Get Ya Motor Runnin'

I've spent all of my professional career teaching kids and grownups about their connection to the natural world.  I've tried to do this through funny videos (my YouTube pages have been viewed over 100K times), live green magic shows, silly prop humor, ecological e-books, green magic sets (the worlds first by the way), and many, many other things.  Recently I started working on a keynote/talk slideshow presentation specifically for businesses.  Why business you say?  First: I love entrepreneurs.  They think.  They work hard.  They solve problems and they solve them for "cold hard stinkin' cash".   Second: Because we global planetary citizens have GOT to get our global economy on a sustainable track or we're in for big trouble.  The current economic path we're on is totally NOT sustainable.  I'm not talking about our current American budget deficit track either (that's a very different story), I mean something much more basic and fundamental to our survival:  how we USE our planet's resources.  We have been able to cruise along blissfully unaware and unsustainably for all these years for two reasons; 1. low population and 2. low (per person) technological impact.  Currently there are 7 billion of us knuckle-heads and each and every one of us increases/leverages our own impact through technology in exponential ways without even being aware of it.  Let me back up a second.  Sustainable means (1) that we don't use resources at a rate that can interfere with future generations abilities to use them.  And, (2) we don't pollute the resources we have.  We currently use the earth's resources as if they were infinite and as if the planet is able to absorb any amount of abuse and pollution with no ill effects for us humans.  It's a nice fairy-tale to think that way, but it just ain't so.   Modern global consumers seem to understand this at a very basic level and they're starting to ask businesses (all over the world) to step up and respond accordingly.  And they have!  Businesses that embed sustainability into their market strategy stand to benefit for these four reasons.   (1)  REDUCE RISK - If you start using less toxic/hazardous/harmful chemicals or materials to manufacture your product or service... you're less likely to be out of legal compliance (with constantly tightening legal restrictions) AND you're less likely to get sued for an accidental leak, explosion, or contamination.  (2)  CUT COSTS - Focusing on what you TAKE, MAKE, and WASTE (water, energy, waste are the easiest to start with) can be "cost savings" bi-products of being sustainable, because everytime you cut your expenditures, you've saved yourself some overhead cash AND lessened your impact on the planet.  Win. Win.  (3) BUILD THE BRAND - The more you act like a company that is a decent local and global citizen, the more your customers will appreciate it.  You don't have to ignore profit.  In fact, ignoring profit is the safest way to go out of business and we need good, healthy, sustainable businesses to keep the planetary economic system going.  Profit is good.  A sustainable profit is even better, it's great!  (4) GROW REVENUE - This is the most fascinating part of the list!  Embedding sustainability allows you to see the market in a way you cannot without it.  It's like looking at the same old marketplace, but through new lenses.  If you're in a specific industry, you are much less likely to create a breakthrough product that solves the customers problem in a RADICALLY new way.   However, lets say that you're looking through the lenses of sustainability.   Say you're in the industrial floor polisher industry and everyone in your industry is worried about the toxic/hazardous chemicals used in the process of cleaning the floors with your scrubbers.   You are much less likely to see that you can solve the problem with a totally different cleaning process (using water, ionization, and a more efficient floor polisher) rather than using less toxic stuff, unless you're seeing the world through embedded sustainability lenses.   Through these lenses our products and services take on new dimensions.  We may even be able to take our core competencies and create new problem solving products for the market and that means revenue growth!  So the road ahead looks very bright to me as long as we businesses are in willing to put sustainability at the core of how we serve our customers.