The Corporate world of greater good

In 2004, UPS decided to stop making left turns. With a tweaked GPS system, they eliminated all left turns from the routes that their 95,000 delivery trucks would take — except for those absolutely necessary to avoiding ridiculously circuitous journeys. By eliminating the need to idle at red lights where right turns were allowed, they reduced the number of vehicle miles driven by 28.5 million and saved 31,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

In 2009, responding to the growing alarm that honeybees were disappearing, Haagen-Dazs decided to create a microsite devoted to raising awareness about the issue. The company donated a portion of proceeds to research on the topic and launched a Twitcause campaign (#HelpHoneyBees) that raised $7000 and generated 643,748 tweets in two days.
Last year, Coca-Cola moved to invest in Haiti’s mango juice market. This initiative alone has helped 25,000 mango farmers gain access to markets, more efficient technology and associated infrastructure, like roads, etc.

A little while ago, I wrote a column about the value of consumer awareness and activist campaigns — about how everyday people could force the hand of multinational corporations at scale. But as I have been thinking increasingly about what I want to do for the rest of my life, I realized that my initial thinking was incomplete.
I meet people everyday at Middlebury whose main goal in life is to make the world a better place. Be it through journalism, political activism, academia or art, they strive to deliver people from poverty, restore the environment or pursue a world of greater equality and justice. But very few people think about pursuing a life in the private sector, devoted to the gruelling, often superficial, incremental world of corporate social responsibility. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we generally don’t think about multinational corporations as potential places to live out lives devoted to a greater good.

But what if we did? What if in addition to each being socially responsible and active consumers, we signed up to work at Exxon Mobil, General Mills, Nike or any other of the multinational corporations we all love to hate? What if we were the ones campaigning for initiatives like the ones mentioned above; the ones that leverage these companies’ scale for initiatives that serve to improve the world around us?

The state of the corporate world is such that companies, with the slightest supply chain change, marketing campaign or market expansion can sometimes achieve more than some small countries can with federal policy. It will no doubt be difficult — more often than not I hate everything these companies stand for; understanding the need for profit margins and growth, but not at all comprehending why the margins have to be so wide that slavery and environmental annihilation are necessary conditions.

But in the end, multinational corporations represent a unique opportunity to move mountains. With carefully thought out company policies, regulations and initiatives — that continue to generate profits but also other kinds of wealth — we might find ourselves just a few steps closer to a world where a 7.0 magnitude earthquake doesn’t kill 200,000 people and where climate change does not threaten entire nations and peoples. Hearts and minds that can be won run these corporations that we both rely on and simultaneously despise. Maybe we should think about making our living by striving to win them over.