Dov Khenin is not the typical Israeli politician. A veteran environmentalist, Khenin gets around the city by bus or on his bike. While he comes across as relaxed and even-tempered, the look in his eyes projects seriousness and determination. He voices his opinions clearly, without any of the Orwellian doublespeak that has become the trademark of the local political discourse. He shows up for our interview, at a small coffee shop in northern Tel Aviv, casually dressed and on foot.

A human rights lawyer with a doctorate in political science, Khenin served as Chairman of Life and Environment, the umbrella organization of Israel’s environmental movement, for three years prior to being elected to the Knesset. Though he comes from a political family (Khenin’s father was one of the leaders of the Israeli Communist Party, Maki), Khenin has been in politics for only two years.

As a Member of Knesset from the Jewish-Arab Hadash party, Khenin has been instrumental in passing environmental legislation. Together with Rabbi Michael Melchior, he heads the Knesset’s Social-Environmental Lobby, a group of forty lawmakers that promotes progressive legislation.

This unassuming man, the head a diverse list of neighborhood activists, environmentalists and academics known as A City for All (Ir Licoolanu), is seen by many as the only serious alternative to the policies of incumbent mayor Ron Huldai.

What is A City for All?

Well, A City for All is really a fascinating phenomenon. It is a kind of urban movement that was created in Tel Aviv over the past year by people who were involved in different struggles on the municipal level, and came to realize that they all have something in common.

This way we created this very unique, multi-party movement. Most of the people involved are not members of political parties at all, though some are members of various parties. But we have a strong and well-developed opinion on the problems of the city and we want to put forward an alternative to what is going on in Tel Aviv-Jaffa right now.

How would the city change under A City for All’s leadership?

It will be different on the environmental front; we will see a much greener city, with public transportation as the most important priority. We will see a city with more social justice, bridging the gaps between north and south. We will see a city where affordable housing programs will be advanced very, very quickly. And most importantly we will see a democratic city with open doors to social activity, to civil society, and to all kinds of organizations, groups and initiatives.

What is your vision for Tel Aviv? What can we expect after five years under your leadership?

Tel Aviv-Jaffa is a fascinating city. It is a really interesting, intense, good place to be. But there are very grave dangers that are hanging over Tel Aviv right now.

First of all, we would like to have a transportation revolution in the city. We should have a very modern, efficient public transportation system here. Otherwise we will continue with the present transportation crisis. You know, people do not have a place to park their cars, there are terrible traffic jams and air pollution. We shouldn’t continue to wait around for an underground train system. There are different solutions for public transportation systems based on rapid, clean, modern buses that could really change the transport situation.

Another very important problem is housing. Many young people are driven out of the city because they can’t really afford to continue living here. This is another area where the municipality can be involved and make a difference.

Of course, the Tel Aviv Municipality does not create market forces, but we believe that the city should not just swim along with the current; we believe it should swim against the stream. [This can be done,] for instance, by building flats that are more suitable to the population here. Most households in the city are very small, so people need smaller flats, cheaper flats, and not the very luxury giant flats that are being built in these towers that [current Mayor] Ron Huldai is really encouraging.

So the municipality, using smart urban planning policy, can change the crisis of demand that is driving up housing prices. We should also use the municipality’s own housing companies to build affordable housing. The city can encourage different affordable housing schemes; it is possible, it is being done in different places around the world, and Tel Aviv is very suitable for such programs.

Another is the issue of democracy and openness. Some people say that the city is being run like an army barracks, with the mayor as commander, where the people’s opinions do not really count. In our view, the most important thing in the city is not the streets and the buildings, but the people and the communities. Ron Huldai is not attentive, at all, to the needs of the communities in the city.

Another very important issue is education, which is also connected with the issue of equality between north and south Tel Aviv.

What steps must be taken here in light of the world economic and ecological crises? Which other world cities could serve as development models for Tel Aviv?

In the world of the 21^st century, the city is a very important arena for the struggle for environmental change. This is a very acute issue, it’s not a theoretical issue, and actually it’s a matter of life and death for people and, in a way, for humanity at large. We can find very interesting examples of changes all around the world that Tel Aviv can learn from, starting with Vancouver, Portland and Curitiba, Brazil. We can also look at cities in Europe where public transport is the norm and the private car is the exception. This is not currently the situation in Tel Aviv, but it can change.

What can be done to make transportation in the city more efficient?

One very important legal tool is a new change in the Transportation Law. This was one of my initiatives, as a member of the Knesset, which gives local authority a clear and wide mandate in dealing with transport in the city, in order to lower air pollution. With legal tools like this one we can really make a revolution in the city.

