About

Beth Davies founded Green ABCs out of a desire for eco-friendly school supplies for her own son. A few years ago she was surprised to learn many of the green products her son needed for school didn’t exist or weren’t easily available. Realizing the vast amount of school supplies used in classrooms each year, over $6 billion bought by parents and teachers alone, Ms. Davies saw an opportunity to provide a green alternative. Green ABCs products are sourced from all over the world and made with recycled material, renewable resources and innovations in biodegradability. The online retail store sells kits in three age ranges that provide a year’s worth of green school supplies. Green ABCs also offers customized kits from over 100 products. Ms. Davies is a global communications and marketing leader with over 15 years of experience working across a range of organizations types including multinationals, nonprofits and start-up companies. Before running her own consultancy over the last five years for a range of multinational, nonprofit and technology startups, Ms. Davies had a long career with Diageo, the global leading drinks company. She held a series of successive roles with the company most recently as Guinness Global Vice President of Corporate Relations in Dublin, Ireland, where she developed the Arthur Guinness Fund, a $10M corporate social responsibility program that supports social entrepreneurs. Prior to that, Davies had been vice president of communications for Diageo Europe; head of corporate social responsibility for Diageo Ireland; and director of brand public relations for Diageo North America. Before Diageo, Davies was director of communications for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a senior account executive with Rogers & Cowan and she began her career in public service with the Department of Environmental Protection. She has served as a board member of the online media organization Facing Change: Documenting America and as commission member for a decade on the Clinton Inland Wetlands Commission, which is a land-use regulatory body in Connecticut. How did you first get involved in the green industry? Recycling and environmental conservation were a part of my childhood. For a decade I served on a land-use regulatory commission in my hometown starting when I was still in high school. I have always in my own life worked on various environmental issues and was looking for a way to merge my business experience and skills with environmental sustainability and Green ABCs was born. What interests you most about being green? As a parent, the state of the environment now and in the future is something that concerns me. I believe that parents and teachers can have a positive impact to the environment if we all chose green school supplies. An average classroom uses five trees worth of copy paper alone every year and all those pencils require about 80,000 trees. Beyond the environmental benefit, green school supplies are an excellent educational opportunity for children to learn about the importance of sustainability in the products they use every day. What is your biggest “green” pet peeve? Green washing is my biggest pet peeve, and the lack of a global standard to explain easily to consumers the environmental impact of products they use and buy. What green trend is most exciting to you or your industry? I think the most exciting trend is how technology is being leveraged to create efficiencies that deliver environmental benefits.