Member Profiles

Coop Owned Organic Valley CROPP Cooperative and our two premium organic brands, Organic Valley Family of Farms and Organic Prairie Family of Farms, have been leaders in sustainability from our very inception as a farmer-owned organic cooperative in 1988.

Our organic philosophy, cooperative and regional business structure, and a mission to save family farming culture provide our framework for sustainability. We take a holistic approach, where the triple bottom line elements – social, ecological, and economic – are interconnected and work in harmony with each other. We promote respect for the diversity, dignity and interdependence of human, animal, plant, soil and global life, and practice environmental awareness and cooperative principles in all aspects of production, handling, marketing and operations.

Our cooperative is farmer-owned and promotes economic stability for our members. The farmers elect the cooperative’s board of directors from among themselves, set policy for the cooperative, and set their own fair, stable pay price for their products. Our staff receives sustainable wages and benefits, and we strive to enable a healthy human livelihood by providing quality employment, cooperation, organic education and community growth.

Here at CROPP Cooperative, sustainability isn’t just a business initiative, it is our business.

Guy L. Bazzani LEED-AP, GRI. Bazzani Associates Bazzani Associates has achieved the Clean Corporate Citizen designation with the State of Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. In 2003, we reconstructed a historic building to LEED standards, which house our offices. Since that time, 90% of our development and construction projects are LEED Certified. Our energy efficiency statistics of the buildings constructed range between 42% to 55% reduction in energy consumption as compared with buildings of the same type in Grand Rapids, MI. Guy Bazzani was appointed by Governor Granholm to the position of voting member of the Michigan Climate Action Council. The Council has completed its work on inventorying the GHG emissions for Michigan and projecting reductions through 2020. Detailed information can be found at: www.miclimatechange.us/stakeholder.cfm

Scott James Fair Trade Sports Within the last 18 months we focused on how to green our product line of sports balls for soccer, football, basketball (and more). We found by switching to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified rubber, we could instantly green 70% of a sports ball. Overnight we had the world's first eco-certified sports ball and a great demonstration point to encourage the other major brands (Nike, Adidas, Puma) to do the same!

Paulette Cole, Amy Chender, ABC Home. We are training staff on personal carbon reduction with a minor emphasis on personal offsets. Employees now taking the stairs, using reusable cups, reporting that they shifted to CFLs and timers, unplugging cell phone charges and shopping locally at farmers markets with reusable bags. We are implementing energy efficient bulbs in specific areas of the store. Our most sustainable area, a shop n shop, called abc home & planet, which represents our full select of environmentally conscious product has CFLs and metal halides alternating. We continue to push the edge on sustainable product from our wood selection to selling LEDs bulbs as an option. Our goodwood program (responsibly managed forests or reclaimed sources protecting old growth and endangered forest species) consists of over 50% of our reproduction furniture. We have over 650 pieces of goodwood furniture as options for our customer/participant And have led a movement in textiles towards organic cotton. Other efforts include reduced packaging, organic cleaning products, recycled pcw content copy paper etc. and increasing the environmental content. Purchasing off sets for our air travel that is an integral part of our business.

Mike Pullen Bamboo Revolution Bamboo Revolution is a collective of designers, product developers, craftsmen and innovators that believe bamboo has unlimited potential to create a better built environment.

Bamboo Revolution’s entire line of flooring, plywood and veneer is produced with urea-formaldehyde free adhesives. Our flooring line is pre-finished with Swedish Bona™ formula, a low-VOC finish.

Bamboo Revolution is continually developing ways to decrease landfill waste. Customers can receive credit for returning scrap flooring and we are always increasing our recycling capabilities through the City of Portland’s “Recycle At Work” Program. Sawdust is collected from our custom millwork and given to local gardens, increasing soil nutrition. Lastly, we are exploring relationships with local digester system developers to have our sawdust also be used to created energy while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Bamboo Revolution is also a member of 1% For the Planet in which 1% of revenues go to support environmental non-profits.

