Industry group looks past organic

It's been a long road to market prominence for the organic-food industry, but after 30 years, no one can argue that organics’ time has come.

Instead of resting on its success and reaping profits, 19 major industry leaders, including Amy’s Kitchen, Nature’s Path, New Harvest Organics and PCC Natural Markets, this week announced the formation of the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association (FTSLA). The nonprofit aims to help members become more sustainable while continuing to increase profits.

Natalie Reitman-White, FTSLA executive director, says the organization is an attempt to build on the industry’s history of companies working together to solve industry-wide problems. The effort would help industry veterans and newcomers alike answer the industry’s “next big challenge," which involves applying the same level of integrity that goes into food production into companies' entire business models. FTSLA is creating a network of resources to help organic food companies reach sustainability.

"We're all trying to figure this stuff out together,” Reitman-White says. “It seems like a no brainer that we should be sharing resources about how we should measure and reduce our carbon footprint. That’s not proprietary.”

FTSLA grew out of a sustainability program based at the University of Oregon in Eugene. The group’s members spent three years developing a Sustainability Declaration that covers 11 areas of doing business including distribution, energy, climate change, packaging, animal care and labor issues.

Each member organization pledges to address and improve its actions in such areas, using the network and education tools provided by FTSLA. But the group is not going to answer all questions for all companies, says Reitman-White. Instead, it plans to help companies put answers into a food-industry perspective.

“I’m not interested in reinventing what the green building sector does well,” she says. “We’ll point to resources in the green building sector when members go to build a new warehouse but we’ll have an eye toward the food industry."

Reitman-White says FTSLA is not designed to be a certification scheme because it’s “premature” to certify the sustainability of an entire company. Companies do have to report metrics annually outlining company progress toward sustainability. To this end, FTSLA provides a data collection and reporting package based on existing data tools such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Ways program for tracking transportation emissions.