Recyclegate at Lord & Taylor: A corporate whistleblower story

Back in 2008, I was 4 years into my life at Lord and Taylor. Overall, L+T was a great employer. They hired intelligent people, the workforce was more diverse as a %TTL than any company I’ve interacted with since. They had plenty of women in leadership. There were dinners, fashions shows and plenty of discounts on clothing. All in, it was a pleasant and, at times, an inspiring place to work.

But like so many other companies spewing their virtues to the press, they trafficked in the same sanctimonious BS we see weekly coming out of Big Tech, Big Pharma and the like.

You see, companies are sociopathic. They can’t “give” unless there is profit at the other end of it. In fact the public markets don’t even allow for it (companies can be sued by your shareholders for breech of fiduciary duties if the company is too generous).

Lord + Taylor was no different: sacrificing ethics for $$. But on at least one occasion, the policy backfired.

Here’s my story of how a little lack of recycling, had (Mr.) Big consequences.

As a retail buyer, we’d receive a massive stack made up of thousands of sheets of paper every Monday morning. It represented every SKU a buyer was responsible for. Multiply that by 70 or so buyers and again by the planning department. Lot’s of trees gettin’ butchered for no reason here.

Anyway, L+T hosted this “recycle” event and made a big bloody stink about. So big that they threw a party, invited Chris Noth (Mr. Big), who was quite popular and in-favor at the time, and donated a $10,000 check to the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), of which Chris Noth was heavily involved.

*Chris Noth accepting $10,000 check on behalf of L&T. You can find more images* *here*.

Long story short, I was a member of RAN. The first non-profit I ever gave money to. When they came into the picture, I couldn’t take it. So I called RAN during the event and explained to them the hypocrisy of it all.

Then this happened: