Sustainablog

My favorite radio station is usually giving the news every morning just about the time I’m making my boys’ lunches. Lately, I’ve been flipping the station as soon as I hear the news start. It’s a variation on a theme each morning. The Dow is down. One bank or another is failing. The government is considering bailing out one industry or another. Consumer confidence is hitting record lows, and even the holiday season won’t reverse that. People will be spending a lot less than they have in previous years.

A study of Americans done by the retailer Plow & Hearth, however, shows that some consumers - green consumers - are willing to spend a little more to buy a product that is environmentally friendly. According to an article on Portland Business Journal the study found that

About two-thirds of those going green this year say they are willing to spend between 10 percent and 25 percent more to by ecofriendly holiday green gifts.

Here are a few other statistics that the study found:

• 55% of women are likely to purchase green products
• 45% of men are likely to purchase green products
• Middle-aged and younger people are more likely to buy green than older people
• Those who live in the West are more likely to buy eco-friendly than other parts of the country
• 34% said that money is the most important factor when it comes to deciding about purchasing an eco-friendly product

So what can we conclude from this?

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you surviving the financial crisis?

While the mainstream media seem more interested in spinning stories of foreclosures, bankruptcies and the like, millions of Americans who have gone green in either their homes, lifestyles or businesses have discovered a degree of sustained prosperity, security and stability, despite the tough times both nationally and globally. That’s not to say they’re living high on the land. But that’s the whole point for many who have chosen to live lean, green, and with the health of their community in mind, focusing on what they value, not on what they can consume next.

There’s Tazza D’oro, the fair trade and community-focused coffee house I just visited in Pittsburgh, where sales are up by double digits; this, despite the restaurant industry as a whole seeing sales plummet by about 43 percent last I checked with the National Restaurant Association. New Society Publishers, the publisher of my latest books ECOpreneuring and Rural Renaissance, both printed on 100 percent post consumer waste recycled paper, continues to prosper, perhaps even more so with books that provide positive solutions for people hungry to make a difference. For people who took their early summer 2008 Economic Stimulus Package check and invested it in energy efficiency and conservation, paid off a credit card balance, or like my wife and I, added a photovoltaic system to power our all-electric CitiCar, we realized both a return on our investment and return on environment while needing less money to pay the bankers or utility companies.

Here’s what I’ve learned from both personal experience over the past twelve years and in talking with many others about how to survive a financial crisis:

(1) Invest in the future and in your community

In a time when 401ks are quickly turning into 101ks, many Americans are exiting the debt-based economy, paying off credit cards, canceling car loans, paying down mortgages. Suddenly, when we don’t need to earn money to pay the banks, we rediscover what freedom means. We don’t save for the future, we invest in the one we want to live in, filled with green building materials, fairly traded products, and crafted as a part of the restoration and reuse, place-based economy, sometimes costing us only pennies on the dollar. From an old building turned we into a strawbale greenhouse heated by solar thermal system and biodiesel (we make with a neighbor) to various renewable energy systems, we are pleased — happy — that what we invest in does, in fact, make the world just a little better.

Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist, the authors of Ecopreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet Before Profits, are both contributors to sustainablog and other GO Media network blogs. Despite our relationship, I was excited about their new book, and agreed to write a review. I’ll try not to let me relationship with John and Lisa get in the way of a fair and impartial assessment.

Ditch high-paying (and high-stress) corporate careers for a Wisconsin farm house, a more sustainable lifestyle, a portfolio of small businesses, and much less money. Sound idyllic to some… and crazy to others. As I noted in my review of their earlier book, Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life, John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist made the jump from Chicago ad executives to rural bed and breakfast owners… and have never looked back. Their newest book, ECOpreneuring, focuses on how they continue to bring in income while creating a life centered on home, family, and environmental restoration, and provides guidance for others that want to recenter their careers and lifestyles around their environmental values.

Already, you should be able to tell that this is no ordinary business book — in fact, I’m not even sure I’d call it a “business book.” ECOpreneuring contains plenty of advice on starting a small, eco-conscious business, but the authors focus primarily on how entrepreneurial efforts can incorporate values and priorities beyond the bottom line. Lifestyle choices trump profit motives, but neither have to be sacrificed in order to create meaning and income.

Read the rest of this entry »

The stock market is down, unemployment is up, and the political class is falling all over over itself trying to take action (or, at least create the appearance of taking action). Looking for some calm in this economic storm? Two words: carbon offsets.

