10 Firms Join Panel on Green Business

By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff
December 1, 2008

Meet Beacon Hill's newest environmental advocates: Legal Sea Foods, Genzyme, and Millipore.

Ten leading Boston-area companies have joined a corporate council of the Environmental League of Massachusetts to advocate for environmental policies, help develop new regulations, and provide a counterpoint to the loud business lobbies that protest environmental regulations claiming they will quash economic growth.

"The purpose is to make clear that a healthy environment and a healthy economy are not in conflict," said George Bachrach, the former state senator and congressional candidate who took over as head of the Environmental League last year.

The council includes Cape Wind Associates, which wants to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound; and Triumvirate Environmental, which handles environmental and hazardous waste; as well as companies with missions far beyond the environment - Millipore, a Billerica life sciences company that has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions; Genzyme, whose Cambridge headquarters features LEED-certified green architecture; Stop & Shop; Grossman Marketing; NStar; Legal Sea Foods; Shawmut Design and Construction; and Saunders Hotel Group.

"When you're talking about groups like Genzyme and Millipore - these are major businesses that I think any politician who is trying to get a good understanding of an issue is going to want to listen to such major players," said Tedd Saunders, chief environmental officer for Saunders Hotel Group, a council member and a leader in greening hotels.

The group is being formed after a string of environmental victories on Beacon Hill. One of the missions of the council will be to help advise the state on how it can satisfy the new Global Warming Solutions Act, which calls for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

"There is a belief that we are at a tipping point in terms of the commitment to alternative energy and that to accomplish that will require a whole new set of technology companies and that can become a whole new economic engine," said Bachrach. "A separate piece is how do we get existing companies to establish energy efficiencies and do the right thing? That is where these guys are the leaders."

While the Environmental League views its corporate council members as leaders in their industries, it is not suggesting that their environmental practices are completely unblemished or that they will agree on every policy issue, Bachrach said.

But they hope to provide a corporate counterpoint to powerful business lobbies like Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which often fights additional regulation by arguing that it will suppress the business climate.

Robert A. Rio, senior vice president for Associated Industries, said his association prefers that other firms do not turn their social concern into mandates. "To the extent that some of these programs increase costs even marginally, some companies may not be in the same position to pass those costs along," he said.
He argued that his group is not anti-environment, and that it also represents corporate leaders in environmental stewardship.

Rio noted that he will be working, along with Genzyme, on an Energy Efficiency Advisory Council to update the state's energy efficiency programs under the new Green Communities Act.

Rick Heller, senior vice president and general counsel for Legal Sea Foods, said, "A lot of times environmental groups don't speak with businesses and frankly, businesses and environmental groups have more in common than sometimes they think they do."