What we plan to do is to make rapid routes open for public transport. We would like to change the bus system, which can be done relatively cheaply, and create a network of rapid buses all over Tel Aviv that will persuade the average Israeli to leave his car at home, avoid using it in the city, and instead use public transport. This is the key. Our policy on transport is first of all public transportation and then bicycles, at the expense of the private car.

In recent years, skyscrapers have been appearing all over the city, and much criticism has been leveled against them. Does the city have a policy regarding tall buildings? Are there places where skyscrapers are inappropriate?

There are places where we can build skyscrapers, for example along the Ayalon highway. Where you have a rapid transportation system that can serve these huge buildings, it is possible to build skyscrapers. We do not oppose skyscrapers on principle. But the current administration is building skyscrapers all over the city. And in places where the structures are very low and dense, such a tower is a social, environmental and transportation disaster. That we will surely avoid.

Do you have any plans to make the city’s bureaucracy less onerous and more functional for citizens and local business owners?

Well, the strangest thing of all is that if you want to build a 40 story tower, it will be [approved] much quicker than if you want to close the small balcony in your apartment. That is very strange, and we cannot accept that situation. We should create different fields of approval for different plans. The smaller issues should be dealt with in a simple, quick fast-track. When we deal with the big plans, the discussion should be much deeper and much more serious, and would certainly take much more time.

Despite its great potential, much of Tel Aviv remains aesthetically unappealing, to say the least. How active of a role should the municipality take in improving the city’s appearance?

Well, let’s begin with the fact that there is a very big difference between what you can see here -- we are sitting in a residential area in north Tel Aviv and the surroundings are relatively nice, you know – and what you can see in the streets of Jaffa or the south of the city. There the municipality should do much more to improve the physical appearance of the neighborhood. This is part of bridging the social gap between north and south.

Tel Aviv is home to some of the country’s most active and influential environmental groups, many of whom have quite a lot to say about the city’s development, but feel like they are always fighting an uphill battle. How would you, as mayor, relate to environmental groups and neighborhood organizations?

This is a very, very important issue. I think that what you refer to, that Tel Aviv is very rich with many kinds of organizations, struggles, people with ideas -- this is really a very important resource for the city. So we should see ourselves as very lucky that we have all these kinds of energy in the city. We should really embrace all of these organizations and movements and groups, and tell them: “We are lucky to have you with us.”

The current situation is the opposite. The current administration really views these organizations and activities as some kind of obstacle. The mayor has his own ideas, and there are these very strange green people who come and make things difficult, you know. It is very wrong to view things like this, because actually all of these people are the most important thing we have in the city.

Tel Aviv is also home to some of the country’s most powerful business interests. How do you plan to garner their support for the new party?

Well, we are not a party, we are a movement. But our movement deals mainly with small businesses. These are very important in the city, and we should protect the small shops and cafes in the street, because this is part of what makes the city a city. If we do not preserve them, there is a danger that businesses will leave the city for all kinds of complexes outside the city. And that is very bad socially, and in terms of urbanism.

How can that be done?

We should encourage small cafes in different parts of the city, not only in the north, but also in the south. Small enterprises can really make a big change in the total overall atmosphere of these neighborhoods, without putting much money into it, making the whole neighborhood livelier and healthier, in a way.

Does the city have the tools to do this?

Surely. The city has the tools because the city is the one who regulates permits for businesses.

You are a member of the Hadash party, and you have been characterized as a communist and even an anti-Zionist. How would you characterize your political worldview?

Well, of course I am from the Left. I am a member of Hadash, which is a Jewish-Arab political movement. And my worldview is socialist and universalist, and I am for peace with the Palestinians as well as with the Syrians. All these issues are very important, and of course I have my opinions, which are not a secret, but these are not the issues being voted on in Tel Aviv.

So when people tell me, ‘you are for peace with Syria’, I tell them that this is correct. Of course I am for the peace with Syria, with all the implications that this entails for the Golan Heights and so on. But with all due respect, this is not something that the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality will decide.

Again, these are very interesting issues and topics, and we can discuss them at length, but these are not the real issues [at hand]. You know, when people speak about Zionism, what they understand is very different. Is it a specific ideology or is it a way of saying that someone is a patriot? Of course I am an Israeli patriot. I love my country. As an environmentalist I defend my country against all kinds of threats. From businesspeople, for example, who would like to tear it apart. I want to make [Israel’s] people happier and secure a better future, in my own way.

