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January 19, 2010

Ray Anderson on the business logic of sustainability

Inspired by Paul Hawken's "The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability," Ray Anderson completely retrofitted his carpet company in order to lead the way for big business and industry to take a hard look at reversing the decline of environmental impact caused by their businesses. Sustainability. A relatively new concept, but one which ancient people's have understood and practiced for centuries. "Take nothing, do no harm." It's an idea which is coming into fashion as even businesses like Wal-Mart have acknowledged the need (and even profitibiltiy) of going Green.

One of the most confronting ideas that Ray Anderson puts out there, at least to me, is the notion that "theft is a crime". Well, we all know that if you walk out of the 7-11 without paying for your Slurpee, you're doing something wrong, but the truly sad fact of the matter is, many of us don't have the same moral code about later dumping that empty container out the window on our way to the beach. At least not until fairly recent history in this country.

I'm reminded of a recent episode of the show "Mad Men," (the episode is called "The Golden Violin" in case you want to look it up on Hulu). The scene itself isn't very important to the episode, but one of the great things about this show are the finer details in between the larger themes. The scene is this: Don Draper takes his family on a picnic in the park, and it's a beautiful and calm moment. After they are done, Don chucks his empty beer can onto the grass. Betty, his wife, cleans off the picnic blanket by shaking all of the trash onto the ground. They all return to the car and drive away. It's both shocking and funny in a surreal kind of way. But it's also an unexpected commentary about the mess we've made due to our ignorance and laziness.

Big business has been operating like Don Draper for as long as Capitalism has existed; possibly longer. To say that theft is a crime, and to suggest that CEOs of large companies should be arrested and thrown in jail is a long overdue paradigm shift in attitude and belief. As people become more aware of climate change, and many of the other issues under that larger umbrella, companies are becoming increasingly aware that even though they might have been able to buy off the government, they can't fool consumers as they begin to factor these concerns into their purchasing decisions.

Another interesting concept is the idea of affluence itself. The old model has us polluting the environment more as we become more affluent, as a matter of course. Additionally, as technology becomes more advanced, this compounds the levels of destruction. Here is his chart:

The new model, on the right, has technology dividing, or cutting the amount of waste now that we are looking for ways to innovate and build sustainable businesses. Affluence no longer clogs the system with waste, it just means that people are happy. I'm no mathematician, but this is how I interpreted the diagram.

Personally, I am interested in expanding the notion of how we are all connected even further to include the resources themselves. Companies that make billions extracting fossil fuels from the earth, for instance, are in effect taking something which belongs to all the people of the world, not just Exxon. We all have a stake. "But Sean, isn't that SOCIALISM?" Maybe, maybe not. Could be it's time to get rid of these loaded words we use to tune out fairness and common sense, and start focusing on a new bottom line–the preservation of all our futures.

It's time to take these profits from the robber barons and use them to uplift the human race!

Posted by dsr at January 19, 2010 01:27 PM