Mary Anne Howland Ibis Communications. The flip side of paper output from the printer that would usually be tossed is now used for the fax machine. We receive a ton of junk faxes and it has proved a great way to not waste paper. We have also replaced all of our styrofoam cups and plastic dinnerware with ceramic mugs and plates that we wash at the end of the day with "green" cleaning products. This has greatly reduced our garbage as well so we use less trash bags. Ironically, the staff enjoys dining on real serviceware and feels good about their contribution. We receive a lot of newspapers and magazines on a daily basis. One of our staff has committed to transporting these materials to a recycling bin in our area. Our Holiday card/gift to about 50 of our corporate clients this past year was a tote (green - as it is also part of company logo color) with a card attached asking them to use it to help do their part. We used hemp and a small wooden bead to tie the card to the tote strap.

Miranda Magagnini, Peter Strugatz, Emily Doubilet, Icestone. We are working toward getting energy bills in order to track the emissions of each product that they produce. We are also composting their food waste and recycling 85% of office and manufacturing materials. We also support ongoing education programs internally to move staff toward turning off appliances and computers when not in use. IceStone has started working toward implementing a tracking system around supply chain management toward inquiring of suppliers what they are doing to reduce waste and rely upon renewable energy. IceStone looks to move toward carbon neutrality first by maximizing its internal reduction strategy and then will offset what it can’t manage at the end of its audit.

David Leventhal, Principal, Playa Viva - A Sustainable Resort & Residence Community
Rainforest2Reef.org a non-profit that we founded conducted a preliminary study of the annual tons of carbon off-set created by the conservation easements under protection by the non-profit. We discovered that we off-set over 250,000 tons per year of Carbon.

Initial estimates from ERT-Winrock [independent third party report] on the potential carbon benefit of our project were very promising: i.e. for the three community partners' forest extensions currently protected (a total of 140,000 acres) emissions avoided from "not logging" were roughly 250,000 tons/year.  For Pustunich alone (57,000 acres) initial estimates of avoided emissions were roughly 100,000 tons/year.
In addition, our newest project, www.PlayaViva.com, is developing a 200 acre resort on the beach near Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Of the 200 acres, we are placing 80% into a private reserve and reforesting this agricultural (coconut grove, mango grove and tamarind grove) land back > to coastal forest not only carbon ranching but adding net new carbon reductions.

We still have not obtained a third party verification of  the total carbon reduction but based on the 80/20 rule, I'm sure we are more than covering the carbon emissions of our business endeavors.

Sunshine Smith, Margaritaville, Key West. Margaritaville has become a community leader in its push toward carbon neutrality. The employees have formed a sustainability committee that meets monthly to come up with new ideas. One of the ideas implemented is provide an environmental tip of the day on customers? receipts, in the store and on their website. We have also been working with a consultant who provided a 100 page strategic plan that would help reduce their emissions. This included a more in-depth waste stream management program, supply chain changes and building efficiency evaluation to reduce energy consumption. All lights are turned off when not needed, computers are set to sleep after ten minutes of inactivity, phantom electrical use was identified and turned off at night, printers were set to two sided and draft copies, eco friendly cleaners were purchased, each staff member was given a compact fluorescent bulb with an explanation of why all bulbs should be replaced, reusable coffee filters were purchased.

John Quiter, Cunningham Group Architects. We have implemented energy saving measures costing about $400,000. These include added insulation, lighting controls, a radiant hot water heat loop for personal comfort that will replace dozens of electrical heaters, new windows to provide thermal control, solar protection and operable to provide for natural ventilation. These changes are projected to cut our energy use by 30%. We have committed to purchase green power in all of our five office locations and are in the process of finalizing this purchase through one green power broker. We have committed to offset our business travel carbon footprint this year and will have completed research on how we can best spend our dollars to do this by May. We have teamed with a green developer in Los Angeles to develop a green office building for our LA office and will be planning to reduce energy consumption by 50% over conventional building.