Business student turns green, saves university

By Shelagh McNally

Can going green actually help the bottom line? On March 11 industry leaders are coming to Concordia's Sustainable Business Conference (SBC) to discuss the business of going green.

The conference was oprganized by students of the John Molson School of Business and the Sustainable Concordia Project. SCP supports sustainable development, a kind of nirvana in which we would satisfy our needs without gobbling up the resources of future generations. SCP projects help Concordia staff and students become more ecologically responsible and aware.

These days, Chantal Beaudoin spends her days thinking of clever ways to get us to Rethink, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. She is the coordinator of Concordia’s R4 Program, one of the newest SCP projects.

She wasn’t always green; once upon a time she was an average business student. Then a professor gave her credit to work on the Concordia Campus Sustainability Assessment (CCSA) with Melissa Garcia Lamarca and Geneva Guérin.

"I had no concept of sustainability. I would show up at my meetings with my takeout containers and they would say to me. What are you doing?” she recalled. “I used my business training to work on the assessment, and I learned a lot."

She started collecting data on how much money could be saved by going green. In 2003, she discovered that Concordia could save nearly $21,000 just by using recycled paper and opting for double-sided photocopying..

Going green made financial sense and she was a convert, but she wondered why sustainability was not being taught to business students. The Sustainable Business Conference is the result.

The theme is "Walk the Talk." Leaders from the public, private and NGO sector, along with students and faculty members from Concordia and other Canadian universities, will come together to discuss sustainable development in business.

"There are businesses out there that have made sustainability part of their culture. We want to celebrate them. We want to show that there is an alternative and that you can be successful and profitable —in fact more profitable, because when you start talking about resource efficiency you have a competitive edge."

The keynote speaker will be Dov Charney, senior partner and CEO of American Apparel, a company that became successful by avoiding sweatshops and paying decent salaries.

He will be joined by author Bob Willard, a leading expert on corporate sustainability strategies, and Louis Desrosiers, president of Ideum.ca Inc. who will discuss how his design company became the first Quebec-certified Carbon Neutral Company in Quebec.

(A company becomes carbon neutral by finding ways to offset or compensate for their carbon emissions. The SBC is looking for sponsors to buy and plant the estimated 89 plants needed to offset the estimate C02 emission of the conference itself.)

A ticket to Walk the Talk includes breakfast, lunch and a wine & cheese. There’s an early bird special of $25 for students who buy before Feb. 18; tickets jump to $40 after that. Alumni, faculty and staff tickets are $90. Tickets are on sale now at the R4 office, H-462-5, or you can buy them online at www.sbc2005.ca.