Sustainability a lingua franca for Smeal executive

Guaraní, an indigenous language of Paraguay, is spoken in most of the South American nation’s communities. Like much of the nation’s culture, it’s tinged with Spanish influences. But at its core, Paraguay is Guaraní. It’s in the constitution.

It’s a language, both melodious and staccato, that contains the nation’s identity. A story itself, each word resonates with history, and also the way forward. Today, Paraguay is experiencing a swell of growth, but a fragile one under the auspices of positive social and economic reform. According to the World Bank, poverty and income inequality still remain major challenges for the country. And Guaraní, spoken by an estimated 90 percent of the population, remains hard to decipher. Some fear it will become a relic of the past.

Yet it has become part of an unlikely story, one that starts with a gangly, ambitious undergrad at a small liberal arts school in Walla Walla, Wash.

Shortly after he graduated from Whitman College in 1996, Erik Foley boarded a flight and began a journey that spanned more than 6,000 miles, two years and countless memories. While working for the Peace Corps, the former sociology and environmental studies major applied what he learned in Walla Walla to classrooms in Paraguay, leading workshops and helping start the country’s first school geared toward environmental education.

He saw poverty. He also saw potential. He learned Guaraní and Spanish.

Two decades later, Foley’s story is as manifold as the complex, beautiful language he learned while in the Peace Corps. Now the director of sustainability at the Penn State Smeal College of Business, the father of two describes his role as “bilingual,” consulting with international companies while still teaching on responsible business practices.

“In my position I get to talk to a lot of business owners,” he said, “and the way that conversation goes is often surprising to them.”

He begins each the same way. In English, usually.

“If I’m trying to help you, I have to first understand what’s your business,” he said. “So I often surprise business owners by the first meeting or first several meetings. I ask a lot of questions about the business because ultimately I have to understand what is your business model. What makes this needle go up, what makes this needle go down? Because ultimately if I’m going to make a recommendation around whether it’s an environmental or a social issue that you can address profitably, I’ve got to understand what drives both sides.”

Paraguay was just one experience of many. But it helped him see sustainability as a human issue — not just one of dollars and cents.

Though he was living a hemisphere away, differences began to give way to similarities. The world has a habit, he found, of contracting with new experiences.

The same problems that afflicted Paraguay could be found at home in the United States. Poverty, income inequality, the environmental footprint of doing business — these were issues that didn’t discriminate, he thought, and were shared by the world.

It’s a question he still thinks about often.

“These opportunities for healthy, prosperous lifestyles and communities, that also protect the environment that underpins their very livelihood, they need to be accessible to everybody,” he said. “Not just the few.”

Foley, still all arms, legs and ideas, sat down with the Centre Daily Times to discuss sustainability at a global and local level, what companies are doing well and his son’s unyielding love for Chipotle.

Q: How would you define sustainability?

A: The term sustainability is just a word in the English language that means to continue something on into the foreseeable future, but it’s important to know when that became associated with human and economic development and social equity and social justice. And that actually happened: You can trace it down to an event. There was a commission that was put together called the Brundtland Commission and it essentially was the world commission on environment and development. It was U.N. sponsored and there were listening sessions in five continents.

Essentially what they were looking at was that after World War II, we were starting to have rapid economic development, but that was only benefiting the few. The benefits were not being shared equitably across geographies, cultures and by socioeconomic status. They could also see economic growth was destroying our environment, so this commission was put together to put a stake in the ground and address these issues.

The famous definition is development that meets the needs of the present without inhibiting the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Economic development also needs to benefit the environment and people: That’s the truly sustainable path forward.

Q: How do we look at sustainability in business terms? How did the term evolve in the United States?

A: Nature is kind of the ultimate supplier. To look at it from a supply chain perspective, any supply chain expert will tell you that you want your supplier to be healthy and profitable. So if I’m making shoes and I’ve got to get polypropylene to make uppers of my shoes, I want to make sure I’m getting it from a supplier that’s healthy and profitable. Because it’s a real pain to change suppliers every year. It seems like common sense, but we didn’t necessarily see nature as a supplier the way we do now. Events like the Exxon Valdez (oil spill), smog pollution in Los Angeles, the Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio, Three Mile Island — you had these events that raised awareness of the connection between business and the environment.

Q: Awareness about climate change has increased over time, and today it’s often in the news about how dire the situation is becoming. Is there hope?

A: Just to leave business for a moment, and looking at the science: The science is not good. Despite what business and governments are doing, all the science tells us whether you’re looking at climate change or the state of biodiversity of air pollution, coral reefs and oceans, most of it keeps getting worse. So clearly compliance isn’t enough, clearly just messing around with efficiency, that’s not enough. That’s where innovation comes in. So there is hope.

We’re doing poorly, but a slower rate than before. The curve is still not good in terms of we’re taking a lot more than we’re giving. Thinking about that in any kind of human relationship, that’s not a good situation. From an economic perspective, if you gouge your supplier, they’re not going to be your supplier very long.

We’re sort of in this state right now where we are still kind of liquidating natural resources at this alarming rate and we’re starting to feel the constraints of that. It causes prices to increase, supply chain risks of various kinds, geopolitical risk because countries are kind of competing to lock in resources around the world.

Q: Where do we go from here?

A: We’ve kind of moved into an “innovation phase.” So for instance, the Nike Flyknit technology reduces waste by 80 percent in their production of shoes. They didn’t get to Flyknit from just looking at how we get more efficient lighting, boilers or air compressors in our facilities. They got there by innovation and thinking about how they could improve environmental performance while at the same time providing a better shoe to their customers.

Q: More consumers report caring about where their products come from and how they’re manufactured. But is this showing in the market in terms of their purchasing behavior?

A: So in the food industry there is this growth of what they’re calling fast-casual — the Chipotles, the Paneras — that are kicking McDonald’s butt. And that says to me that people care hugely about the health of their food, and the health of their bodies and how their food is produced. Chipotle, I’m amazed at how much my son goes there (laughs). My son loves going to Chipotle now that he can drive. So it’s just fascinating to me. On one hand if you look at industry trends, you see people are voting with their dollar, they’re voting for a more healthy way of doing business. But at the same time there’s research around cleaning products or clothing; it’s like if I’m going to buy a pair of Levi’s and if that’s organic cotton and that’s regular, am I going to pay $10 more? The research says that most people would not. So it’s a real question.

This story was originally published October 1, 2016 at 5:35 PM with the headline "Sustainability a lingua franca for Smeal executive."