Business owner works
to save Colorado wildlands

This November,. Roy Young, the owner of Nature’s Own stores, is sponsoring a fundraiser for the Colorado Wilderness Network, a coalition steered by five organizations including the Colorado Mountain Club.  In appreciation of his generosity and environmental ethic, we wanted to share Roy’s perspective of corporate responsibility demonstrated in this interview that first appeared in Hope Magazine two months ago. 

Between November 1 and 27, Nature’s Own stores will donate one hundred percent of the purchase price of merchandise bought at their five Colorado stores.  The only condition is that the purchaser must tell the cashier that they are buying “to support Colorado Wilderness.”  All proceeds will support the protection of Colorado’s wildlands.

Reprinted from Hope Magazine

In 1975, Roy Young left a graduate program in geology and became “an itinerant rock peddler,” a business that evolved into Nature’s Own. It now comprises five Colorado retail stores selling nature-oriented products and a wholesale business distributing rocks from Brazil, Madagascar, and Pakistan. Young lives on less than $15,000 a year so he can channel funds straight from Nature’s Own to environmental projects—priorities he says the IRS somehow has had trouble understanding.  

Q: Is it true that from the beginning Nature’s Own has given away $100,000 a year or more?  

A: We’ve been trying to reach that benchmark every year. In Brazil, I’ve met peers who work in grassroots environmental activism, and they didn’t have enough money to buy a light bulb, literally, let alone to turn it on. I realized that for $2,000 you could leverage a huge web of very energetic, intelligent, committed people and trigger a truly global process. With the business doing what it was doing, it was easy to multiply that.  

Q: Why is your approach to business so cause-oriented rather than profit-oriented?  

A: I can’t really justify my time running the business except for what I’m able to accomplish, multiplied a thousand times for the people it helps around the world. I mean, most businesses are kind of extended Trivial Pursuits.  

Q: So where does your ethic come from?  

A: Fear. Absolute, gut-wrenching fear. I think we’re losing the planet, not in huge steps, but in nibbles and chunks and increments. If you think we’re losing the planet, then it’s easy to take deliberate action to try to correct that process and educate.

I can’t figure out if I’m an optimist or a pessimist. When I look at the whole picture, I’m a pessimist. On the other hand, I keep doing this year after year, and I will continue to do so as long as I possibly can, and that’s the only thing that motivates me, so I guess I’m an optimist.  

Q: What would you most like the average environmentally concerned person to understand?  

A: We’re all responsible, and as Americans we’re more responsible than anyone else. Our impact on the world is enormous. We need to find a way both to share our wealth and to cut back on our consumption. We need to make sustainability a reality, not just a buzzword. P

Interview reprinted with permission from HOPE Magazine, July/August 2002, www.hopemag.com.