Gary Hirshberg is the Co-founder, President and “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm, Inc., the world’s largest organic-yogurt maker. The company has had a compounded annual growth rate of 27.4 percent for more than eighteen years, and 2006 sales topped $260 million. In 2006, Stonyfield Farm received a Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. EPA and the Department of Energy for its renewable energy initiatives, including the recent installation of the largest solar panel array in New Hampshire. Before co-founding Stonyfield Farm, Mr. Hirshberg served as Executive Director of The New Alchemy Institute – a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture and renewable energy. Mr. Hirshberg’s book, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, was released in January 2008 by Hyperion Books.

“Gary Hirshberg is the real deal. He not only talks sustainability, he does sustainability. Now, in Stirring It Up, he shares with great clarity both his wisdom and his penchant for action. Read and be stirred to take your own action.”

– Ray C. Anderson, Founder and Chair, Interface, Inc.

“Gary Hirshberg has done a masterful job telling the stories of cutting-edge companies that have found a way to increase profits and environmental sustainability at the same time.”

– Ben Cohen, Former CEO, Ben & Jerry’s

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High on Stonyfield’s agenda is our top priority – real wealth. As a business, we’ve pledged to do anything feasible to help reduce environmental costs and rebalance the planet’s natural systems, from the land to the atmosphere. At Stonyfield, our goal is more than making money. We aim to be both sustainable and profitable. When we make decisions, we consider the alternatives in terms of whether their impact would move us closer to, or further from, sustainable profitability. Pay more for milk? Yes, if the milk is high-quality and our purchases will ensure long-term access to a key, quality ingredient.

In the United States, at least, too many companies seem to be at war with their suppliers, forcing them to slash prices and then skimp on quality just to stay alive. We learned early on that organic farming enriches soil and cows, thus producing better milk, and we set about helping our organic dairymen to cash in as well. Freeing them from the crazy month to month price swings that affect other milk suppliers, we have brought stability to our organic milk producers by committing to consistent prices disconnected from the roller-coaster ups and downs of the commodity milk market. Moreover, we’ve applied the same principle of stable, fair pricing to the worldwide suppliers of all other ingredients we need. Everyone benefits.

Now, I confess that our gross margins are nowhere near that of our competitors’. But here’s the beauty part: Our net profit margins are better than theirs. At Stonyfield, we turn the old mantra on its head. We buy dear, meaning that we pay top dollar to produce the finest yogurt. And it works for us, just as I know it can work for all companies.

From 1995 to 2005, Stonyfield had great success in increasing our efficiency and slashing our carbon dioxide emissions per ton of yogurt produced. Our pollution-cutting efforts were equivalent to taking 4,500 cars off the road. Moreover, we saved more than $1.6 million in the process – good reason for all companies to do the same.

In 1997, we were the first manufacturer in the U.S. to mitigate the CO2 emissions from our facility by investing in carbon offsets – such as reforestation projects and the construction of wind generators.

I began to see early on that organic is a way of thinking that can help improve any business. By following organic principles, many other industries could become more self-sustaining and thus lessen their destructive impact on our key resources, including air, water, soil, and climate. The Stonyfield record proves they could also boost profits.

Whatever the variations from one business to the next, some twenty-five years of hard-won success at Stonyfield tell me that sustainability is the correct grail for business leaders to pursue in the early twenty-first century. Those who do will reap the unimagined rewards for themselves and the planet. This is no longer a hypothesis; it’s a surefire plan for solid transformation.