Trey Sutton
This month’s Sustainability Champion is Assistant Professor of Management Trey Sutton. Trey teaches courses that explore the connections between business and environmental health. Outside of work, he is an advocate for plant-based food. Read about how sustainability can make businesses better and how our dietary choices impact the planet in our full interview with Trey below.
What led you to teaching at University of Richmond?
Before I got a PhD, I spent 10 years working, mostly focused in management consulting, doing work like post-merger integration, and CFO services-type projects. I really enjoyed the people I worked with. After a while though, I wanted to pursue answers to the kinds of questions clients won't pay you to answer, but universities will. So I got a PhD in Strategic Management and my first placement was here at University of Richmond. I've been here four years and my focus is on non-market strategy, which means thinking about how non-market actors like governments and social movements affect how well firms perform.
How does sustainability impact the courses you teach?
I teach two courses- strategic management and environmental management. In environmental management, the class is broken into two parts. First, we look at broad, foundational topics like the business case for sustainability. After that, we get into industry specific topics like energy, transportation, and agriculture. We talk about problems those industries have created in the environment as well as technology on the horizon that could help alleviate some of those problems.
Students work on a number of cases and one of their projects is focused on either a technology they want to commercialize or a problem they want to solve. One student team looked at converting specialized barns used in chicken farming to something that could be used for growing plants. This idea is relevant to our area. The Delmarva Peninsula, where Virginia's Eastern Shore is located, has the highest concentration of chicken farms in the country. Those produce manure that pollutes the Chesapeake Bay. If a chicken farmer wants to switch to producing something else, it can be difficult if they don't know what to do with specialized equipment.
How are sustainability and good business related?
At its core, business should be about solving problems. Issues around sustainability often emerge because a business solved a problem, but in doing so created more serious problems. One example is nonstick cookware. Businesses producing it solved the problem of food sticking to pans, but then employees started developing cancer or having children with birth defects due to the toxicity of the chemicals involved. And those companies polluted nearby waterways with the same chemicals. To me, it seems like basic morality to make sure the problem you're solving outweighs any problems you create as a result. Today, it's not just “tree-hugging environmentalists” who care about the environment; investors, customers, and employees are very concerned about sustainability too.
What areas of sustainability are you personally most interested in?
My interest is pretty broad. I'm generally concerned about the future. I enjoy being around the water whatever way I can, but sea level rise is not some prospect in the future, it's something coastal communities are dealing with now. When my wife and I were in Charleston recently, we went for a run, then went back to our hotel. By the time we drove away from the hotel, those same streets we were running on earlier were flooded because of high tide. Cities like Charleston and Miami are now experiencing far more sunny-day floods than they did in the past. So the way we're interacting with the coast is changing. I also live near a lot of trailheads that lead down to the James River. Whenever the river has receded after heavy rains, the river banks are littered with a staggering amount of plastic waste. It's really disheartening, but it also keeps me energized about discouraging single-use plastics.
The set of issues I pay the most attention to, though, is diet and agriculture, and I incorporate that into my environmental management class. I'm also involved with that issue outside my job by serving on the board of a nonprofit that helps promote plant-based products. I grew up in southern Georgia hunting, fishing, and eating the typical American diet, but about 10 years ago I began thinking more critically about the impact of food on animals and the health of the environment and I decided to eat a plant-based diet. Dietary choices are often overlooked as an easy way to make a difference.
What easy changes can people make with their diet and how does it positively impact the environment?
Things like renewable energy are really popular and important, but those changes are expensive and take time. You can change your diet without even changing the grocery store that you shop at. Farming animals for food is very inefficient. You're taking food you've grown and feeding it to animals, which ultimately yield fewer calories than they ate. Animal agriculture also takes a ton of land and water. Cows in particular are problematic because they produce a lot of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Eating animals made sense for our ancestors, because in a crude sense, animals are like a battery converting grass into calories that we can harvest whenever we want, but it's inefficient and just doesn't make sense anymore.
When people hear "plant-based diets", a salad often comes to mind. But we have a ton of options and there are foods like lentils and chickpeas that have a lot of protein. Americans have a very meat-centric diet, but there are many cookbooks and recipes online with other kinds of meals you can prepare. One cool thing is that companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are developing plant-based burgers that taste a lot like the real thing. Another innovation is cell-based meat, which is growing just the meat without the rest of the animal. There are massive business opportunities here as this develops.
What are some of your favorite plant-based options on campus and in Richmond?
The dining hall usually has good options, and they do have the Beyond burger. In the city, I really like Hang Space on the south side, and 821 Cafe near VCU. Goatacado and The Daily are also good. There are really dozens of options.
What's one thing you hope your students understand about sustainability and business after taking your classes?
There doesn't have to be a trade-off between profit and sustainability, because there's enough interest among investors, consumers, and employees that you can pursue both at the same time. Like I said, business is about solving problems and environmental mismanagement is a problem waiting to be solved. As a simple example, a company in the Netherlands has plastic fishing tours. You take a canal tour and you have a net, so when you see plastic you scoop it up, then they make that into furniture and sell it.
Not all environmental problems can be solved by business, but a lot can. I want my students to have a unique way to look at problems and find solutions.
Thank you, Fred, for all you do to support sustainability! If you know someone who you think should be featured as a Sustainability Champion, please let us know at sustainability@richmond.edu.