The following is from my new book, “Greening Your Business: The Hand-On Guide to Creating a Successful and Sustainable Business”, published by EarthPress. I hope it adds something to the conversation. Thanks.
Business drives the global economy like never before. Trillions of dollars flow around the world as businesses, large and small, meet the growing needs of people everywhere. Business, in all its manifestations, has an enormous, almost overwhelming, impact on every facet of life on Earth, and one of its greatest impacts is on the natural world. Global climate change, acid rain, deforestation,
overfishing of the oceans, air and water pollution—all of these serious problems are negatively affected by how it is we humans go about our business. And, in turn, the impacts of many of these environmental issues are growing at increasingly exponential rates—from deforestation to overfishing the oceans to fresh water shortages to loss of biodiversity to concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we have any hope of solving the profound problems that will confront humanity in the next few decades, our collective solutions will also need to grow at exponential rates. For that to happen, humanity will need to enlist every possible source of assistance. Chief among these is the sector that employs the most people, uses the most technology, has the greatest impact on the natural world, and is at the very heart of many of the environmental troubles we collectively face—the business sector—including heavy and light industry, high and low tech businesses, ancient and cutting-edge businesses, and the enormous businesses of forestry, farming, fishing, and extraction of oil, gas, and minerals. each and every one of these types of businesses can begin to examine its own powerful impact on our fragile planet and begin to develop new plans, methods, policies, and means to insure that all business—including yours, whatever it may be—is actively engaged in creating a better and, ultimately, sustainable world.
Thousands of businesses around the world have already discovered that, instead of aggravating and intensifying the profound problems that humanity faces, business can become an integral part of the solution—and in doing so, become an enormous force for positive change.
Why are you in business? Most people in the business world would answer that question with a reference to the product or service that their business provides—building homes, making pizzas, repairing cars, manufacturing computers, operating a web business, creating . . . well, just about anything. The North American Industrial Classification System lists literally thousands of different businesses that provide a mind- boggling array of goods and services to today’s consumer. But if you dig a little deeper into the underlying motivations that drive people in the world of business, a different and more powerful perspective emerges. People are generally “in business” for much more personal and more profound reasons—to make money, of course, but often simply and primarily to provide a better life for their loved ones. They are in business to do the best job that they can do—regardless of what their business may be. They want the efforts they make in their careers to make a difference. They want the work they do to be meaningful. Ultimately, the overwhelming majority of people want simply this— to make the world a better place.
From the street peddler to the CEO, from the storekeeper to the industrialist—these powerful motivations are the true common denominator that unite businesses all across the world. But the daily pressures that face a business person to merely stay in business are enormous and these basic ideals are often lost in the struggle to operate a successful business in today’s world of rising energy and health care costs, increasing competition, challenging social problems, and escalating environmental concerns. Around the world, thousands of business owners have found that they can better face the challenges that confront commerce and, simultaneously, begin to make the world a better place by operating their businesses with a new and different ethic—by greening their businesses.
Greening your business is the challenging and highly rewarding task of pursuing the path to sustainability. Over the past few decades, in what writer Paul Hawken, in his book Blessed Unrest, describes as “the largest movement in the world,” millions of people across the globe, including thousands of businesses, have been pursuing a goal of sustainability. A very elusive concept, sustainability has suffered from many attempts at a clear definition. “Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” the somewhat cumbersome definition from the 1992 Earth Summit and the earlier Bruntland Commission, is one of the most common. But the clearest, most succinct definition that I’ve seen comes from a presentation at an environmental education conference by folklorist Susan Fowler. Susan accompanies all of her wonderful storytelling with sign language. She was struggling to come up with appropriate signs for “sustainability,” and hit upon a simple solution. The sign language
description for “extinction” is the two signs of “death” and “forever.” In a flash of insight, Susan signed “life” and “forever” as sign language shorthand for sustainability—life forever—the diametrical opposite of extinction. Life forever—the valiant attempt to keep life, in all of its myriad variety, flourishing for as long as humanly possible, and for as close as we can get to forever, is as clear a definition of sustainability as I have seen.
Sustainability is generally accepted as having three critical components: economic, environmental, and societal. The central question that is posed by sustainability is: how to bring a higher quality of life (economic) to the masses of humanity (societal) without destroying the natural foundations upon which life on Earth is built (environmental). This particular question in turn becomes the central goal of the greening of business by adding one crucial word (shown following in italics). How can we profitably bring the benefits of a better quality of life to all humanity without destroying the natural world? This single question, perhaps more than any other, may be the most important that humanity has ever grappled with. And it is one that this current generation of humans, for better or worse, has the profound responsibility of answering—for we are today at a climactic point in history when inaction and the continuation of the status quo will surely provide an answer if humanity does not.
Sustainability is often referred to as “sustainable development” to emphasize the crucial component of ensuring that the benefits of modern society accrue also to the developing world. “Sustainable progress” is perhaps a clearer definition of the task. Can we continue to spread the progress that perhaps 20 percent of humanity has enjoyed in the last 50 years—in health care, education, communication, transportation, food, shelter and basic comforts—to the remaining 80 percent of humanity, but do so in ways that, ultimately, do not do irreparable harm to the natural world? As China and India and other developing countries accelerate their efforts to pull their people out of deep poverty, the answer to that question will be answered—for better or worse—in the next few decades.
Imagine for a moment that the world of business is organized to accomplish this task and, in the process, also provide enormous employment opportunities for humanity and make a profit, while simultaneously sustaining, indeed enhancing, the intertwined web of life that we have collectively inherited. Imagine a world where business is actively working to eliminate poverty; reverse environmental degradation; spread the benefits of health care to everyone; and provide educational opportunities worldwide. In fact, each and every individual component of this seemingly overwhelming undertaking is already a reality today somewhere in the world. There are businesses that are able to provide goods and services without adding pollutants to the atmosphere; businesses whose purpose is to clean or even create fresh water; businesses that have created products that mimic natural products by using nature’s instruction manual and modeling their product design on animal or plant life; businesses that are thriving by supplying goods and services in a safe and clean manner; and thousands of businesses around the world that are designing the technology and products that can harness the renewable sources of energy that surround us. The greatest challenge of the twenty-first century is to make certain that this future unfolds for the entire world. It is the challenge of sustainability. It is the challenge of the greening of business.
Greening your business is about possibilities and opportunities—the endless possibilities and enormous opportunities that can come from answering this challenge by taking your business on the road to sustainability. The greening of your business can be a quest, an adventure even, as you work to build a leaner, stronger, and healthier business. As science has been telling us about human health in recent years, in order to become healthier we need to cut out the fat, become more active, and lower our bodies’ intake of harmful chemicals and additives. To create a sustainable business is to follow that same general plan: cut the inputs of energy and raw materials to an absolute minimum, make the business more resilient to change and risk, and eliminate toxic materials wherever possible. The results, as with a successful human fitness plan, can be stunning. Reductions of energy use can be well upwards of 70 percent; materials use can likewise often be reduced by half, or even more. Waste can, in some cases, be virtually eliminated or, better yet, sold for a profit or converted into additional useful products. Hazardous chemical use can be dramatically reduced or eliminated. And best of all, by creating a company that is healthier, a company that is poised for the future, a company that is lean and strong, you will almost inevitably generate greater profits, while eliminating many risks.
Like a highly trained athlete who is deeply in tune with her body, you will also begin to understand your business as never before. You’ll understand intimately where all of your material inputs come from, where every kilowatt of your company’s energy is used, how your supply and distribution chain operates, the exact make-up of each of your products, the intimate details of the services you provide, and precisely what materials comprise your waste stream. At each step of your journey towards sustainability, you will find ways to do things better, more efficiently, more effectively, safer, and with dramatically less waste and energy. You will be joining thousands of other businesses and millions of people around the world in the quest to align business with the real needs of humanity.
Greening your business will provide a multiplier effect to your efforts to reach that brighter future. Your work to create a more sustainable business will have a powerful ripple effect—flowing out in all directions from your enterprise—positively impacting its employees, its community, its investors, its competitors, its suppliers up the supply chain and customers down the supply chain. These effects will, in turn, influence all of those players to themselves take more positive steps toward achieving a sustainable future.
The process of greening your business is a major undertaking. It will constitute a new direction for your business and for you personally. The steps taken will take time, money, and a commitment to operating your business in a new and different manner. At the core of this process will be a reimagining of what your business really is and what, ultimately, it should be. Again, from Paul Hawken, writing in The Ecology of Commerce: “To create an enduring society, we will need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable . . .
We must design a system . . . where the natural, everyday acts of work and life accumulate into a better world as a matter of course, not a matter of conscious altruism.” But for now, at least, it will still take a conscious decision to take the first step—and the next—toward that sustainable system of commerce. Taking the action necessary to begin greening your business involves steps that anyone—in any business—can take today to make a difference in the quest for a better future.
All of us in the world of business need to understand the importance of taking these steps toward sustainability and, also, the critical urgency in taking them now. As we rapidly approach the peak of human population, the peak of oil production, and the tipping point of catastrophic climate change, the next few decades will very likely determine the future trajectory of humanity. That direction will be decided, in large part, by the combined decisions made by all of those involved in the business of the world. Each of us, as members of the world’s business community, will have few opportunities in our lifetimes to make a decision as profound, far-reaching, and fundamentally important as the one we make in deciding to take our business
down the path to sustainability.
The foregoing is excerpted from the book: Greening Your Business: The Hands-On Guide to Creating a Successful and Sustainable Business, by Daniel Sitarz. For more information, please see:
www.GreeningYourBusiness.org.
Edited by: dansitarz - Sep. 30 2008 at 6:41 PM
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