Never before have the opportunities for conscious living been so plentiful, and never before has the need been so great. Most of us are acutely aware that just by living and by doing business, we impact our planet. Despite our best efforts to tread lightly and responsibly on this earth, fossil fuels are burned, trees and habitats are destroyed, landfills are overflowing, and toxic pollutants are created — simply as a result of our day-to-day life. We believe that, given the chance, most everyone truly wants to make a positive contribution to their families, friends, themselves, and the world, and at Synergy we love giving people tools and resources for making positive contributions.

It is our passionate belief that the collective effect of individual choice is extraordinarily powerful — in truth, the most significant and lasting changes occur when individuals begin to make different choices. It is also our belief that businesses are responsible for developing solutions, not exacerbating problems. The need for a deeply conscientious stewardship of our ecosystem must become the foundation upon which today's businesses are built.

Because The Synergy Company™ is founded on the premise that good faith, integrity, and environmental responsibility are eminently compatible with good business, the commitment to leaving behind only footprints infuses our daily operations. Accordingly, we strive to promote renewable and sustainable means of doing business. This takes many forms, but all are rooted in the challenge of looking at every impact we create and then generating solutions in our day-to-day business practices.

Environmental Consciousness Award
The first of many solutions and sustainable choices occurred before we ever broke ground for our facility, when we worked with the US Park Service to transplant the site's native plants for use in park restoration projects.

The decision to build our own production facility allowed us to incorporate low-impact and sustainable technologies into every aspect of our business. The desire to minimize our use of nonrenewable resources influenced our selection of everything from xeriscape (water conserving) landscaping, to low-flow toilets, to energy-efficient appliances, to automatic light sensors. The use of only 100% biodegradable cleaning agents further protects the valuable water supply in our delicate wilderness ecosystem.

Our efforts toward sustainability also extend to many other activities. Of course, we use only recycled paper, paper products, and boxes, as well as soy inks and water-based coatings for our printed materials. Our glass bottles are easily recycled in just about any community. We also have our own extensive in-house recycling program that includes recycling expired ingredients into compost piles for our gardens. We reuse or recycle all paper we receive, including all magazines, newspapers, and cardboard. Additionally, we utilize only organic cotton on our bottling line and have always used only biodegradable cornstarch packing materials to ship our products. For these and several other sustainable practices at The Synergy Company, we received the Environmental Consciousness Award for Excellence in Manufacturing from the State of Utah.

Support for organic agriculture
Perhaps our most significant commitment to the environment (and your health), which we’ve made since the outset, is to source and promote the development of organic and ethically wildcrafted ingredients for our products. The environmental damage caused by chemical farming methods (as you read in this newsletter’s article about organic food) is far, far greater than most people know — it’s enormous! Fortunately, supporting organic farming practices is enormously restorative. In fact, it may be the single most influential thing that you can do to help restore environmental health, renew communities, and protect your own and your family’s health.

Sustainable choices that make you and the planet feel good!
In looking for additional ways to walk lightly, we initiated two sustainability programs that we are extremely proud of, and we sincerely hope they inspire you! First, The Synergy Company now purchases 100% of its energy from the Blue Sky wind power program (Mitchell’s satellite office has always been 100% solar powered). This means that Synergy is directly responsible for reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 250 tons each year! Numerous Synergy employees have also signed up for the Blue Sky program in their own homes. Yes, like organic ingredients and foods, wind power is more costly, but we could not justify saving a relatively modest amount of money each month at the expense of the entire planet, and we believe we have an ethical obligation to conduct business in a manner that creates no harm.

Our second program is equally significant. Despite all our efforts to be environmentally responsible, there are still unavoidable environmental costs to doing business, so The Synergy Company, in cooperation with Plant-It 2020, has created SynerTrees™ — a reforestation program to annually plant indigenous trees in the United States at a rate that exceeds our own consumption. To create the program, we first calculated our use of all paper and cardboard, as well as the paper and packing materials used by our vendors to send us our raw materials. We then converted that figure to harvested trees and added the number of trees necessary to offset the carbon dioxide emissions associated with all of our work-related activities (such as incoming and outgoing shipping via truck and air, our vendors’ activities in creating and supplying our materials, commuting to work, and work-related air travel). We then added another 25% to that number to determine the total number of trees we will plant annually with Plant-It 2020.