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Profitable Sustainability

Sustainability will be very costly, we are told, but creative approaches are combining Earth-friendliness with profits.

30 August, 2002

The sustainability debate, now playing out at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, pivots on cost. Defenders of the present order trumpet that achieving sustainability would stop economic growth and cost millions of jobs. This might be true if you believe official statistics and if you count the cost of just trying to clean up the messes we make, after they are made.

However without a change from business as usual, a growing GDP just means more mess to clean up. What if, instead, we were to look for alternative methods of production, methods that avoid trashing the Earth in the first place, and that create jobs and profits in the process?

Take an all-American activity like raising beef, for one version of a story that is being repeated all over the world, with many local variations. Like many ecosystems, the grasslands of eastern Oregon and Washington have been in long-term decline. Long-established ranching families have watched as productivity slowly but inexorably collapsed, grass became feeble, yellow and sparse and patches of bare ground began to appear. Only a few grass species remained common.

In the early 1980s one ranch family decided they had to try something different. Following lessons gleaned from East Africa, they grazed small patches of their land in short, intense bursts, keeping their cattle bunched and moving them frequently. This pattern simulates the grazing habits of wild herbivores in the presence of carnivores. The family also eliminated pesticides and actually encouraged the presence of many "pest" species: local carnivores like coyotes, wolves, mountain lions and eagles, and rodents like the burrowing prairie dogs. The predators keep populations of other species in balance, and the prairie dogs' digging enriches the soil.

Not only the grasses, but bushes and trees responded dramatically to the return of natural grazing patterns. Old ecological niches began to re-establish, bringing many birds and insects. The diversity of plants increased dramatically, bringing back wildflowers, medicinal plants and prairie grass species that hadn't been heard of since pioneer days. Crucially, water returned to local sinks for most of the year for the first time in living memory.

The land restored by these grazing methods is more productive than surrounding land. Other ranchers have paid attention to this success, and by now over 600,000 hectares of Oregon and Washington are grazed in the new fashion. There are deep lessons in this story for managing Australia's fragile land, and many comparable and promising experiments are under way here too.

New marketing methods can also make a difference. The Oregon family that pioneered the new grazing methods also established a marketing cooperative that sells organic beef up and down the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. The prices they achieve are both higher and more stable than the mainstream beef market. The cooperative is run in the same spirit as the grazing methods: with a firm eye on the long-term goal, eschewing short-term expedients that would compromise that goal. In its cooperative structure and its guiding spirit this enterprise contradicts conventional business wisdom, but it thrives anyway.

The people who created this shift in grazing and business methods say they have learnt that, in the long-term, economic and ecological are synonymous. What they have done is remarkable in several ways. They have reversed a major ecological collapse, and the local prairie ecology is regenerating. It can't reach the state it was in before white people and cattle arrived, but it is clearly more productive, diverse and resilient than it was. They have discovered they can live well within a diverse and thriving ecosystem, instead of pretending they can be outside it, dominating it, and destoying the bits they don't like. These ranchers, staunch conservative country folk, have accomplished something else: a comfortable, satisfying and sustainable livelihood.

A sustainable society must be based on biological principles. In the living world, all materials are recycled and no persistent toxins are produced. In Germany, manufacturers have for some years been required to take back all components of worn-out household appliances. They cannot dump toxins, so if they are to survive they must be able to return all components of used appliances either usefully to the industrial stream or safely to the earth.

As of 2002, these recycling laws apply to cars. The German sky has not fallen. The German economy has not collapsed. Investors are still investing and manufacturers are still manufacturing. Rather, German manufacturers are rapidly learning how to apply a new design principle: cradle-to-cradle design. Designers must consider not just the lifetime of their product, from cradle to grave, but how the product's materials will be reborn into new products. In this way, all waste and toxins will be eliminated.

Designer and architect William McDonough calls this the Second Industrial Revolution. Instead of extracting material from the Earth, using it once and dumping it, new industries will recycle, recycle, recycle. In this kind of economy, success will not be measured by the growth of material throughput, but by improving quality of life. Material throughput may well decline, but the quality of our products, services and lifestyles can continue to improve without limit. The idea of getting more from less is nothing new: it is a defining feature of human history.

Australians have a choice. We can keep crying that sustainability is impossible, while others go ahead and do it. We can continue to believe that we have to choose between personal comfort and saving the Earth. We can continue to whinge about greenies and protesters, and continue to prop up industries that are unsustainable and soon will be uneconomic as well.

On the other hand, we can get informed, work to remove the perverse obstacles faced by the many Australians who are already trying to create a sustainable society, and begin soon to enjoy the benefits that will flow to us both directly and through the improving health of our environment.

________________________________

William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle , North Point Press, 2002. David Suzuki and Holly Dressel, Good News for a Change, Allen & Unwin, 2002.


