Stonyfield Farm has been a pioneer in green business by producing organic yogurt for the past 25 years. In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, "CE-Yo" Gary Hirshberg draws on highlights from his book Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World to talk about how his company has consistently worked to reduce its use of resources and production of wastes and emissions, while increasing its profitability.
Addressing audience questions, Hirshberg talks about the business of going "organic," tensions between organic and local, the use of plastics and recycling, and more. He warns that the mythical land to which wastes are thought to be sent known as "away" does not exist, and consumers as well as businesses must become ever more vigilant in their habits and choices.
Gary Hirshberg is chairman, president, and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer, based in Londonderry, New Hampshire. For the past 25 years, he has overseen Stonyfield Farm’s phenomenal growth to its current $320 million in annual sales. In 2005, Hirshberg was named managing director of Stonyfield Europe, a joint venture between the two firms with brands in Canada, Ireland, and France.
Hirshberg joined Stonyfield Farm a few months after its start in 1983. Prior to that, he served as executive director of the New Alchemy Institute, a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture, and renewable energy. Hirshberg was one of the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and has received six honorary doctorates. He was named a Gordon Grand Fellow from Yale, and has won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership, including Global Green USA's “1999 Green Cross Millennium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership.”