You’d be hard-pressed to know that the organization Jim Reid runs is a global leader in sustainability, judging from the decor in his office. Reid’s desk is a table jammed together alongside those of three other employees. The walls and floors are bare, and all of the furnishings, right down to the chairs and plastic plants, are recycled cast-offs. But then again, that’s how Reid makes a living—in the recycled-office-equipment business.

 

“We don’t spend much on furniture,” admits Reid, 56, with a laugh. “It’s a sign of our growth.” On this day he’s dressed in a blue-checkered shirt and beige chinos. No jacket, no tie, no formality. “Call me Jim,” the CEO says simply, and we sit down so he can tell me how a successful Scottish banker like him ended up in a business like this.

 

Bridgewater, N.S.–based Green Standards helps large corporations achieve high standards in both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental sustainability. How? By providing turnkey removal services for their cast-off furniture, computers, cellphones—even industrial kitchens. Executives not only have outsourced a problem but also have turned it into a benefit.

 

It works this way: Green Standards, the operating company, organizes the logistics and removal of massive amounts of old equipment for a fee. Green Standards Trust then assumes both ownership and all of the liabilities, sorts it, warehouses it, and redistributes almost half of the items to various not-for-profit organizations. Another 46% of furnishings, raw material such as metal, wood, and plastic, is recycled. Only the remainder, particleboard and metal-bonded plastic—less than 10%—ends up in the landfill. “The goal is zero,” says Reid. “We take everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly. That’s why this business has legs. Suddenly, doing the right thing makes sense.”

 

The idea for Green Standards started in a dank warehouse in London, England, where two former business associates of Reid’s stood staring at an abandoned desk. Both had been long-standing business associates of his; Greg Blezard had started an accounting business, while Alan Cooper had gone into moving furniture and office equipment for companies—“removals,” as they call it in the U.K.

 

One day Blezard mentioned to Cooper that he was about to buy some new office furniture, so Cooper invited him to his warehouse. There he revealed a cache of pristine executive desks, and a pile of other furniture besides, all of which he had been ordered by clients to send to the landfill, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. “This is friggin’ nuts,” they said to each other, recalls Reid. “What can we do about it?” That was in 2002. They called Reid, their old mentor, and after a couple of years of brainstorming and tweaking the business model, together they launched Green Standards in London in late 2004. Since then, the business has taken off.

 

Reid’s arrival to Atlantic Canada was, in every way, life altering. He and his wife, Pam, were on a plane headed for what was supposed to be a family vacation in the United States. The day was Sept. 11, 2001. On route, he noticed that the plane’s cabin crew was acting strangely. “After our first snack, they all disappeared,” he recalls. “Then one of them came rushing through the cabin, crying. The pilot came on the intercom and told us there had been a major security incident in the U.S. and not to be upset when we saw the 35 other aircraft on the tarmac when we land.” No one would say what had happened, and it wasn’t until the Reids were in the terminal that they saw the TV recaps of terrorist-controlled airliners crashing into the Twin Towers.

 

Abandoning their plans to drive throughout the U.S., the pair decided to spend their two-week holiday with friends in Bridgewater. While there, the tragic events weighed heavily on their minds. “We questioned, is this the end?” says Reid. “We reassessed our lives and lifestyle. What we found in Atlantic Canada—quality of life, community spirit, and unspoiled beauty—was exactly what we were looking for.” Not wasting any time, while still on vacation they purchased 6.5 acres of land just outside Bridgewater. The plan: to build a holiday home where the couple could retire in 10 or so years.

 

A native of Edinburgh, Reid retains a soft Sean Connery–like burr despite an education in southern England at Cranfield University; graduate work at the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France; and a London–based career in finance and telecommunications. In the late 1990s, he spent two years in the banking industry in England before moving into senior management in the IT-and-telecommunications sector. He was at the peak of his career, both in terms of earnings and responsibility, when he decided to give it all up.

 

It took some time for Reid to extricate himself from his various U.K. business interests, mostly in the IT industry, before he could move permanently to Nova Scotia in

April of 2004. At the same time, he developed a passion for the Green Standards venture and wanted to nurture the enterprise. In so doing, his retirement plan expanded. Plans for a cottage grew into a year-round home, and he and Pam were soon joined by Pam’s sister and her family.

 

After they relocated, Reid spent the first few months settling into his

new surroundings and establishing himself in the community. He began studying how North American business works, and in particular how corporate social responsibility (CSR) works here. What he discovered: the market in North America was even bigger than in England. Management seemed to embrace the concept of CSR but many lacked a process to make it reality.

 

“There is no doubt that most corporations make every effort to do the right thing, and with corporate social responsibility, many have gone to great lengths to create, articulate, and publish their CSR policies,” says Reid. “However, in many cases these policies are not connected to their processes, and that is what we do: turn policy into process in a compelling, tangible, and real way.” In late 2006, Reid signed his first client, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), in Halifax. The Canadian corporate headquarters of Green Standards was born.

