Q&A: Gary Gerber, Sun Light & Power

Going green can save green, that’s not necessarily a new concept. But the tools and mechanisms for incorporating sustainable policies and practices into one’s business model have evolved and grown significantly over the years. One of these mechanisms is the B Corporation certification, a program that identifies companies that meet a set of social and environmental performance standards and that take into account more than just shareholder interests, says Gary Gerber, president and CEO of Sun Light & Power, a design/build contractor for solar installations.
 
Sun Light & Power, based in Berkeley, Calif., was one of the first solar companies in the U.S. to earn B Corporation certification, says Gerber. Today there are some 327 B Corps in 54 different industries throughout the United States, Canada, France, and Germany.
 
Companies certified as B Corporations meet comprehensive social and environmental performance standards and incorporate stakeholder interests wherever possible, according to a B Lab spokesperson. There are 327 B Corps in 54 different industries throughout the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany. Two states, Maryland and Vermont, have ratified legislature making Benefit Corps — the legal equivalent of a B Corporation — an accepted class of corporation at the state level. Seven other states have laws pending that would do the same.
 
Green Building News interviewed Gerber in a phone interview.
 
Q: What are B Corporations?
 
A: B Corporations focus on the triple bottom line. Other people have called the triple bottom line other things, but it is easily remembered as the three P’s — People, Planet, and Profits. A B Corporation essentially takes into account other stakeholders than just the shareholders that want to make a profit in the short term. B Corps build that triple bottom line into their mission by integrating them into their bylaws and making them fundamental to the way they operate. It’s more than just symbolic, too — a company that operates as a B Corp is, by it’s nature, going to be more sustainable.
 
Q: How does a company become a B Corporation? 
 
A: Right now, businesses have to qualify to the standards of the B Corporation program, which involves a long questionnaire and going over the environmental, social, and organizational issues that are considered by the people from B Lab to be good practices. If a company scores above a certain level, they qualify to become a B Corporation.
 
Functionally, it’s really more a set of guidelines. Taking the test is an educational experience because you can easily learn what some good practices are. One can actually go through the test and determine new things they maybe haven’t thought of yet.
 
I also find the B Corporation certification useful when talking to other companies that I might want to do business with. For example, a B Corp that we do business with is Salesforce.com, which offers a discount on some of its products to other B Corporations. So for us, it actually pays to be a B Corp. We were already customers of Salesforce.com when we became a B Corporation and once our original contract expired with them, we became a B Corp customer of theirs and our costs dropped tremendously. I think that’s going to happen more and more, where B Corps make an effort to connect with other B Corps. For me, another B Corp is exactly the kind of business that I want to do business with.
 
Q: Why is creating a green business environment important? 
 
A: The thing about being sustainable, from a business perspective, is that it is more profitable to be sustainable in business operations. When you don’t throw away half of the product you buy but instead use it as efficiently as possible, it costs less to produce whatever you’re making. In the big picture, some of the things are more for the benefit of society as a whole. For example, running bio-diesel in our trucks saves our own people from breathing in nasty diesel fumes, but in the bigger picture if everyone were to do the same we would all have cleaner air. So some of the benefits are more societal and some more directly for a company’s employees.
 
Q: What are some things businesses can do to go green?
 
A: Well certainly doing an energy audit of a site or building is easy. There are a number of simple things that can be done in terms of lighting, more efficient heating and cooling, and policies around turning off computers, turning off lights, and using motion sensors. There’s just a whole laundry list of things that one can do to improve one’s energy usage and carbon footprint. Selecting green building materials and supporting green businesses and other B Corporations has a multiplying effect, and that way you know you’re greening up your supply chain.
 
Not all businesses can do that though. My own business has a really hard time staying competitive with all the other solar companies, because everyone is trying to find the highest quality and lowest cost products. This isn’t unique to our business of course, but when one finds that a product line is being produced in a less sustainable way than another product is, one would choose the more sustainable product, assuming one really has that choice.
 
Q: How important is marketing a company’s green practices?
 
A: We’re seeing that a lot of corporations have a social responsibility commitment of some sort, and having that commitment displayed prominently on a website or advertisement is important. I also think the trend is currently, and perhaps it will always be this way, where operating a business in a sustainable method is a plus in the matrix of determining whether one might choose to decide to do business with a company or not.
Companies are not going to spend 20 to 30 percent more to do business with a sustainable company. However, some might spend five percent more.
 
I’ve been involved with sustainability since the mid-90s to where I’ve seen sustainable products that were marginal become mainstream. Ultimately, that’s what I hope will happen with sustainability is that it will become the de facto condition of business. There won’t be an advantage to being sustainable, per se, because everyone will operate that way.
 
A good example of that is engineered lumber in the construction industry. It was sort of an innovative thing to create joists out of scrap materials like plywood and things like that and turn them into structural beams. Well it turns out they are stronger, stiffer, less expensive, and more stable — there’s a whole list of pros, plus, it involves using recycled materials. So it’s a sustainable product that happens to be better, in a lot of ways, than what was already being produced.
 
That’s the same thing that I think will happen with solar. Businesses will realize that solar helps to stabilize energy costs and allow companies to better plan for the long haul because they’ll know exactly what it will cost for energy from day one. That will become the smart business practice.
 
Whether it’s a B Corp. or some other mechanism, I think that companies really need to understand how being socially responsible is the way to survive as a company. If we destroy the environment that supports business, there will be no business. To me it’s really about long-term thinking versus short-term decisions. That’s at the core of the issue, in my view, is looking beyond the next quarter’s profits. Instead, look beyond the next year’s profits. Look out five or ten years at least and your decisions will be more sustainable.