Doing well by doing good; The move toward more sustainable economies involves everyone from mom and pop companies to major corporations. And the biggest surprise of all may be: its working

The new millennium has opened under a barrage of blows to Planet Earth: Shrinking forests and expanding deserts. Collapsing fisheries and disappearing species. Melting glaciers and stratospheric ozone depletion. It's enough to make the most optimistic among us take cover against a future of environmental doom and gloom.

Instead, people around the globe are demonstrating new ways to interact with the earth and the societies that depend upon it. They are adopting a visionary economic model--one in which we grow and get richer by using less, and become stronger by being leaner and more stable.

In place of traditional reinvestment in monetary capital, these entrepreneurs are reinvesting in natural resources. Instead of accepting nature and the services it provides for free, they evaluate them in dollars, pesos, and rupees.

This is a movement about possibilities that emphasizes innovation over convention, cooperation over competition. It is building around the world in a groundswell of commitment by companies that believe their survival--and the planet's--depends on recognizing nature's looming scarcities. Its leaders understand they can no longer take from ecosystems without giving something back. They are assigning market value to what we have always taken for granted.

The groups creating a sustainable and socially just world are the planet's true superpower, says Paul Hawken, founder of one of the first natural-foods wholesaling businesses and a leader of the sustainability movement.

"This is the most untold story on Earth right now. This movement is growing--it's an uprising, it's the biggest movement in the world--and nothing can ultimately stop it despite the efforts of corporations, the military, and politicians to ignore and suppress it. . . It takes a lot of conversation and dialogue and patience, but ethically and morally it's clean," Hawken says.

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Uprising or transformation, sustainable development has attracted a host of corporate America's rich and famous:

* Dow Chemical Company developed a process that saves 99.7 percent of the wasted materials and 62 percent of the energy needed to prepare aluminum cans for filling.

* The California Rice Industry discovered that by flooding up to 200,000 acres of Sacramento Valley rice fields after harvest, farmers could create seasonal wetlands that replenish groundwater, improve fertility and support millions of wildfowl.

* Johnson & Johnson redesigned its wrapping and paper stock to save 2,750 tons of packaging, 1,600 tons of paper, $2.8 million and at least 330 acres of forest annually.

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* The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California saved 3 billion gallons of water a year and created more than 100 jobs by distributing 300,000 low-flush toilets throughout the metropolitan area.

Some call this movement natural capitalism, others the eco-economy, the restoration economy, sustainable development, and "spreadsheet earth." By any name, it is revolutionary, the second industrial revolution, says Hunter Lovins, a director with The Global Academy, a Florida-based institution working to build sustainable economies.

"Economics as we know it is going to change in ways we can't imagine. We will have new ways of accounting, new ways of keeping score," Lovins says.

A GREEN OPPORTUNITY

The companies and municipalities already committed consider investing in natural resources and their services a business opportunity--the opportunity of the 21st century. By protecting the ecosystems that supply the raw materials, these big-picture thinkers are convinced businesses can generate profits far greater and for far longer than under conventional capitalism.

Those making the shift to resource reinvestment are not just doing good. They are doing well, reaping profits from entrepreneurial innovations. Sometimes it's as simple as switching to a new-powered light bulb. Rooftop solar cells have transformed more than a million buildings worldwide into mini-power plants that heat and light themselves. The owners sell the excess electricity they generate to the power grid. Along with long-term savings through less-expensive solar power production, their photovoltaic systems are cutting smog, particulate, and carbon emissions by as much as 97 percent, according to the book Natural Capitalism, which Hawken wrote with Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins.

Development that sustains and restores natural resources is one of the biggest opportunities in the history of commerce, says Theodore Roosevelt IV. He believes the Bill Gates of the next generation will make his or her fortune in these new technologies.

"It actually looks like doing the right thing by communities and the environment is quite likely to also be the profitable thing," says Roosevelt, managing director of Lehman Brothers, a New York-based international investment banking firm.

It has been for Drew and Myra Goodman of Earthbound Farm. They started in 1984 with 2.5 acres, where they grew organic raspberries, specialty greens, and culinary herbs. Today Earthbound Farm is the largest organic produce brand in North America, with $300 million in gross sales in 2003.