Sunrise Soya

We're in planning mode for Sustainability 2.010 (fall 2010) at the Strathcona Business Improvement Association (SBIA) where I vollunteer on their sustainability committee. Looking back at the last year I found this footage of the 'Shades of Green' panal I sat on talking about sustainable business practices in the Strathcona Green Zone in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It's been exciting at the SBIA with the announcement of $50,000 in funding from the Vancity enviroFUND for the development of a materials exchange network so businesses in our community can easily utilize each other's waste materials and save money on disposal and recycling services. An example of this can be seen in our use of off cut paper scraps produced by a local printer as packaging material in our corporate gift basket program. In the near future we'll be looking to hire a full time sustainability coordinator for the SBIA to run with the program and hit the pavement to learn about amd engage all our neighbourhood businesses, helping to facilitate meaningful connections identifying opportunities to save money while reducing environmental impact. Besides materials exchange a community energy challenge is another area of interest, looking at how we as a community can work together to better use resources. Building on the recent success of the SOLE Food Urban Farm project, an initative by United We Can and Building Opportunities with Business, we're finding lots of ways for local businesses, organizations and community members to find meaningful employment while addressing environmental and social justice issues.

Strathcona area businesses are finding ways to cooperate for bottom line benefts. Last week I was honored to meet with other local business owners at Sunrise Soya Foods, a Strathcona keystone business, for the purpose of exploring ways in which we can utilized each other's waste streams.  I'm happy to report back on some of the progress we've made happen to date in addition to opportunities we're continuing toll explore.  Reducing and eliminating waste pays directly into the bottom line of a business, waste = cash, but beyond saving some money this type of work also adds value by building community and relationships with our neighbours. All of this work feeds into building the Strathcona Green Zone, an initiative by the Strathcona Buiness Improvement Association (SBIA) helping local businesses maximzing value from sustainble business practices. Through cooperation we're finding ways to work together for mutual benefit and creating a progressive and innovative business cluster in close proximity to downtown Vancouver.

Meet our neighbours

Sunrise Soya Foods - Manufacturers of a variety of brands including Pete's Tofu, Sunrise Soya Milk, Mandarin and Soyganic, Sunrise has been a corner stone business in Strathcona for over 50 years.

Wing Wing - Manufacturers of Chinese style pork sausages since 1949 shipping their products world wide.

Great Day Bokashi - odour free home composting systems that ferment organic food waste, interested in locating their business in the Strathcona area

Top Success Stories

1. Pallets - both Sunrise and Wing-Wing use orange and blue pallets for shipping, these are the standard ones for shipping into major retail stores. Last week Saul Good gave Wing-Wing 3 blue pallets, helping us figure out how to get rid of something we didn't need while helping them save money on aquire something of value. We also realized that Sunrise receives plastic pallets while Wing-Wing ships products out on plastic pallets. Pallet cascading is an easy way to allow materials to flow through the area as resources, as oppose to as waste to throw away.
2. Plastic buckets - Great Day was able to source plastic buckets from Sunrise which they use for home composting systems.

Opportunities on the rise

1. Reclaimed packing materials - Saul Good is currently experiementing with various options of using reclaimed materials for gift box packaging. Both Sunrise and Wing-Wing have a laminated plastic film product that, if shredded, may be a suitable packing material for Saul Good. Because the product is made from a variety of plastics it can't be recycled, thus by using it for packing we get one more use out of it before it heads to the landfill. Although not ideal from a full product life cycle perspective, it does add some value to waste.
2. Utilizing waste heat - Great Day is looking to utilize waste heat to dry their bokashi, a wheat bran product used in their home composting systems. Food manufacturers can create a variety of heat sources from their manufacturing processes, some of which may be suitable for Great Day. We may need to bring in our consultants to help us calculate if this is a viable eco-industrial opportunty.
3. Our friends at Kona bikes introduced us to a local artist that welds waste steel into various sculptures. As we walked through the Sunrise facility I noticed some old machines and am working on forging a connection here to help Sunrise get rid of something they don't need that's taking up space while helping an artist get access to materials.

Although competition plays a role in challenging ourselves to improve, cooperation is key to progress in a major way. By working together, people and companies are finding amazing ways to contribute value to each other and our organizations.  While working on my MBA I was introduced to Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolutionary biologist giving us a lecture on how we can learn from nature to improve business & society. Over the past while I've noticed a few things that merge together in this space.

Co-Marketing - got clients? so do we!

This past week Saul Good launched a co-marketing campaign with Frogfile Office Essentials, a local green office supply company here in the Strathcona Green Zone. It's a refer a business program giving a Saul Good gift box to every client that refers a new business account at Frogfile. With the newsletter announcement this morning I quickly landed a new client and seeing it emerge on twitter to boot. The web 2.0, digital space and social networking have opened up great opportunities for co-marketing, helping consumers and companies connect with each other based on common interests, markets, and expertise. When two companies offer various value propositions an opportunity emerges to share sales leads as everyone is helping each other to improve their businesses.

Co-Location - it's easier to get help than be on your own

After Sustainability 1.0, a green business expo hosted by the Strathcona Business Improvement Association (SBIA), Toby Barazzuol and I really started talking about our vision for a sustainable business community in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Quickly, various emerging opportunities started to present themselves as Toby's business, Eclipse Awards International, and mine, Saul Good Gift Co., found ways to work together to innovate and do business together. We collaborated with the SBIA and others on Sustainability 2.0, a more progressive expo focused on collaboration as key to sustainable community economic development (For more info on this please read a great article by Emily Jubenvill). One partnership that developed was in the Green Awards space, as we realized that both of our clients would benefit and see value in high quality, locally produced, recognition awards made from recycled, reclaimed and socially responsible labour. On January 1st of this year Saul Good moved into share the office and warehouse space at Eclipse. Having now been in here for 5 months, besides enjoying working in a beautifully designed green renovated building, we've found ways to help each other which include sharing production staff and shipping/receiving logistics, sharing sales leads and clients, collaborating on the development of new business opportunities through creativity and brainstorming sessions, and the development of shared PR contacts interested in the innovative business development happening in Strathcona. This is only the beginning. Co-location has really helped us to learn more about each other and our businesses to find ways we can help each other, after all, it's easier to get help then to be on your own.

Creating value from waste saves cash

For years it's been my passion to be involved with businesses that take useless waste products and turn them into objects of beauty and value. This is the field of industrial ecology, where no energy or resources are wasted but utilized through the development of partnerships where companies use each other's by-products (water, heat, materials) or share resources (buildings, services, employees). Just last week the SBIA hosted a waste exchange workshop that brought neighbourhood businesses together to learn about such opportunities and network in this space. I found value in the workshop as I connected with new people at Strathcona area businesses and with a tour tomorrow at Sunrise Soya I'll see how it all develops. It's amazing to see other businesses interested in cooperation for the development of a sustainable business community and even more thrilling to hear about new companies locating here for this strategic reason.

All business is about relationships, I'm sticking with that, and it's definitely all good to look and develop cooperative models for working together as businesses. It's what we need to do to evolve given the economic and environmental terms of our day. It's also our job.