All these issues are very important and interesting, but again, these are not the issues at stake in Tel Aviv. When my opponents try to divert the discussion from the issues on the agenda in Tel Aviv to grand ideology, I think that they are afraid of debating the real issues here in the city.

Interview text originally published in Jerusalem Post Metro on November 7 2008. Video posted on TreeHugger.com on November 9 2008.

Above: Jerry Greenfield, Jesse Fox & Yair Engel (photo by Daniel Cherrin).

“Business is very involved in trying to influence policy, such as lobbying against regulations or raising the minimum wage. All of this is done to promote business’ narrow interests, and it’s done behind the scenes. Ben & Jerry’s takes a different approach. We try to do good deeds and act in the consumer’s interests.”

I caught up with Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s recently at Maala’s 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Conference, where he gave a lecture about his (& Ben’s) fascinating journey into the world of responsible, sustainable entrepreneurship. Here’s what he had to say…

TreeHugger: Jerry, you just gave a speech to an audience of Israeli CEO’s and investment bankers about the Ben & Jerry’s model of social responsibility, which I would guess is quite a bit more radical than anything anybody else in the room is doing right now. How receptive do you think they were?

Jerry Greenfield: What I talk about at these kinds of events is based on our experience. I think sometimes people feel like Ben and I are trying to, well, pontificate is too strong a word, but direct people that business should be a certain way. What we are doing is sharing our experience of running a business in a non-traditional way. So usually I try to tell some humorous stories about how we started, how we didn’t have any training and we’re not your usual business people. We tried to run a business the way a person on the street would, at the beginning.

Most people in the US view corporations as selfish entities, and we didn’t want to have that kind of business, so we said we’re going to see if we can be different. So we try to let people know that you don’t have to do it the traditional way; you can do it differently – it’s possible. The tradition thinking is that environmental and social responsibility takes away from profitability, but our experience is the exact opposite. There are many people in the business world that would like to do that, but don’t know how.

I think it will become a competitive advantage, because that’s what consumers respond to. So often people are buying products and services and that they don’t really like, but they feel like they don’t have any alternative.

“If It’s Not Fun, Why Do It?” Jerry Greenfield at Maala’s 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Conference.

TreeHugger: In your speech to the conference you said, “Business is the most powerful force in our society today… Business has incredible power and influence over our society, all of which [it uses] in the narrow interest of business, which is to make money… We would not tolerate that from any other major entity in society, but it’s okay for business.” How do you think that went over with the crowd?

JG: I think businesspeople know how powerful business is, particularly big corporations. Business is very involved in trying to influence policy, such as lobbying against all sorts of regulations or against raising the minimum wage. All of this is done to promote business’ narrow interests, and it’s done behind the scenes – because it would be very unpopular if people knew about this stuff. Businesses want people to like them, which is why they spend so much money on advertising and marketing, to try to get consumers to feel good about the stuff they are buying.

Ben & Jerry’s takes a different approach. We try to do good deeds and act in the consumer’s interests. I don’t think the whole world is going to start acting that way overnight, but there are tangible benefits of doing it. For example, people that work for the company feel better about what they are doing, employees feel more motivated.

TreeHugger: After your speech, the CEO of one of the big cellular companies gave a presentation about the charity work that his company does, including donating to kids who are fighting cancer. He neglected to mention that his company’s cell phones and antennas are seen by many in Israel as a major cause of cancer! What will convince corporate managers to start moving the core of their business activity toward sustainability and social responsibility, instead of continuing along more or less the same path while covering it up with donations and greenwash?

JG: It’s really an interesting question – the core of your business versus these things on the side. I don’t quite know where to start. What we essentially figured out was that normally in business you think about cost, quality, time of delivery, things like that. We added another factor – responsibility for social and environmental impacts – as another fundamental thing, alongside price and quality.

Managers are trained to think in terms of these things, and when you add another factor, it adds another layer of complexity, which managers don’t like. Plus they may not even believe in these environmental and socially responsible things in the first place! So you may be asking people to do things they don’t believe in, and which they think just makes their job harder. Unless you have people in the company who believe in these things, its’ going to seem like a burden.

So I think it needs to come from the top. As important as it is to have these ideas bubbling up from [workers and consumers], the person at the top has to make the decisions. That person is looking at the welfare of the company, hopefully not just in the short term, but in the long term as well.

You know, when Ben and I started doing this like 20 years ago, these ideas were considered very fringe. Nowadays they are quite mainstream. That’s the way it happens. The companies that start things like this are the smaller, innovative, entrepreneurial companies. The big conglomerates are not leaders on this; they come on board after it’s been shown to work. That’s the nature of their role. They are behemoths who are good at making something bigger once it has already developed.