That’s right: according to the Washington Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, there’s “a bull market in environmental guilt.” Fahrenthold’s tone, and those of several bloggers whom have linked to his article, suggests something nefarious is happening with the sale of offsets.

I don’t agree with that, but I didn’t sit down today to defend offsets from detractors.  I think there’s a much more interesting question raised in this article: the sustainability of a “green economy” that’s focused primarily on, well, environmentalists… or, at least those who share our larger set of values. Fahrenthold notes:

…people in this business are worried that the guilt boom is about to bust. Most of their customers — usually college-educated and making more than $50,000 a year — have not been hit hard by the weakening economy. Yet.

“People still come to the site, but where you used to get people signing up [for offsets] every day, now you’d be lucky to get a few people a week,” said Fred Weiss, a small-time offset seller based in Ann Arbor, Mich., who sends customers stickers that say, “Carbon Neutral Vehicle.” Apparently that isn’t as important now.

“Who cares about the environment? Am I going to have a house next week?” he imagined would-be customers saying.

As an environmentalist, it’s tempting to respond to Weiss’ rhetorical questions with something along the lines of “But you should care about the environment because…” — fill in the rest for yourself. More and more, I think that first impulse is probably the wrong one.  Rather than focusing on the first question, we should think hard about the second one… and worry if we can’t come up with an answer.
Read the rest of this entry »

“Nobody is asking us to love others more than we love ourselves,” said the “poet president” of Tanzania Julius Nyerere. “But those of us who have been lucky enough to receive a good education have a duty also to help to improve the well being of the community to which we belong; is part of loving ourselves!”

Step 1: Click once a day at TheHungerSite.com.

You’ll fund the donation of 1.1 cups of food. While you’re there, take a look at their equally worthy sister sites.

Step 2: Play at FreeRice.com.

Study for the GRE, test your English abilities, or simply bone up on your vocabulary. While you do, your clicks will generate funding for donating free rice to the hungry. Better yet, share this online game with students you know.

Step 3: Sign the petition at HelpSweden.org.

This tongue-in-cheek organization turns our concepts of poverty around and asks for a renewed commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. Read more about what makes HelpSweden a good idea.

Step 4: Put some of your paycheck into Kiva.org.

You’ll get your money back and you’ll have helped somebody to build a business or a home. Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, the American (and so the global) financial market is an absolute mess right now, largely because of dodgy credit and lending practices by major financial institutions. Sure, millions of Americans (and people across the globe) are buried in debt, be it a mortgage or a maxed-out credit card.

Despite these ominous signs of an economic storm on the horizon, credit card companies are more than ready to give you outrageously generous credit and a nice, shiny new plastic card. But wait, it gets better! Just sign up now, financial crisis or not, and you can get a year without interest, a new appliance or electronic gizmo, a trip to Cancun!

OK, maybe not those last two.

This scenario may well sound familiar for any of you who 1) have applied for or opened up a new credit card account at any point in your natural life and 2) receive postal mail in some manner. Despite the environmental crisis facing planet Earth, junk mail is far from being an endangered species of tree-killing pest. Along with catalogues, bills, advertisements, and other snail-mail SPAM you likely do not want, credit card offers contribute significantly to the paper used for junk (unsolicited) mail.

Fortunately for consumers and postal carriers, there is a way to free yourself from the avalanche of credit card offers and so help reduce the number of trees used for paper. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing sustainable about the $700 billion Federal bailout plan for the decomposing financial sector of the US financial system. Americans know it, judging by the outpouring of objections sent to US legislators and reflected in national polls this past week.

According to various estimates by experts in the financial industry, the proposal to let the government buy bad assets from banks range from $500 billion to $1 trillion. Hank Paulson, Treasury Secretary, and Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman, are asking for $700 billion – for now.

Keep in mind that this is ON TOP OF the costs already incurred for various government actions this year, including, but not limited to:

* up to $85 billion for AIG
* up to $29 billion to fund JPMorgan’s takeover of Bear Stearns
* up to $200 billion each for nationalization of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac
* as much as $50 billion to insure money market funds
* up to $25 billion for special loans extended to GM and Ford

Let’s not forget the billions of dollars in expenses to help those in flooded or hurricane-destroyed areas – so recent that the costs aren’t even in for the damage done from Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike. There’s plenty of other federal funds flowing to counties throughout the US that were declared federal disaster areas in 2008 – like in Vernon County, Wisconsin, where we own a silviculture operation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pear pie. Pear ginger muffins. Pear cordials made from aging pears, sugar and vodka. Pears canned in sugar syrup. Pear jam.

