Charting a New Course: A Manufacturing Company CEO on Reducing Waste, Empowering Communities, and Fighting Against Recidivism
One might quickly assume that Cascade Engineering puts profits above anything else. For one, there's the grand spectrum it covers: The manufacturing and large-scale plastics company contains eight innovative businesses that serve a vast array of markets including recycling, furniture manufacturing, automotive, waste—and more. And then, there's its four-decade-long momentum. Cascade Engineering started in Michigan in 1973 and has steadily grown to be a renowned force in all its fields. (The company employs nearly 2000 people and has thirteen offices across the United States and one in Hungary.) Given its size and output, it seems to be a textbook example of an enterprise fueled by cut-throat policies.
It reality, it is a company that believes everything culminates in its triple bottom line. Cascade Engineering was built on the premise that people and impact are as vital to a company's success as its profits. Its founder, Fred Keller, believes there is a huge opportunity to solve environmental and social problems in tandem with a company's main business contribution. One of the first social missions Cascade Engineering worked on was employing and retain people who had been on welfare. Fred and his team learned that by working on that issue, the work culture was actually strengthened.
The company has continued those efforts over the past four decades—and has created other ways to do good. A more recent example is its Returning Citizens Program, the company's involvement in hiring people who have formerly been incarcerated. The program offers people support to transition into a meaningful, empowered life after prison.
These are just a sampling of the ethical aspects to Cascade Engineering. Of course, we wanted to get a deeper understanding behind the operations, so we called on its president and CEO, Christina Keller, to talk about the foundations her father, Fred, built, as well as the company's strategy and driving force. We learned from Christina that Cascade Engineering—which is a certified B Corporation—is more than a leading manufacturer and innovator. It's a lantern for a growing number of companies driven by a desire to make an impact.
"I think if everybody shares their story," says Christina, "that could be inspiring to each other to continue on the journey."
A Q&A with Christina Keller
What makes you excited to lead Cascade Engineering?
I really am passionate about the employees that we have in our organization. We've done a lot of work in reinvesting in the training and development of our individuals. We've hired over 1000 people from prison and from welfare backgrounds, and we support them with services by having social workers on site and allowing them access to public transportation. We're now unrolling a housing program to help with down payment assistance for our employees. We're also working so they can have career ladders throughout the organization, so they could start as an entry level operator and progress into the management ranks.
So hands down, it's the people in organizations that make me excited—but we are also doing a lot of things around the planet. People often think that plastics is not an environmentally friendly area. I talk a lot about materiality: using the right materials for the right purposes. In plastics, it has never been intended to be a single use product. Plastics has been around for hundreds of years and used for applications that need to be around and to be durable. So for durable products—which are what we create across the board—it is actually a great material. For example, with our parts, we've made over 30 million roll-to-the-cart trash and recycle containers, as well as organic. At the end with the life, we typically take those back, re-grind them, and put them into our next cart. So we're able to have a full cradle-to-cradle a life cycle with our products. The plastic is a durable product that allows it to be something that can persist in its application. So for me, in the triple bottom line—people, planet, profits—the people are very exciting and that the planet is right up there, as well.
How has the focus on people, planet, and profit been a part of the company's DNA?
It was part of the inception. We've been around for over forty years and our founder, Fred Keller, my father, had a passion for this. The triple bottom line terminology probably came around in the late 80s and early 90s for us, so we've been publishing a triple bottom line report tracking and measuring ourselves on the progress, relative to our goals and objectives. But really, it was part of the initial founding and the purposes of the organization. My father was a Methodist and one of the quotes he believes in was "do all the good you can to all the people you can for as long as you can." A core principle of that foundation or tenant was doing good to others, and that evolved into doing good for the environment, in doing good for people in our organization and our communities, and beyond.
It is fascinating when companies focus so much on their people. It can be an incredible morale booster and inspiration.
