This week, I hosted a panel at the Ceres Conference at which Jeff Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, the boot company, and Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of Stonyfield Farms, the organic yogurt company, answered questions about the role of business in society. Prior to the panel, I spoke with them about sustainable consumption.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

Rather than the usual canned answers one often gets from CEOs at these events, both these Red Sox fans proved to be deeply committed, not to selling less shoes or yogurt, but to sustainable consumption and enlightened consumerism as a potential way out of the ecological and societal quicksand in which we find ourselves.

Gary explained that only about half of what we eat is real food, in terms of its nutritional value. For him, sustainable consumption starts with optimizing the food value chain, which will reduce waste and create value simultaneously. The resources we now waste to make Twinkies can actually feed lots of people.

Gary believes that we need enlightened consumers, i.e. a critical mass of organic yogurt eaters to really change the equation. Twenty years ago, when Gary realized this, he started Stonyfield.

Jeff represents the third generation of Swartzes to run Timberland, and has a harder case to make with boots. But he and Gary are on the same program. Timberland's mission is "to equip people to make a difference in their world," which includes showing consumers, employees, other companies, and his children how commerce and justice can go hand in hand.

Timberland works hard to sell boots on the basis of its environmental and social actions. This is "cause marketing," yes, but also a deeper attempt to change consumer preferences by helping people "to be the change they want to see in the world." And, yes, quoting Gandhi is apropos here--Jeff is deeply motivated by spiritual and inter-generational concerns.

I know when I am being sold a bill of goods, and this time I was not. Both of these guys have thought deeply about their actions, and they're not just walking the talk, they're running it. When we finished the panel later that morning, they deserved the prolonged standing ovation they received.

As for me, like some other unenlightened "experts" in sustainability, I had wrongly assumed that smaller companies like Timberland and Stonyfield were sideshows to the main event—that the GEs and GMs of the world would move us forward, not the little guyes. Now I see the role that deeply committed CEOs like Gary and Jeff are playing and I would not be surprised if they had more of an impact, in the long run, than companies that are hundred of times as big.

And that size gap may not last forever. Under Jeff, Timberland has grown from annual revenues of $159 million to $1.6 billion, and the company now competes directly with Nike and Adidas. And while organic foods represent only three percent of the food consumed in the United States, Stonyfield sells six times the amount of yogurt as Kraft foods and is growing every day.

Maybe the answer lies in one of my favorite lines from The West Wing: "They'll like us when we win."