Thanks to a new green business, some vending machines are replacing candy bars and chips with dried fruit and protein shakes

You may be surprised to learn that Sean Kelly, founder of America’s first healthy vending machine company, was once a Twinkies-and-SunnyD kind of guy.

“I freaking loved vending machines when I was a kid, because all I ate was crappy junk food,” says Kelly, who grew up in the picturesque lakeside town of Traverse City, Michigan. “Even though my parents were health nuts and my dad was a dentist—along with my sister, grandpa, great grandpa, uncle and cousins—I just loved to eat junk.”

Today, his company H.U.M.A.N., which stands for Helping Unite Man and Nutrition, builds and distributes vending machines that sell healthier fare, such as granola bars, trail mix and dried apricots—basically, the absolute opposite of the trans-fat-laden, obesity-triggering sodas and candy bars he loved to pillage from vending machines as a kid.

At around age 12, thanks to the constant nagging of his father and grandfather, Kelly finally changed his eating habits and noticed massive, positive shifts in his “attitude, happiness, performance, just about everything.” Barely into his teens, Kelly had an aha! moment. “I started to realize that many foods in America, especially refined sugars, fast food and candy, are just like drugs and should be treated as such,” he says. He never ate from a standard vending machine again, and today is adamant that school-age kids shouldn’t even have access to typical junk food vending machines. “Thank God I was saved,” he says, with the zeal of a religious convert, “but many kids don’t get that chance. Accessibility is the problem—we need to take [the junk] away.”

Embracing his newfound health and energy, Kelly became a two-time freestyle snowboarding national championship medalist. He could have become a pro snowboarder, but quit competitive snowboarding and enrolled at Johns Hopkins University instead, majoring in biomedical engineering (BME) with a concentration in biomechanics. He transferred after his freshman year to Columbia University in New York, where he continued to study BME. That’s where he had his eureka revelation, the one that would ultimately lead to the creation of H.U.M.A.N.

While at a gym on 80th and Broadway, Kelly watched a middle-aged woman buy a Coke from a vending machine (the only food or drink option in the gym), take a massive swig, and jump on the treadmill with the Coke in her cup-holder. “I was like ‘wow, if we have so-called “healthy” people drinking Coke on treadmills, how can we expect an entire population to get healthier? We can’t!’” He saw very clearly how lack of accessibility to healthy food and over-accessibility to junk food lay at the root of the problem. And he wanted to fix it.

Birth of a Green Business

In 2005, Kelly co-founded his first company, Fit Fuel, with a cousin. Then in 2007 he launched H.U.M.A.N. Core products in his vending machines include trail mix, energy bars, protein bars, dried fruit, granola bars, organic cookies, protein shakes, natural energy drinks, pita chips, kettle corn—and not a Coke in sight. “It may sound ridiculous, but we’re trying to do to healthy foods/drinks what Google did to information—make it more accessible. That, at the root, is what we’re all about.”

Health clubs were among the first to embrace the idea, followed by schools and then forward-thinking office buildings. The machines themselves were custom-built as per Kelly’s vision: they come equipped with LCD screens with remote-loading capabilities, credit card readers, remote-monitoring functionality, eco-friendly lighting and power devices, touch-screen displays and internal Pcs.

No two machines are the same— H.U.M.A.N. vending machines offer thousands of products, sourced from the largest natural food/drink and sports nutrition distributors in the country. “Basically, if you want it and it’s healthy, we can get it,” says Kelly. The company often sources products locally to minimize their carbon footprint and support local sustainability efforts.

But there’s still a long way to go before bosses, business owners, school kids and even some gym rats take the leap from traditional vending staples like soda and chocolate toward healthier fare. “So many people want to change,” says Kelly, “but they’re scared . . . scared of making someone mad that their Snickers and Doritos were removed from the vending machines.”

Caroline Ryder eats only healthy food except for the occasional loaf of Velveeta.

Running an eco-friendly business goes beyond catchy slogans

Last year my sister-in-law gave me a gift I’d been eyeing for months: I Am Not A Paper Cup. It’s a porcelain mug for take-out coffee, so I no longer contribute to the 28 billion disposable cups discarded in landfills each year. I love the mug. It keeps my coffee warm, the silicon lid feels good against my lips, and it’s insulated enough that it doesn’t burn my hand. But is it as eco-friendly as the message it touts? It came in a box of plastic packaging, was made in (and shipped from) China, and had no insert or stamp to indicate green manufacturing process or materials. Was the designer more interested in protecting the planet or cashing in on a growing market? What does it take to run a genuinely eco-friendly business anyway?

“There is a tendency for business owners in the green market to look at only one area of the environment instead of taking a holistic view,” says Doug Mazeffa, research director at Greenopia, a service that provides green businesses directories to consumers.

In fact, the Natural Resources Defense Council reports that a holistic view is better not only for the planet, but for a company’s bottom line. Conservation and waste reduction save costs, green initiatives improve public relations, and employee productivity measurably increases as the use of toxic products decreases. Here Mazeffa shares five ideas on how to develop a greener business plan:

Make Your Supply Chain Local

Keeping the supply chain local will be easier for some businesses, depending on the line of work, Mazeffa says. Clothing is challenging because although there are domestic mills, most fabric comes from overseas. But those in the food and restaurant industries should look to a small radius for comestibles. Many of the vendors at L.A.’s dozens of farmers markets—which these days offer much more than fruits and veggies—are able and eager to work with small businesses.