People spend a lot of time in their work environment. So one of our goals is to be an employer of choice: a place where you choose to go, not a place where employees are saying on Wednesday it's just about getting over the hump. It's that you're really passionate, engaged in what you're doing. They say you never work a day in your life if you enjoy what you do.
Putting people, profit, and planet at the center of your company ultimately led you to become a certified B Corporation. And you are one of the only B corporations in manufacturing. Why did you decide to go through the process, and also what effect has it had on the company?
We're a group full of engineers. We love metrics and we love data. We wanted to know how to measure some of these things that are relatively squishy. When you talk about your social impact and your environmental impact, it's difficult to come to an agreement of what's the value of a person or a tree or something along those lines. It's always looking at best practices of how others are looking at the metrics relative to the environment and people.
Fred actually met some of the people from B Lab and talked to them about what they're trying to accomplish. For us, it was twofold because already we were focused on being a purpose driven organization. One was having those metrics available so that we can improve what we're doing and get better over time. We have seen our B score grow as we've continued to learn and adapt with it and understand how we can improve in different areas. One of the major areas it opened us up to was looking at our supply base and how we can ask similar things of our supply base that we're doing internally. The second piece was to be part of a community. We were a bit out in front of the purpose-led organization movement, and so having a partnership with others in the States that are passionate about making a positive impact through business, and looking at how we can practice capitalism differently, was an interesting point for us, as well. We have been engaged in various different activities related to real leaders and B corporations and others to be able to expand our network and partnership and support others that are working.
You've mentioned that you've incorporated more recycled plastics into your products and that the kind of environmental impact is key to you. Who has initiated these changes within the company?
Innovation, for us, comes from any area. We have a group called Noble Polymers. which does compounding. And they initially had been looking at different ways that we could bring additional contaminated end-of-life products into our processes, maybe even using compatibilizers to make them more relevant for HDTE [high-density polyethylene], and how we can increase our alternative materials. So we have our engineers and our chemists involved in that.
We've also been working with outside groups, such as UBQ, who came to us through a connection with the Closed Loop Fund and some other groups. UBQ is actually taking trash and making it into plastic so that we can ultimately have a carbon negative product available for sale, which is exciting. So it's really looking at our entire carbon footprint; looking at the use of recycled content and the overall impact that we're having on the climate, as well as our waste landfill initiative.
Who on your team has been driving these decisions?
Ultimately, there is buy-in from all levels—stakeholders, the board of directors, the management, and the executive council—to be able to foster and grow those ideas. But as I mentioned, innovations can really come from anywhere. We have innovation that came from Jeff Totten, one of our engineers. We have another innovation that came to us through a partnership on the outside. The pink cart was the brainchild of Jo-Anne Perkins, who's one of our business unit leaders for the trash containers and recycling containers. Julianne's mother and grandmother both passed away from breast cancer. To honor them, she made a pink cart for Breast Cancer Awareness. Five dollars from every cart goes to cancer research. We are excited that now we've raised more than $700,000 for the American Cancer Society, all from somebody's idea from within the organization. That was an idea that somebody had within our organization and we fostered it—because an innovation can come from anywhere so long as you have an environment that fosters the growth of those ideas.
What have been some of the tensions that you've navigated when instituting a triple bottom line approach?
There's been false starts and difficulties along the way. Even with some of our success stories, there's areas where you know you lose your way for a little bit and then you find it again. One of the stories that was one of the most powerful is the work that we've done on the prisoner reentry work. When you look at the stats, Michigan has 9000 people coming back from prison back into society every year. A lot of times those people don't even have a state issued ID. Think about the difficulty and the false starts of trying to find a job. You can't get a home because you can't get a loan because you don't have a home address. You can't get a driver's license and you don't have an ID because you don't have a home. It's the compounding impact. Talent 2025 shows that if you have a job and a home, you're 95 percent likely to go back to jail. But yet [the United States] has a very high recidivism, where people are going back into the system. We're spending billions of dollars every year from the state to be able to incarcerate people, and we're not focused on how those people are to transition into society and be successful.
