Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Approach
Review: This book explains how environmental concerns are an integral part of doing business, whether we want to consider them or not. Hawken begins by relating how the genesis of this book came one day when he was about to accept an environmental award for actions his company had taken. He realized that despite the award, his company's environmental efforts had been trivial, at best. To actually merit such an award, the company would need to adopt a revolutionary approach to doing business. Such a revolution is what Hawken argues for here. His approach boils down to 8 points: reduce consumption of energy and natural resources in the developed world by 80% within the next 50 years; provide meaningful employment for everyone everywhere; be self-actuating rather than regulated or morally mandated; honor market principles; create a more rewarding lifestyle; restore habitats to better than they were; rely on current income; and strive for an aesthetic outcome. These are mighty goals-unfortunately, they may not be realistic because of the degree of cooperation they would require from governments and business across the world. But the book has some interesting points that could be implemented independently by individual business owners, both large and small. (Sources of information are cited in endnotes at the back of the book, organized by chapter, and there is an index.)
One of the strongest points in this book is that we are not consumers, but producers. Producers of waste, that is. Most companies are giant producers of waste, and as Hawken points out, such waste is literally wasteful for the bottom line. When a company makes and discards by-products as part of its production process, it is throwing money away as well as harming the environment. Hawken lists a number of companies (such as 3M) that have re-evaluated their procedures, and discovered that they didn't need to use hazardous chemicals after all, or by changing their formulations, found they could sell their by-products rather than pay to dump them. These companies ended up increasing their profitability at the same time as improving their environmental record.
Hawken advocates for companies to be accountable for the full costs of their product, including any resulting environmental damage or disposal requirements. He stress that, "Without doubt, the single most damaging aspect of the present economic system is that the expense of destroying the earth is largely absent from the prices set in the marketplace." Hawken supports green taxes, that is, taxes on items that harm the environment. He argues that if the federal government adopted green taxes, consumers would make choices that take environmental issues into consideration. At the same time, income taxes could be reduced or even eliminated, based on the revenue from the green taxes.
Hawken likes to run the numbers and find equivalencies for common items whose true impact may not be fully understood. For example, he calculates that 27 years of stored solar energy are consumed every 24 hours by our utilities, cars, houses, factories, and farms. Another interesting figure that he cites is that an average American town spends 20% of its gross income on energy. Ninety percent of that money is exported out of town. So by adopting conservation measures, the town would be able to keep more of its own money floating around the local economy rather than being sent away or overseas. Thus, saving energy would not only help the environment, but it would be great for the economy as well. And that's the big point that Hawken wants us to take from this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be required reading
Review: This book is inspiring and depressing at the same time. I enjoyed the book and was even more inspired to put my money where my beliefs are. As a consumer I am just as responsible as a business owner for the industrial effects taken upon the planet I live on. My choices make a difference. In fact I have found that I am less and less of a consumer now. It was depressing because I really don't believe that the world at large will change their habits enough to not only preserve but improve this giant garden, Earth.
Rating:
Summary: thorough, well-written, convincing, well-documented
Review: This is a compelling, well-documented, and riveting account of the take-over of national economies by corporations whose only guideline is profit. The result is environmental devastation, rampant disease, and spiritual bankruptcy. Hawkens, himself a successful entrepreneur, is not anti-capitalism; rather, he insists that corporations bear the true cost of creating and disposing of their products so that society can make informed choices and prices are rationally related to their long-term effects. The market cannot work properly if price is artificially low due to society's picking up the tab for a product's environmental impact.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, especially the second time around
Review: When I first tried to read this book, I didn't even get past the first chapter. But when I picked it up again almost a year later, I absorbed it like a sponge. Even when I interviewed the president of a sustainable business for my website, SustainableWays.com, I found that the same thing happened to him. The fact of the matter is, this is an excellent book, but it's also somewhat of a pragmatic call to arms. It wasn't till I'd explored and developed my ideas about the environment and resolved to do something about it that I could fully appreciate this book. For someone who's still exploring their position on these issues, Paul Hawken's prescriptions for action will probably seem irrelevant and premature. But if your ideas are ripe and you're ready to put them to work, The Ecology of Commerce is an invaluable resource.Before I read this book, I used to think that business and the environment were inherently at odds. But then I realized that this doesn't have to be the case. According to Hawken, the problem lies in our economic system's design, and no amount of management or programs is going to change that. In order to make things better, we're