How Businesses can Help Save the Planet (and still make money)

When it comes to saving the planet, I do the usual virtual signaling. I drink with a reusable copper straw. I dutifully recycle my peanut butter jars.

It’s the right thing to do. But honestly? I know it’s not going to save planet Earth. Our individual actions can only do so much in the battle to stop devastating climate change. We need massive efforts from governments and companies.

Which is why I’m grateful for people like Jake Kheel.

Jake is an environmental innovator who works at the Grupo Puntacana resort in the Dominican Republic. He and his boss Frank Rainieri have spent the last 15 years coming up with radical, impactful ways to make their business both environmentally friendly while still profitable. This is not lip service, not greenwashing, but real changes, often surprising and unexpected (e.g. water-stingy grass and composting worms).

Jake has just released a wonderful new book – Waking the Sleeping Giant: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Business to Save the Planet – filled with advice for other businesspeople on how to, as they say, be green while making green. The goals aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, they sometimes work together.

I wrote the foreword to Waking the Sleeping Giant. This is partly because Jake is my cousin. His great uncle and my grandfather – a civil rights lawyer and environmental activist -- was one of the original investors in the resort (my family is still involved). But the beauty part is, I don’t have to pretend to endorse this book. I swear on a stack of Silent Springs that it is a truly important work. Here's my Q&A with Jake.

1.    In your book, you discuss how when you were a kid in Florida, your mom had an alligator shot on your front yard and stoned a poisonous snake to death. How did all this violence against wildlife translate into you becoming an environmentalist? 

We grew at a time when Florida was still pretty wild. Mom taught us to appreciate the local wildlife, but there were quite a few dangerous animals around. The alligator on our lawn was a protected species, making it illegal to remove it unless it bit someone. Mom was not going to wait around and let that happen, so she had our neighbor shoot it instead. That really left an impact on me. Here was my mom, a perfectly reasonable person, going all Crocodile Dundee and murdering an innocent, endangered species. There had to be a better way. That was the beginning of my conversion as an environmentalist.

 2.     When most people picture an environmental activist, they don’t picture someone working for a resort with an airport, golf courses and hotels. 

 I didn’t either! When I started my career, I imagined living in a remote jungle protecting rare monkeys and saving the rainforest from deforestation. Working for a company was inconceivable to me. Businesses, I was convinced, were causing most of the environmental destruction in the world, there was no way I was going to help them or support golf. But it turns out one of the keys to solving many of our environmental challenges is to involve the private sector. If you want to figure out how to create sustainable airports, ecologically friendly golf courses, and green hotels, you need to engage businesses. Not only have we been able to do that in Punta Cana, we used our luxury resort as a wildlife refuge for the an endangered hawk species. We convinced local fishermen to help us protect and restore the local coral reef. I learned that it was possible to transform companies into a force for good, working from the inside out. (I’m still not crazy about golf, though.)

 3.     You refer to companies as the “sleeping giant” of social and environmental change, what do you mean by this? Why are companies so important to saving the planet?

 Companies possess unparalleled access to the best talent, the latest technologies, and huge amounts of capital. They are battle-tested at solving complex problems. But their talents are rarely used to solve social and environmental challenges, they are normally focused solely on making money. If we convince companies to direct even part of their ingenuity and resources toward solving some of our most complex global challenges, we could put a serious dent in them, without necessarily sacrificing profits. We need companies’ ability to innovate to make headway in sustainability. Until we do, most companies are still just a sleeping giant.

 4.     In the book you write “No offense to my many friends promoting eco-lifestyles, but we will need more than eliminating plastic straws and buying local veggies to make a dent in the planetary crisis we face….Promoting good individual habits is useful, but transforming corporate decision-making and culture from within can translate into major sustainability victories.” Does this mean that individual actions are not important? 

Not at all! But do I worry about environmentalists becoming so obsessed with small individual actions that in the meantime they let companies and governments completely off the hook. Trying to lesson your own individual impact is an important exercise that builds a kind of muscle memory of concern for the environment. But we need big, transformative changes and that’s only going to come when we force companies to take some responsibility and act. So go ahead and buy that bamboo compostable toothbrush, but don’t forget to drive change at your company and in your local community, too.

 5.     In the book, you talk about the difference between “greening” and “greenwashing.” What’s the difference and how can the average person not help companies that are greenwashing?

Greening is when a company takes advantage of its good work to improve its public image. By embracing sustainability, companies can rightfully gain reputational benefits that become a potent marketing tool. Greenwashing, on the other hand, is disinformation used to present an environmentally favorable image when a company doesn’t actually deserve it. Greenwashing gives a company the appearance of being conscientious, fooling consumers into choosing their products, in spite of a less than stellar record. Greening is hard-earned recognition; greenwashing is scamming customers.

 Today the average person has more access to information about brands and their practices than ever before, it just takes being curious and doing a little research to sort through green companies versus greenwashers. When you discover a company being purposefully deceitful, be vocal and call them out. Companies are terrified that bad publicity will go viral, most will clean up their act if they get enough pushback.

 6.     What does protecting the environment have to do with going on vacation and what can the average person do to make sure they are not impacting the place they are visiting? 

 Before the pandemic, over a billion people traveled the world on a yearly basis. Travel can have a profound impact on people, places, and local environments, sometimes positive but often not. Too many visitors can put immense pressure on local habitats and communities.

Just like you wouldn’t want someone to come into your town and pollute your neighborhood, travelers need to be thoughtful when they visit a place. It’s important to think about where, when and how you travel. Do a little research and prioritize companies and destinations that take care of the local people and environment. Visit places when they are least likely to be crowded, for example during the off-season. Once you get there, ask a lot of questions about a hotel or resort’s practices. If they don’t currently have good practices, if enough people ask, soon enough they will. Most hotels religiously monitor their Tripadvisor reviews and social media comments. If they get enough questions or comments about how they handle their trash, they will notice.

 Here are some good additional resources from the Center for Responsible Travel (full disclosure, I am on CREST’s Board of Directors).

 8.     Most people think worms are pretty gross, but you have a soft spot for them. What are you doing with worms and what is it about them that you find so attractive? 

Worms are valiant little creatures. They consume organic waste and then poop it out as high-quality soil (worm compost). They turn garbage into beautiful, black dirt. Organic waste can be a serious environmental hazard. When deposited in landfills it decomposes and produces methane gas contributing to climate change, as well as leachates, a liquid noxious soup that seeps out from common garbage and can contaminate groundwater, rivers and other water bodies. Worms are one way to confront that problem. At Grupo Puntacana, we feed worms food waste from our kitchens and let them transform it into organic fertilizer for our golf courses. Instead of polluting, our worm compost replaces the use of synthetic fertilizers.

9.     If people could do one thing to help protect the planet, what would you recommend? 

Get involved! Whether it’s starting a neighborhood compost program, taking your kids hiking in a national park, lobbying your local representative, leading a boycott of a company, or starting a recycling program at work, there are dozens of way to get started having a positive impact on the environment. You don’t have to be a perfect eco-citizen. But once you get started and begin to learn more, you’ll find there are lots of ways to help the environment without having to be a hippy treehugger. Ideally one day being sustainable will become the default way that we live our lives.

Ah, and please read my book: Waking the Sleeping Giant: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Business to Save the Planet.