One of the biggest challenges for any organization is how to spread its mission throughout the institution so that there is alignment of purpose and practice. In other words, a mission is only a statement on a piece of paper unless everyone throughout the company lives and practices it. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned a CEO (or, in our case, a CE-Yo) is if he or she cannot get everyone to join in the effort. In the case of Stonyfield Farm, and our mission to protect and restore the earth, the tool that has helped us create that alignment and sense of common purpose is MAP (Mission Action Program).
Stonyfield Farm’s Mission Action Program (MAP) is a company-wide program developed to engage our employees in achieving our environmental mission. MAP has been transformative for our company as well as our employees on a professional and personal level. We are more aligned now than at any other time in our twenty-odd years to achieve great environmental progress.
Some of the MAP accomplishments over the past few years include:
- Greater than 40% reduction in transportation GHGs, 2006–2008 ($2,500,000 savings).
- 18 tractor-trailer loads of plastic prevented annually ($780,000 annual savings).
- 19% reduction in facility energy/ton product, 2007–2008 ($500,000 annual savings).
- 10% increase in recycling rate since 2006.
- 30% decrease in trash per ton of product, 2007–2008 ($100,000 annual savings).
Overview of the Program
In 2006, we formed high-level teams in each of our areas of environmental burden, including Sustainable Packaging, Zero Waste, Facility GHG Emissions, and Transportation. As part of the MAP process, each team completes an annual Action Plan, which includes setting long-term and near-term goals and outlines the steps to achieve the goals. The plans must be approved annually by our CEO, COO, and VP of Natural Resources. The team members also have a portion of their compensation linked to achieving an annual MAP objective.
As a result of the MAP Action Plans, we now have company goals in place for our major areas of environmental burden, such as facility energy, facility GHG emissions, percent renewable energy for our manufacturing facility, packaging, and transportation.