going to have to rethink our economic structure, and in that possibility is where Mr. Hawken finds hope. As he so eloquently put it: "To create an enduring society, we will need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative...Just as every action in an industrial society leads to environmental degradation, regardless of intention, we must design a system where the opposite is true, where doing good is like falling off a log, where the natural, everyday acts of work and life accumulate into a better world as a matter of course, not as a matter of conscious altruism." (Hawken, p. xiv) The Ecology of Commerce is dedicated to envisioning such a system, and discussing how we can get from here to there. The restorative economy contemplated by Hawken may seem like a long shot, but he demonstrates that it IS possible because his approach is to work WITH natural processes, not against them. That not only includes those processes existing in ecosystems, but also the ones present in ourselves, like our unique ability to innovate. You see, what makes these ideas inspiringly hopeful, and what I love most about this book, is the author's willingness not just to acknowledge the way things really are, but also to use them to our advantage. For example, he's smart enough to know that any system, program, or law that asks people to sacrifice happiness, comfort, or convenience ISN'T sustainable because ultimately, it just won't work. "Humans want to flourish and prosper," he explains, "and they will eventually reject any system of conservation that interferes with these desires...[A sustainable society] will only come about through the accumulated effects of daily acts of billions of eager participants" (Hawken, p. xv). This is the kind of book I'd encourage you to buy if you are even remotely concerned about the state of our environment, which is intimately tangled with our own. On a personal level, it's one of the most motivating books I've ever read--in fact, its concepts form the foundation for my website, SustainableWays.com. My copy is now riddled with highlighter marks, astericks, and dog ears. It's just one of those books you come back to again and again and again, every time learning something new.
Rating:
Summary: Spectacularily Revolutionary.
Review: Written in 1994 Paul Hawken describes some visionary changes to the way we measure and conduct commerce. His core philosophy revolves around sustainability. What is most important is not that we stop taking from the environment, but that we do not take more than we can replace. Hawken also asks for a reduction of the levels at which we consume, and for each of us to seriously look at the products we consume. We as consumers say the most with our dollar. Please spend it wisely. Interesting Passages: "Each person in America produces twice his weight per day in household, hazardous, and industrial waste, and an additional half ton per week when gaseous wastes such as carbon dioxide are included. An ecological model of commerce would imply that all waste have value to other modes of production so that everything is either reclaimed, reused, or recycled." P 12 "The act of restoration involves recognizing that something has been lost, used up, or removed. To restore is to bring back or return something to its original state. This can involve rebuilding, repairing, removing corruptions and mistakes; it allows for the idea of bringing a person or place or group back to health and equilibrium; it can mean returning something that originally belonged to someone else, whether it is returning lands taken from other cultures, or dignity stolen by bureaucratic regulations and offialdom; it encompasses the idea of reviving and rejuvinating connections, relationships, and responsibilities. Honor can even be retrieved. It can be as simple as replacing something that has aged and died away. Above all it means to heal, to make whole, to reweave broken strands and threads into a social fabric that honors and nurtures life around it. To restore is to make something well again. It is mending the world. People have to believe that there will be a future in order to look forward." P 59 "The purpose of all these suggestions is to end industrialism as we know it. Industrialism is over, in fact; the question remains how we organize the economy that follows. Either it falls in on us, and crushes civilization, or we reconstruct it and uleash the imagination of a more sustainable future into our daily acts of commerce."..."It also means doing something now. It means trying things that may fail. It means shaking up city hall. It means electing people who actually want to make things work, who can imagine a better world. It means writing to companies and telling them what you think. It means never forgetting that the cash register is the daily voting booth in democratic capitalism. We don't have to buy products that destroy or from companies that harm or are unresponsive. If we want businesses to express a full range of social and environmental values in their daily commercial activities, then we, too, will have to express a full range of values and respond to the presence or absence of principle by how we act in the marketplace. It may mean being obstreperous or conciliatory, and knowing when to be which. To go back to our nature can also mean becoming 'sour, astringent, crabbed. Unfertilized, unpruned, tough, resilient, and every spring shockingly beautiful in bloom.' It may mean a meticulous reinventorying of our lives, and our country. It wil mean, in the words of Vaclav Havel, trying harder to 'understand than to explain. The way forward is not in the mere construction of universal systemic solutions to be applied to reality from the outside; it is also in seeking to get to the heart of reality from the inside, through personal experience.' It is time to clean out the closet, both conceptually and materially, and to reexaming our priorities and beliefs. We can't wait until the guardians wake up, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to wake them up. We cannot wait for business to set a new course. We have to educate our businesses, and, wherever appropriate, let them educate us." PP 212-213
|