One of the programs that we have is to support prisoner reentry into society. One of the individuals, Jahaun McKinley, one of the early people in the program, started on the production floor and went all the way through the program to become a plant manager. He is now down in Texas working on our lean implementation. Jahaun gave a wonderful TEDx Talk called Transitional Leaders, which was all about his journey of coming back, the false starts, the difficulties, and the persistence that he had to overcome those barriers. Now he has a wife and two young kids and they're doing wonderfully. It's so great to hear the stories of individuals that have navigated through all the difficulties within society and within our organization. It is a testament to the resilience and persistence that individuals can have.
Is this type of hiring process and total cost of employee comparable to a standard hiring process?
If you look at it from an aggregate perspective, the manufacturing industry ranked dead last in terms of what high schoolers want to go into. A Gallup Poll shows that fifty-two percent have little or no interest in manufacturing. They rank it seven out of seven in their career choices. We're also seeing that if you do get young people to come into your employment, the average tenure is about two years. So the cost of turnover is quite a bit, especially if you have a young person that you're investing a lot of resources, training, talent, et cetera, to get up to speed. You're going be filling that hole again. It's difficult in the manufacturing industry. It has been stated that there are about 2.5 million jobs that will likely go unfilled in manufacturing in the next several years. This is the combination of no interest from incoming talent, as well as a lack of STEM programming and STEM talent developments in our pipelines.
So, it's twofold: One is that you're giving someone an opportunity. We have 20 million people in the U. S. that have former felonies, and you have 40 million people living in poverty. That makes 60 million people potentially underemployed and looking for opportunities in our current pipeline. So many companies are focused on attracting millennial talent, and that is a worthwhile effort. But one of the things we've said is that we want to focus differently. We want to focus on people who want to be here. We want to support them, and we want to give them opportunities for growth. And we do find that the average tenure for our former felons and other groups is over seven years.
What does a typical day look like for you at your company when you're focusing on people, profit, and planet?
Every day looks a little bit different. I try to stay focused on our three core areas, which are: customer driven innovation, clear first choice, and operational excellence. My day could be balanced anywhere between spending time with a customer to ensure that we're listening to what their concerns are, working with our engineering team on the next-generation innovation, and looking at how we can potentially look at additional patents and other things we can get involved in.
From an employer perspective, I always try to attend the Monday employee orientation so that we can say hello to our new employees and welcome them to the organization. We work at having lunches for new employees so they can get to know each other. That's where a lot of our formerly incarcerated people talk about the impact that having a job has had on them. That's one of the most personally enriching conversations that we get to have. And it's fun because you have people from throughout the organization—production, HR, finance, leadership staff. We also do our Peer Star Award at our company town hall where people show gratitude for what that person means to them. Those are really powerful moments. We have had the University of Michigan Ross School of Business come and study some of our practices.
And the last one's really operational excellence: ensuring that our practices are working well. Troubleshooting is a big role that you take on as a leader. But it's also about celebrating when we've made some successes, especially relative to our metric as we continue our journey towards operational excellence.
Does focusing on more than just the financial bottom line fuel a greater satisfaction for you as a leader?
Absolutely. I think your true value lies in the lives that you’ve impacted, and how you lead your community to the next generation. I'm excited about how Cascade been a participant. One of the things that Fred did was convene a bunch of CEOs in a group called Talent 2025, which focused on how we're going to get great talent for our community in the future. And we come together to see how can we make a positive impact. For our prisoner reentry program, we were one of the first ones to hire people that were formerly incarcerated. Now there are more than 320 companies in the region that are hiring people out of prison. So it's not only about the impact that you could make personally on your organization, but the impact you could have as a partner or a peer to other organizations in their approach.
To learn more about Cascade Engineering, its triple bottom line approach, its Returning Citizen Program, and more, visit: http://cascadeng.com.