Business 100 Green Initiatives

Patrick Byrne, Chairman and CEO

Worldstock.com, sister site of Overstock.com, sells artisans’ goods as inexpensively as possible to maximize the amount of return to them. Byrne addresses several ethical issues here: child labor, oppression of women and general human rights violations, economic sustainability, cultural sustainability, and environmental sustainability. Byrne writes on the Overstock.com website, “Goods can contribute to environmental sustainability. For example, organizations such as the Worldwatch Institute and One World Products, Inc., aim to save the Brazilian rain forest by researching and selling renewable products from it rather than burning it for pasture. Moreover, some goods are surrogates for commercial goods, but are produced in non-industrial, eco-friendly ways.”

Pepperidge Farm

Patrick Callaghan, President

Pepperidge Farm falls under the larger umbrella of the Campbell Soup Company, which details on its website its commitment to sustainability “from farm to table.” One thing Pepperidge Farm has done in particular is to use an alternative energy source to power its Bloomfield, CT plant.

In 2007 Pepperidge Farm partnered with the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund and FuelCell Energy, Inc. to install a 1.2-megawatt natural gas powered fuel cell in its Bloomfield, Connecticut, baking plant. Scheduled to go online in the summer of 2008, the new cell will provide approximately 57 percent of the bakery's energy needs. When combined with a smaller, 250-kilowatt fuel cell installed in 2006, the two cells are expected to supply nearly 70 percent of the total electricity needs of the plant and save an estimated $700,000 annually in utility charges.

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