	Profitable Sustainability Sustainability will be very costly, we are told, but creative approaches are combining Earth-friendliness with profits. 30 August, 2002 The sustainability debate, now playing out at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, pivots on cost. Defenders of the present order trumpet that achieving sustainability would stop economic growth and cost millions of jobs. This might be true if you believe official statistics and if you count the cost of just trying to clean up the messes we make, after they are made. However without a change from business as usual, a growing GDP just means more mess to clean up. What if, instead, we were to look for alternative methods of production, methods that avoid trashing the Earth in the first place, and that create jobs and profits in the process? Take an all-American activity like raising beef, for one version of a story that is being repeated all over the world, with many local variations. Like many ecosystems, the grasslands of eastern Oregon and Washington have been in long-term decline. Long-established ranching families have watched as productivity slowly but inexorably collapsed, grass became feeble, yellow and sparse and patches of bare ground began to appear. Only a few grass species remained common. In the early 1980s one ranch family decided they had to try something different. Following lessons gleaned from East Africa, they grazed small patches of their land in short, intense bursts, keeping their cattle bunched and moving them frequently. This pattern simulates the grazing habits of wild herbivores in the presence of carnivores. The family also eliminated pesticides and actually encouraged the presence of many "pest" species: local carnivores like coyotes, wolves, mountain lions and eagles, and rodents like the burrowing prairie dogs. The predators keep populations of other species in balance, and the prairie dogs' digging enriches the soil. Not only the grasses, but bushes and trees responded dramatically to the return of natural grazing patterns. Old ecological niches began to re-establish, bringing many birds and insects. The diversity of plants increased dramatically, bringing back wildflowers, medicinal plants and prairie grass species that hadn't been heard of since pioneer days. Crucially, water returned to local sinks for most of the year for the first time in living memory. The land restored by these grazing methods is more productive than surrounding land. Other ranchers have paid attention to this success, and by now over 600,000 hectares of Oregon and Washington are grazed in the new fashion. There are deep lessons in this story for managing Australia's fragile land, and many comparable and promising experiments are under way here too. New marketing methods can also make a difference. The Oregon family that pioneered the new grazing methods also established a marketing cooperative that sells organic beef up and down the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. The prices they achieve are both higher and more stable than the mainstream beef market. The cooperative is run in the same spirit as the grazing methods: with a firm eye on the long-term goal, eschewing short-term expedients that would compromise that goal. In its cooperative structure and its guiding spirit this enterprise contradicts conventional business wisdom, but it thrives anyway. The people who created this shift in grazing and business methods say they have learnt that, in the long-term, economic and ecological are synonymous. What they have done is remarkable in several ways. They have reversed a major ecological collapse, and the local prairie ecology is regenerating. It can't reach the state it was in before white people and cattle arrived, but it is clearly more productive, diverse and resilient than it was. They have discovered they can live well within a diverse and thriving ecosystem, instead of pretending they can be outside it, dominating it, and destoying the bits they don't like. These ranchers, staunch conservative country folk, have accomplished something else: a comfortable, satisfying and sustainable livelihood. A sustainable society must be based on biological principles. In the living world, all materials are recycled and no persistent toxins are produced. In Germany, manufacturers have for some years been required to take back all components of worn-out household appliances. They cannot dump toxins, so if they are to survive they must be able to return all components of used appliances either usefully to the industrial stream or safely to the earth. As of 2002, these recycling laws apply to cars. The German sky has not fallen. The German economy has not collapsed. Investors are still investing and manufacturers are still manufacturing. Rather, German manufacturers are rapidly learning how to apply a new design principle: cradle-to-cradle design. Designers must consider not just the lifetime of their product, from cradle to grave, but how the product's materials will be reborn into new products. In this way, all waste and toxins will be eliminated. Designer and architect William McDonough calls this the Second Industrial Revolution. Instead of extracting material from the Earth, using it once and dumping it, new industries will recycle, recycle, recycle. In this kind of economy, success will not be measured by the growth of material throughput, but by improving quality of life. Material throughput may well decline, but the quality of our products, services and lifestyles can continue to improve without limit. The idea of getting more from less is nothing new: it is a defining feature of human history. Australians have a choice. We can keep crying that sustainability is impossible, while others go ahead and do it. We can continue to believe that we have to choose between personal comfort and saving the Earth. We can continue to whinge about greenies and protesters, and continue to prop up industries that are unsustainable and soon will be uneconomic as well. On the other hand, we can get informed, work to remove the perverse obstacles faced by the many Australians who are already trying to create a sustainable society, and begin soon to enjoy the benefits that will flow to us both directly and through the improving health of our environment. ________________________________ William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle , North Point Press, 2002. David Suzuki and Holly Dressel, