Undoing the damage - business and the environment - Part 1

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 1996 by Paul Hawken

Within the next 50 years, we must work toward reconciling and bringing together commercial and living systems. Business can do that by learning to mimic the efficiency we see in nature. The next industrial revolution is about changing products, systems and society so that they are cyclical instead of linear.

BUSINESS MUST confront the fact that commercial systems are enormously wasteful. Let me put it in material terms: every year, America sends 3 billion pounds of carpet into landfills, spews 360 billion pounds of organic and inorganic chemicals into the environment and generates 710 billion pounds of hazardous waste and 3.7 trillion pounds of construction debris. American citizens--who directly use 123 pounds of materials every day--have the largest material requirements in the world. These figures do not include the 16.8 billion tons of the waste produced as a byproduct during the extraction of gas, coal, oil and minerals, most of which are left on site. All told, it requires just over a million pounds of wasted resources generated every year to support the lifestyle of an average American.

Unfortunately, many business leaders think ecological and financial interests are at cross purposes, and they're right. In the short run, exploitative industries reap the most financial gain. The most enlightened say economic growth and environmental protection are equally important and recycling a portion of post-consumer waste or planting some trees will set things right. This approach is about as effective as bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon, because in the long term, all business will suffer equally if the environment continues to deteriorate.

For real results, we will have to eliminate completely the concept of waste and we will have to act fast. Over the next 50 years, we will have to make dramatic reductions in our use of resources and switch over to a manufacturing system where materials are used over and over. This system will save money as it reduces its impact on the environment for a simple reason: It is vastly more efficient than the system it is replacing.

On a societal level, industrialism uses large amounts of resources to increase human productivity. But in order to succeed, modern industrialism also requires massive quantities of materials: oil, coal, minerals, water, electricity, etc. Two hundred years ago, when there were relatively few people and abundant resources, this made sense. Today--in a world where ever-increasing use of resources is destroying the environment and where the population continues to explode--it makes no sense at all. It is not that industrialism is bad, it is just ill-suited to meet our present-day needs. It marginalizes people and resources precisely at a time when it is imperative to take better care of both. Rather than assessing it a failure, we can say charitably that it has outlived its usefulness.

Are there really institutions and companies fundamentally changing their industrial metabolism so that Homo sapiens can stick around? The answer is a resounding yes.