Sometimes people say to me, what do think about businesses who are doing good things, but only because they think it’s good for business. I say whatever makes businesses be more positive is wonderful. If they are just going through the motions, and good things are coming out of it, that’s okay.

TreeHugger: But at the pace these things are happening, are we really going to prevent the big ecological crises that people are predicting?

JG: The difficult thing with something like global warming is that a lot of times humans don’t respond until there is an emergency, and you cannot always see the real impacts of things until you are past the tipping point.

I’m not convinced that we can’t make dramatic changes quickly enough to dent those huge impacts. Carbon in the atmosphere – people say it’s beyond repair, that it’s too late. I haven’t really bought in to that line of thinking yet. I think you do the best you can, try your absolute hardest, and if you are successful – good. And if not, at least you tried.

“I’ve got 4 flavors here!” Jerry hawks his wares to conference participants.

I think real change is hard for any institution, it has to do with the nature of institutions. At Ben & Jerry’s, the biggest things for us in making our company more sustainable were the ingredients, the packaging, and, being a somewhat energy-intensive business, the freezing and transport of the product. That was the change that we made at the core of our business, the fundamental stuff. We committed to reducing our energy footprint per pint. You make a commitment and then you just make it happen.

I think that’s part of the answer to your questions – the issue of measuring success.

Companies are really good at things they can measure. That’s a good way for companies to address sustainability issues: first commit, and then start measuring. You don’t know where to start until you take an inventory of your baseline.

TreeHugger: Do all Ben & Jerry’s franchises share your business philosophy?

JG: Absolutely. It doesn’t work if you have people throughout the company that don’t believe in it. We have a mission statement, which deals with our product mission, economic mission and social mission. All three are equally important. We wrote it back in the 80’s and there was this discussion about how to not put one of top of the other, so we ended up writing them horizontally.

The hard part comes when you achieve your financial mission for the year, but not your social mission. Is that a successful year? For it to work, the person at the top has to take these missions with equal seriousness.

You know, when we were coming up with this, it was not easy to convince the managers. Some thought it was great, some thought it was lousy. The question even came up: Does someone have to believe in the company’s social mission to be hired by the company? Isn’t that un-American, or even illegal?

The conclusion that we came to was that people can believe anything they want, but when they are at work, they have to be working to achieve the social mission no less than they are working to make a profit for the company. It’s part of their job. One thing that is different today is that it is completely accepted that this is the mission of the company.

TreeHugger: How did Unilever’s takeover of the company affect these things?

JG: Unilever has surprised me at how much they have allowed the social mission to continue. I don’t think they know how to do it themselves, but the current CEO, Walt Freese, has been there a few years, and he’s great. He believes in the mission, and he’s doing everything he can to make it central to the company.

Here’s an example. A year or two ago, the CEO decides he wants to come out with a flavor called “American Pie.” On the lid would be a pie chart showing the US federal budget. Military spending would be about 50%, and the rest would be all these little slices like environment, jobs, health care, whatever. And then on the packaging, there would be some information about how some of the military budget goes to Cold War weapons systems that are no longer needed, like the 10,000 nuclear bombs in the US arsenal. Now anyone would agree that 10,000 nuclear bombs is more than you would ever logically need. What happens after you drop 5? The country spends around $20 billion maintaining this nuclear arsenal. The packaging would ask if this is so wise – maybe it would be better to spend that money on children?

So Walt Freese goes to talk to his bosses at Unilever about this. I wasn’t there, but at some point he talks to his boss, who talks to his bosses. They talk to the lawyers, and in the end they decide that it’s okay. And “American Pie” came out talking about nuclear bombs on its packaging.

TreeHugger: What advice can you offer people who are thinking about opening environmentally and socially responsible, sustainable enterprises?

JG: I think the key concept is sustainability. That’s a word that is thrown about a lot these days, but human activities are not always thought about in terms of “is this sustainable over time?” I think we’re now reaching a point where this is THE question that is going to be asked about businesses. Global warming, whether you believe in it or not, has brought the issue of sustainability to the forefront.

The interesting thing about doing business in this other kind of way – a community-based business or an environmentally forward-looking company – is that you still have to do all the other business stuff well. Just because you are based on certain values, that does not mean you don’t need a great product, good marketing, distribution and so on. Nobody is going to buy Ben & Jerry’s if they don’t like the product.

Photos by Daniel Cherrin. Thanks also to Yair Engel, who participated in this interview as well.