Nonprofit agency goes online with `green' products marketing firm

Tom Hancock Tom Hancock packs shredded papers in a box in preparation for a shipment of goods through Greenmarketplace, while Mark Dolinsky sweeps the floor at Goodwill of Pittsburgh's South Side headquarters. (Cala Moldovan/Tribune-Review photo)
By Marc Lukasiak
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

An Internet retailer making the environment and mankind its top business priority is partnering with Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh in bringing social responsibility to the forefront.

Goodwill workers have begun filling orders at its South Side warehouse for GreenMarketplace.com, a Squirrel Hill firm that markets environmentally safe products via e-commerce.

Goodwill is using the partnership with GreenMarketplace as a training tool for its staff, many of whom struggle with disabilities.

Josh Knauer, CEO of GreenMarketplace, said his company's "social mission" and Goodwill's goals are essentially the same, making the alliance a perfect fit.

"We're selling products which help the world and making a difference in the lives of people working in the warehouse," Knauer said. "We seek to only do business with people who are fair to workers by creating a positive work environment and help empower people who are disenfranchised in some way."

On Wednesday, products, such as hand-crafted soaps, key chains, date books made from recycled rubber, hand-woven clothing from Guatemala, and "living herbs" cleansing treatments for the body, were being packaged for shipment to various destinations across the country.

Consumers can use GreenMarketplace's e-commerce web technology to peruse its Nonprofit Store, which sends 60 percent of the proceeds from each purchase back to the nonprofit organizations whose products it sells.

"We want to build our community by using our resources wisely ... whether they are human resources or environmentally safe products," said Sheila Holt, director of public relations for Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh. "It's actually kind of fun. These are eager, exciting people."

Goodwill has staffed its warehouse with five trainees who are responsible for product orders. Trainees use shredded paper and old boxes to package the products.

The trainees will learn a "marketable skill they can use on their resumes" while working for GreenMarketplace, Holt said, adding that there is no timetable for the training.

Goodwill and GreenMarketplace would like to see the number of warehouse trainees increase to 70 over the next five years, according to Holt.

GreenMarketplace has a contractual agreement with Goodwill, paying an hourly rate for "warehousing services," Holt said.

Knauer and GreenMarketplace spokeswoman Deborah Ellman said it wouldn't bother them if their company didn't save money by partnering with Goodwill's warehouse, near its headquarters at 2600 E. Carson St.

GreenMarketplace.com

Some of the suppliers and nonprofit organizations GreenMarketplace.com supports:
  • The Enterprising Kitchen - This Chicago nonprofit organization helps at-risk women build skills and self-confidence through job training and paid work experience. The sale of TEK's hand-crafted soaps helps these women rebuild their lives.
  • Honor The Earth - This organization uses music, the media and the arts to raise awareness of the environmental threats facing Native American homelands and communities. HTE works to prevent the storing of nuclear waste on native land, and to restore buffalo to the Great Plains. CD, book and poster sales help HTE fund more than 200 Native American groups.
  • Pittsburgh's Littlearth - Products made from recycled rubber, license plates and bottle caps are created by workers from all over the world, including political refugees from Bosnia, Haiti and Vietnam, and former U.S. welfare recipients.
  • Erbaviva - Soaps, oils and cleansing treatments are hand-packaged by Thai and Burmese tribes working to support their communities and fragile forest ecology through fair trade practices.
  • The AJ-Quen Cooperative - In rural Comalapa, Guatemala, parents are working to keep the 2,000-year-old Mayan art of weaving alive and their families together. For them, weaving means a fair wage without having to leave children at home.
  • Seventh Generation - GreenMarketplace has an exclusive online partnership with this leading, award-winning national supplier of environmental household products since 1988.
    • "It doesn't matter. This is the only one who can claim they're trying to help people," Ellman said.

    "Pittsburgh is not really thought of as progressive, and this is so progressive," Ellman said of the partnership. "We hope to raise the bar."

    Knauer, 26, said GreenMarketplace is a spinoff of his nonprofit Web site, Envirolink, a clearinghouse for environmental concerns.

    The New Jersey native began both ventures while he was a student at Carnegie Mellon University between 1991 and 1995.

    GreenMarketplace formerly had a warehouse in Arizona, but moved east since a majority of customers are concentrated on this side of the Mississippi.

    Knauer projects his company will do $27 million in sales within two years.

    As the company grows, Holt said, Goodwill will add more employees to the warehouse.

    "They're very innovative," she said of GreenMarketplace. "We want to blend some of our similarities."


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