These days, picking out an energy bar [1] for your next adventure can be a daunting task. Should you skip the adventure and pass the day comparing nutritional ingredients and packaging, or is there one that clearly stands out from the rest? If you demand social and environmental responsibility from the businesses you support, all natural and mostly organic [1] Clif Bar [2] products may be the best choices for you.

Berkeley, California-based Clif Bar offers an alternative business model to the build-it and sell-it plan adopted by several of its competitors. The Clif Bar model measures success based on what Clif insiders call their five "bottom lines," which are sustaining the brand, the business, the people, the community, and the planet.

According to owner and founder Gary Erickson's book, Raising the Bar [3], sustaining the brand means investing in making quality nutritional products that generate natural demand instead of investing in marketing to create artificial demand. Sustaining the business means living within their means instead of selling out to larger corporations or going public. Sustaining the people means providing the conditions and programs for Clif employees to thrive. Sustaining the community entails philanthropy and making it easy for employees to volunteer their time. Finally, sustaining the planet means reducing the ecological imprint of the company at every turn. Clif Bar is so serious about adhering to its model of sustainable business that they even have a position called ‘Sustainability Manager." LIME talked to Sustainability [3] Manager Diana Simmons about the challenges and excitement of the five-bottom-line model.

LIME: What does a Sustainability Manager do exactly?

SIMMONS: My responsibility is to look at our supply chain from the fields where we grow all our ingredients all the way through to our final product, and think about environmental impacts and how to reduce them all along the way. So it's a small job! I work with a team that includes staff ecologist, Elysa (Hammond) who is in New York, and Cassie Cyphers who is focused on in-house education and empowering employees to learn about sustainability and then incorporate that knowledge into their day-to-day decision making.

LIME: How long has Clif Bar had a Sustainability Manager?

SIMMONS: I've been in this role since last November, so it's almost been a year. But Elysa has been working with Clif Bar since 2001. We really started with baby steps back then in terms of thinking about our sustainability program. We started not really knowing what to do and began with simple things like recycling and composting our food waste here in the office. She really worked to educate employees about what they could do. When I came in, we were able to expand beyond the employee initiatives and take on some bigger projects that crossed a lot of our supply chain partners, our suppliers, that kind of thing. We even work to make the events we sponsor greener including the Mavericks Surf Contest [4], the Tour of California [5], Escape from Alcatraz [6], and music events at the Greek Theater [7].

LIME: One of the most obvious projects that you've been involved with is the shift to organic. How much organic material is Clif Bar using?

SIMMONS: We've gone from using zero pounds three to four years ago to over 20 million pounds for the year 2006. That's 75% of all the ingredients we purchase. The really exciting thing is that organic farming is so important. It replenishes soil fertility, promotes bio-diversity and protects the air, water, and wildlife from exposure to toxic chemicals. On the global warming [7] front, there's a lot of research that talks about the carbon storage in soil from organic farming. Plus you're not using fertilizer derived from natural gas. There are so many reasons that we feel using organic ingredients is such an important piece of our sustainability program.

LIME: How organic will Clif Bar go and what limitations do you face?

SIMMONS: We've set kind of an audacious goal of using as many organic ingredients as possible. There are sourcing challenges with some ingredients. I'm sure you've seen that demand for organic is growing. And you have big players entering the market, like Wal-Mart for example, that are asking for organic ingredients. It is a challenge to find the supply. Basically, once you certify organic you make a promise that the bars will stay organic. You have to find those ingredients wherever you can.

LIME: Is Clif Bar really putting sustainability over profits? Are there ways that these practices actually pay off?

SIMMONS: We measure our five bottom lines quarterly and we measure our success based on those bottom lines, not just in dollar terms. Some of the sustainability activities cost money and some save money. We know there are trade-offs. Organic ingredients cost more. When we first made Clif Bar organic a couple of years ago, we committed to not raising the price of our products. For us, we're willing to invest in organic because we think it's the right thing to do. Places where we save money include eliminating shrink-wrap on the caddies, which are the boxes you see on store shelves. That eliminated 90,000 pounds of shrink-wrap a year but it also saved us $450,000 dollars a year. When we converted those caddies to recycled paperboard, it saved us $50,000 a year. It also saved 7500 trees.

When it comes down to it, people buy the bars because they like the way they taste. Then, it's wonderful when they learn more about our company. We do feel that must play a part in the decisions people are making. I think there is a growing trend of consumers demanding that the companies and the products they support are consistent with their own values and their beliefs. So businesses are being held accountable. We're trying to be pretty transparent about what we do and we hope those things are the things our consumers are passionate about, too.

LIME: In Raising the Bar, Gary wrote that this is a business model that "has legs" and can be adopted by other companies. Do you think that's true?

SIMMONS: I absolutely think so and it's important to say that we didn't start out with the sustainable business model that we have today. It's important for companies to think about this as a journey. We started with small steps and then we did more as we learned more through partnerships we've created. We can learn more about sustainable agriculture, for example, through the Organic Farming Research Foundation [8], which works to support organic farmers. Another partner is the Breast Cancer Fund [9], which looks into the environmental causes of breast cancer. We work with government groups like Alameda County Stop Waste [10], which is a great resource for learning how we can reduce waste at the office. So, for other businesses, I think starting small, not being afraid to start and realizing that you can always continue to learn and grow is really important

LIME: Is there any one issue that takes precedence in the sustainability conversation at Clif Bar?

SIMMONS: It's global warming. Without meaning to be glib, no business can survive without planet earth so every business better contribute to the fight against global warming. It's the environmental issue of our time.

LIME: I understand Clif Bar is about to go even greener when you move your headquarters to Alameda [11]. What will be different over there?

SIMMONS: We are set to move in the summer 2008. Right now while we love our Berkeley building, we moved into a space that already existed, so we had to try and incorporate green building principles into an existing structure. We lease the building here. But in Alameda, we'll be able to start from scratch. We'll be building into an old vacant warehouse and integrating green building from the beginning. We're really excited about it.

LIME: What is the sustainability dream for Clif Bar?

SIMMONS: If we could achieve our vision, we would create a sustainable food company that works in harmony with the laws of Nature. We want to not just minimize or offset our impact on the environment, but work to maybe even become a restorative company. How can we have a positive impact on everything we do, from the farmer's fields to our final products? We dream big.