When Mary calls me every year at the end of August with her annual message of “The tree is ripe – come pick,” I turn into the Bubba Gump of pears, gratefully using the four bushels of pears I harvest off her abundant backyard tree.

As the country whines about escalating food prices, there’s often rotten apples falling from some tree near you. Or pears, plums – name your fruit. You know the tree I’m talking about – the one you pass by every day in someone’s yard that is practically falling over with ripe fruit and you think to yourself, “Someone needs to do something with that.” How true – and that “someone” is you.

Talk about a sustainable homerun: By connecting with and harvesting a local fruit tree, you not only garner more organic, fresh, local fruit booty than you know what to do with – and put something to use that would otherwise have gone to waste. You build community by connecting with others. We’re talking community at its core, most sustainable essence, sharing abundance with others, relishing the gifts of the land.

Step up to the plate – or bushel – and tap into these unwanted fruit on trees in backyards across the nation that could be making the world a better place through more pie – or jam or cobblers or muffins – you get the picture.

Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you: Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about how much of my hard work when I toiled away for a large advertising agency (definitely NOT sustainability-minded) ended up contributing to the problems facing humanity. It didn’t get me much further ahead financially, either.

When I think about sustainability, I’ve come to the conclusion it needs to be something that’s holistic and inclusive of both my life AND my career, livelihood, or, if you must, “job.” It doesn’t make much sustainability sense to have an energy efficient home, drive a Prius and eat vegetarian when many of us — like I once did — trudge off to an office building powered by a coal-fired power plant, help a company sell products or services that were likely to destroy the planet or exploit people, and drink free coffee that was neither organic nor Fair Trade certified. All this to “pay the bills.”

The following chart from our book ECOpreneuring is my wife and my stab at contrasting the mainstream approach of being an employee in a typical company versus the owner of an ecopreneurial “green business”, ideally family scaled and locally-based. After more than a decade of interviews and meetings with ecopreneurs across the U.S., it became increasingly clear that truly sustainable enterprises provide far more than financial renumeration for its owners. These ecopreneurial businesses had owners who blended a sustainable lifestyle and workstyle, often enhancing the environment, their communities and their own quality of life by how they operated their green business.

What’s most striking from the above simplistic comparison is how the company approach seems rather disconnected from both the planet and the well-being of people as a whole. No wonder numerous studies keep finding that many employees are cynical, detached, unhappy, apathetic, and, some, downright angry.

What other aspects of an ecopreneurial life have you discovered that reveal the shortcomings of the highly touted company career in a global free market economy? In reality, there are far more ecopreneurs making the world a better place.

For several years, my wife and I worked hard for the money at a job with a full service ad agency. Every year, however, we kept coming out on the short end of the stick: working longer hours, living with more stress, securing less net income to cover our mounting expenses. A recent New York Times article echoed the reality we felt more than a decade ago. According to their research drawing from data from the US Labor Department, employee wages are the lowest share of Gross Domestic Product since 1947, with the median hourly wage after factoring in inflation for American workers declining about 2 percent since 2003. Only the top percentile income earners have prospered while the rest of us whither under rising food and energy prices (and soon, rising prices for just about everything else). According to Census Bureau reports cited by the New York Times, the median pay among American workers is about the same, after accounting for inflation, as in 1973.

Besides helping sell products of questionable societal value (and with plenty of negative social and ecological impacts), we kissed off corporate America after just a few years on the treadmill to nowhere. Now we operate a diversified family-scaled, small business based on an organic farm powered by the wind and sun. We use our profits to make the world a better place and have built our business around our passions.

The main requirement of a for-profit business is to make profits, at least once every three years says the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). No requirement specifies how much profit must be made, just some. That’s the big difference between a hobby, where generating revenue is not the primary goal of the activity, and a business. There is no such thing as a “hobby business.” The non-profit business, formed as a special type of corporation depending on its purpose, uses revenues collected to fund its mission, whether it’s saving open space or planting trees around the world to help mitigate the effects of global warming, provide nature-enhancing livelihoods and prevent soil erosion like Trees for the Future does.

As my wife and I explore at length in ECOpreneuring and in my blogs, we approach our passions — writing, photography, hosting people at Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and desiring to restore the planet — not as hobbies, but as business enterprises. You can blog on the Internet about growing in your garden, or you can write articles about growing food organically in your garden for Hobby Farm Home magazine and blog for GreenOptions.com. One’s a hobby; one’s a business and provides income from writing about something you love.

Read the rest of this entry »