the way up to a societal issue. I think we\u2019re at a really unique moment in time because we\u2019re simultaneously experiencing the #MeToo movement while being led by an administration that isn\u2019t necessarily always showing respect for women.<\/p>\n

As a company, we\u2019re realizing that we need to make an impact wherever we can. It\u2019s not only through making sure that our internal women are empowered and that we have women in leadership. It\u2019s also to blow that out even further and make sure that women feel accepted in snowboarding and in the outdoor industry. We\u2019re a company that\u2019s making gear that works better for women. We\u2019re using respectful imagery and encouraging meetups.<\/p>\n

The larger issue is that companies really need to take women seriously. People are talking about that a lot now and saying that they\u2019re going to, but it\u2019s still a question of, \u201cAre we going to decorate women or are we actually going to empower them?\u201d I hope we go in the direction of empowerment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BARD MBA: HAS BURTON SET AND OVERARCHING CIRCULAR ECONOMY GOAL, AND HOW MUCH AS IT INFLUENCED YOUR SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t actually use the term \u201ccircular economy\u201d too often within the walls of Burton. There are so many things that we can do to fundamentally change how we do business, and I think circular economy is now used in a way that somewhat cheapens it. There\u2019s the way that apparel retailers offer to take back old clothes for recycling, and then you get a discount for new clothes. There\u2019s also all that controversy about where that clothing is going, and whether it\u2019s really just about getting rid of the guilt in the garage.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re trying to fundamentally change all the areas that impact our business the most. Doing life cycle assessment and using software to really hone in there allows us to understand where our highest impact is as a manufacturing company across all of our product lines. So, for example, we\u2019re shifting our soft goods to lifetime warranty and doubling our repair amount.<\/p>\n

We also have all of our R&D initiatives going on. We\u2019ve worked for probably six years on trying to find a way to recycle snowboards. The issue is that they\u2019re made out of metal, wood, plastic, resin\u2014all sorts of different materials\u2014as they\u2019re currently manufactured. That means that all you can do is chop them up into really small pieces and maybe pull out the metal with magnets and then downcycle the scrap into slop or filler.<\/p>\n

We now have a small portion of our board line using a product called ReRez. Resin is the glue that holds a snowboard together. With ReRez, if you put the scrap or the actual snowboard into a safe acidic solution at the end of its life, you can separate out all of the materials and then turn them into other uses and even upcycle them.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the kind of thing we\u2019re thinking about when we think about circular economies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republished from GreenBiz. It\u2019s almost impossible to upcycle used snowboards. Because their components\u2014metal, wood, plastic, resin\u2014are tightly fused during manufacturing, the best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":360,"featured_media":1832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[537,543,536,545,546,287,540,541,542,539,538,544],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-ali-kenney","tag-board-sports","tag-burton","tag-burton-us-open","tag-chill-foundation","tag-circular-economy","tag-gender-equity","tag-lca","tag-life-cycle-assessment","tag-rerez","tag-snowboarding","tag-womens-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/files\/2018\/05\/TIR108_OPTION-B-ALI-Kenney-HeadshotWCT-e1526384597150.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/360"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1847,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/1847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}