 

Since then, Green Standards has become RBC’s preferred supplier coast-to-coast, completing close to 30 refurbishing projects across the country in a more environmentally responsible manner. “Green Standards fit our mandate. As we refurnished and expanded offices, we tried to reallocate the equipment to other branches, to charities—anything to keep it out of the landfill,” says Steve Hatcher, RBC’s regional manager of physical network distribution. “It took a lot of time and energy, and it’s not what we do best. We do banking. This is a solution that saves us time while also allowing us to fulfill our mandate.”

 

Other companies such as IBM, Chevron, and American Express have been more than willing to pay a premium over normal haulage fees for Green Standards’ service because of the benefits they receive, Reid explains. They know they’ll get a turnkey solution for the disposal of all redundant assets; it’s an environmentally responsible solution that offers compelling public relations and human resource marketing, plus they get charitable-donation tax receipts for the assets that were previously written off.

 

At the boardroom level, redistributing and recycling looks a whole lot greener than buying greenhouse gas credits. That’s because Green Standards’ work is highly measurable. Clients receive quarterly reports detailing the tonnage of redistribution, recycling, and waste, as well as the charities that have benefited. “It’s empirical data,” says Reid. “Companies can literally cut and paste the data into the CSR sections of their annual reports.” The key is its warehouse system called Waste to Wonder.

 

While the corporate headquarters for Green Standards is in Bridgewater, its biggest Waste to Wonder operation is located in Toronto, which includes a 20,000-square-foot warehouse and showroom. Calgary has a 15,000-square-foot warehouse and a sales-and-marketing operation, while Vancouver has a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. In major centres throughout the U.S., several warehouses are scheduled to open shortly, taking Green Standards from coast to coast in less than two years.

 

Waste to Wonder is a hokey-sounding slogan until Reid starts telling you what’s in his Toronto inventory. “I have two skids of BlackBerrys,” he says. “Some of them are still hooked up to the network.” He also has thousands of desks and credenzas, laptop computers and projectors, workstations and chairs, filing cabinets, unused medical equipment, and many other trappings of modern corporate life.

 

“The demand is a challenge. In Toronto after only a few months, we had to triple the size of our warehouse,” says Tim Moore, the founder and chair of Halifax–based Premiere Van Lines, Green Standards’s North American haulage contractor. “Corporations want to help charities and improve the environment; they see Green Standards as giving back.” Moore is an entrepreneur based in Chester, N.S., whose other business interests include a Premiere Executive Suites, Premiere Self Storage, Premiere Leasing, and Premiere Mortgage Centre. He agreed to act as Green Standards’ logistics partner just 10 minutes into a 45-minute selling pitch by Reid.

 

“I’m a tough sell, everyone wants me to buy something from them,” says Moore. “Right away it was obvious this was a huge opportunity for me as an owner, and for all the employees, to give back to the world. How do you say no to that?”

 

Closer to home in Nova Scotia, where Green Standards has a small Waste to Wonder warehouse in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park, it has provided used equipment to the Progress Centre for Early Intervention in Halifax, the Nova Scotia Gambia Society, and Nova Scotia Community College. Other organizations have benefited by purchasing office equipment at a discounted price.

 

Perhaps closest to Reid’s heart is the Green Standards School in a Box program, where 40-foot containers stuffed with everything needed to furnish a school or teaching centre are sent to less advantaged parts of the world. So far, with the help of charities and NGOs, Green Standards has helped to build over 50 schools and teacher training centres worldwide. “People are desperate to learn, and all they need is access to information,” says Reid about a recent trip to Morocco. “Children were being charged a cent an hour to use the computers we had sent over. I was horrified, at first, because they have no money.” But as it was explained to Reid by the village leaders they don’t want the donations to be seen as handouts. So children earn a cent for every kilogram of garbage that they pick up around the village. The children get to use the computers by earning the right to do so and the village is kept clean. “More importantly, the children’s self esteem and self image is enhanced in the process and they work extra hard in learning how to use the computers.”

 

Green Standards has also supplied dozens of schools in the Toronto area, not a location one would normally think of as needy. But for budget-strapped principals who prefer to spend money on teachers rather than white boards and IT gear, it’s a lifesaver. “We had one principal who was dubious when he came into our showroom,” Reid says. “Initially, he couldn’t believe it when we told him he could have anything he wanted. I think he had been sent to see if we were for real, because after he left we saw him out in the parking lot, talking on his cellphone, and within 10 minutes we had calls from six more principals.”

 

Eventually, Reid wants Green Standards to cover North America, including Mexico, which will allow the company to better serve communities where the need is the greatest. He currently employs 15 people but hopes that, by using additional partnerships such as the one he has formed with Moore and Premiere Van Lines, to run an entire North American operation with no more than 50 employees. “Few people in business have the opportunity to make a positive difference to our environment and in the lives of people around the world,” says Reid. “Doing this and being able to leave a lasting legacy is both humbling and rewarding.”