Lifestyle goods, such as furniture or crafted items, should also be manufactured with materials sourced close to home.

Use Low-Impact Material

Low-impact material, particularly recycled content, will have a reduced environmental impact. And do your research, Mazeffa advises, because things that sound eco-friendly may actually be overrepresented as green. “Organic cotton is ‘in’ right now, but as far as water use and energy intensity, cotton doesn’t perform as well as other materials, such as bamboo or hemp.” If you’re serving food products, bulrush fiber (begreenpackaging.com) is an environmentally friendly alternative to cardboard and Styrofoam.

Use Minimal Packaging

“If you can eliminate 80 percent of your packaging, you can make a tremendous difference in reducing your carbon footprint,” Mazeffa says. Avoid using virgin material and opt instead for post-consumer waste recycled paper.  And those huge chunks of Styrofoam that hold an object in place? Small cardboard inserts work just as well. Or reuse the confetti from your paper shredder for cushioning . . . unless, of course, you’re reusing “popcorn” that’s been sent your way. You can also buy recycled plastic air pillows (greenpackaginginc.com) that won’t drive up your shipping costs.

Watch Your Energy Consumption

Fortunately, Southern California’s natural resources make it one of the easier places to source renewable energy—see NRDC’s renewable energy map at nrdc.org. When it comes to saving energy, you can find DIY audits online, for example, at carbonfootprint.com; or for as little as $250, hire a consultant, such as Green Irene (greenirene.com), to do a small business energy audit and offer tips on how to cut back. Some basic steps? Maximize sunlight and use CFL bulbs. Install motion sensors so lighting will cut off when the office isn’t occupied. Program your thermostat so it automatically lowers at night, and instead of letting computers “sleep,” which still consumes power and produces heat, shut them down. Water is another big energy drain (sic), and low-flow faucets and dual-flush toilets pay for themselves reasonably quickly.

Opt for Online Marketing

“Marketing can be tricky since it often involves printing,” Mazeffa says. If you’re advertising in a publication, be sure to choose one that is FSC-certified. For online marketing, Zumbox (zumbox.com), a business that launched earlier this year, has created a paperless postal system that can deliver your postbox mail (e.g. invoices) in a virtual manner. If you do have to churn out documents on your printer, use chlorine-free paper and soy-based ink, and when possible, print double-sided.

Organic to Green Having spent years as a performing artist, California native Rianna Loving knew the importance of her skin’s outer appearance, but it wasn’t until motherhood brought an increased awareness of organics and social responsibility that she went back to school to study skincare. In 2009 she started Organic to Green, where she sells beauty products made with “ingredients the earth naturally provides to treat skin.” She soon realized that finding healthy ingredients was only the first step. “I didn’t want to put a quality organic lotion in cheap packaging where it would absorb the plastic it was packaged in,” Loving said. “I wanted to be green all the way, not be the contradiction I see out there.” Her decision to package her products in reused glass bottles meant starting a second company, ReuseCycle, and turning her backyard into a donation center where local restaurants and neighbors drop off wine, beer, and other types of glass which Loving then sanitizes before filling with soaps, moisturizers and salts. Any glass she can’t use is donated to others who want to lengthen its life. “Restaurants donate these unbelievably gorgeous wine bottles that are too big for my beauty line, but you can make them into the cutest lamps.” OrganicToGreen.com; ReuseCycle.com.

Urth Caffé (www.urthcaffe.com) Ten years ago Shallom Berkman and his wife, Jilla, wanted to start their own busi-ness. She was a coffee fanatic, he, an environmen-talist. While researching coffee roasting, they discovered coffee beans are usually highly chemically treated, making them harmful to the body, and often come from farms that have hybridized the beans so they can grow in direct sunlight on stripped-down land. At a healthy living event, they met a sustainable Peruvian farmer named Jorge who taught them about bourbon coffee, a plant that grows 20-feet tall and requires deep shade (thus, it grows well in rainforests). To support his farming practices, the Berkmans bought their coffee directly from Jorge and opened Urth Caffé. Ten years later, the Berkmans own four branches in the L.A. area and a mail-order business that sells organic, fair-trade coffee from around the world—often from countries where they have traveled and taught farmers sustainable, shade-grown agricultural methods. Urth Caffé uses 100 percent biodegradable cornstarch cups and ships coffee and tea in biodegradable bags.

j clay pottery (www.jclaypottery.com) Jeana Greulach became addicted to pottery after taking a college art class. She continued to hone her craft over the years, often giving handmade pieces as housewarming gifts. Then two kids came along and she shelved her hobby. When a friend told her about Clayhouse, a communal pottery studio in Santa Monica, she joined, this time with a green business in mind. Having kids had prompted her to refocus her family’s diet on organic foods, so she decided to create a line of serving bowls—“bowls are functional and useful.” Greulach reuses her excess clay—neither an easy task nor a common practice—and embraces Clayhouse’s water consciousness; over time, clay and water separate, so instead of throwing away the murky water, the artists use the recycled water to wash hands and clean up. “The spigot is almost never turned on, or else it’s a drizzle.” Greulach says. “Whenever a new member heads toward it, we yell, ‘No, no, no!’” Greulach’s sustainable vision extends outside the studio to how people use her pottery. “I wanted to inspire people to put organic, local foods in their bowls,” she says. “The nourishing food then goes into their bodies.” So she engraves green messages on them, ranging from “Be Kind to Cows” to “Life Is a Bowl of Organic Cherries.”