LOHAS Forum

The DotGreen Community, Inc. recently attended the Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability Conference, known as the LOHAS Forum, a three-day conference in Boulder, Colorado focused on personal and planetary health and economic sustainability. Spread out across five local downtown buildings – a theatre, a meditation center, an art gallery, a local restaurant and Boulder’s own historic hotel – the LOHAS Forum brought us an inside view of the sustainable downtown area. Individuals and organizations were able to connect organically and share ideas in a colorful and unique atmosphere.

LOHAS attendees included business executives, entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, and individuals with interests in learning more about lifestyles of health and sustainability, and taking these applications to their own sectors throughout the world. The DotGreen team had the opportunity to connect with a diverse group of organizations and individuals who represent important contributors to the future .green online space.

Triple Bottom Line Economics

The forum kicked off Tuesday with an Impact Investing seminar offering insights for investors and entrepreneurs targeting opportunities that provide tangible social and environmental returns, as well as economic advantages. The seminar got exciting as three entrepreneurs pitched their businesses to a mock venture capitalist panel, which critiqued each firm’s viability, its potential for positive societal and environmental impacts, and the quality of the deal from the investor’s business perspective.

Premium Customer Service

Stefanie Lynch, DotGreen, Mark Retsloff, Alfalfa's Market Co-Founder, and Jenny Bullock, DotGreen Director of Communications

Another morning activity brought LOHAS attendees on a tour of some of the companies making a positive impact in downtown Boulder. The group started at Alfalfa’s market, a Boulder marketplace founded by Mark Retsloff, Hass Hassan, and Lyle Davis in the 1980s, on the principles of providing wholesome food and premium customer service. The market sources largely from local and organic vendors, and boasts an extensive bulk foods section, for patrons to load up on their favorite staples without the packaging.

Choices Matter in What We Wear

The next tour activity took conference goers to GoLite’s flagship store, where we heard from the owners about their experience starting a minimal waste and low pollution high quality outdoor wear company. They develop “simple, beautiful, high performance gear that’s light on the planet”. A compelling sentiment from Kim and Demetri Coupounas, the husband and wife founder team, was the idea of embracing current imperfection and moving toward ever improving environmental performance with total transparency. The GoLite company releases sustainability reports, and has the goal of eventually eliminating or mitigating 100% of the environmental footprint.

New Dimensions To Eating GREEN

Lunch at the restaurant Next Door brought fresh produce, creative foods, and lively conversation. The restaurant owners purposely cultivate a friendly community atmosphere and achieve impressive environmental standards. The restaurant, and its nearby sister restaurants The Kitchen, and Upstairs, practice farm-to-table sourcing, compost food waste, employ wind power, and recycle used cooking oil to power one employee’s car.

The Human Component to Corporate Leadership

Some other important insights in the conference came from two well-known speakers and leaders, Chip Conley and Gopi Kallayil.  Both leaders have had long careers in business, and have navigated the challenges of launching new enterprises and initiatives, Chip in the hotel and hospitality space, and Gopi as an intrapreneur for Google. As Chip took the stage for his talk titled, “Emotional Equations,” he wore a suit, but over the course of his opening narrative, he removed it in favor of his running clothes and bare feet.

Chip Conley, speaking to the LOHAS audience

His idea was that the emotional suits we wear affect us all – human emotions cannot be divorced from the self at work, and trying to do so leads to incomplete selves. For leaders, this can cause emotional fragmentation, which begins to permeate the company culture. Chip’s story is one of hardship and loss, but also of joy and the enduring power of the human condition. The first emotional equation he offered was that {despair = suffering – meaning}, and only by increasing your meaning can you affect this equation positively.  In as much as we increase the frequency of the positive relative to the negative, we can truly begin to thrive in our environments.  His path has led him to a place of considering the CEO role as “Chief Emotions Officer,” acknowledging the importance of leading from an emotional place and allowing others the freedom to express their authentic selves.  Ultimately this can lead to more engaged people, who can perform their work more effectively and with greater passion.

Seeking Quality in the Noise

Gopi brought the insight that we all have our own inner-net, or inner technology of being human, which we must nurture in order to achieve our personal and career goals.  As our lives become increasingly busy, mobile, and technology driven, it is important to slow down enough to listen to what your deepest motivating forces are telling you. Our world is one of “continuous partial attention,” where we focus intently on very little as we attempt to focus on everything.  His advice was to get back to the essentials, whatever those may be for you. For Gopi, this pursuit involves a daily practice of mindfulness.  A life-long yoga practitioner, Gopi charged the LOHAS community with striving for self-discovery and reflection as a core discipline.

Economics, A Positive Bottom Line for GREEN

During the next two days of the conference, over 30 speakers shared their insights on green businesses and green living, with sessions ranging from green consumer marketing to the ecological interconnectedness of fungi with new cancer research applications.

Slide from the Natural Marketing Institute presentation at LOHAS

One of the main themes of the conference was the connection between personal and planetary health, and understanding of consumer trends at this intersection. According to recent research by the Natural Marketing Institute, a growing consumer segment associates earth friendly and personally healthy choices. Personal health continues to be an overarching trend within the LOHAS segmentation model, and is increasingly resilient in difficult economic times (www.nmisolutions.com). NMI proposes that the pursuit of personal health is reinforcing environmental sustainability as organic food sales surge to over $30 Billion USD. Communicating health oriented products and services, and catering to customer values can have an impact on customer health and satisfaction as well as planetary health.

The LOHAS Forum is an important place where the DotGreen team connects with thought leaders in sustainability and shares and discusses our role within the larger context of global green activity already taking place. We have been welcomed to attend next year, to further opportunities to grow and connect with like-minded businesses and individuals who collectively represent an important movement taking place around the world.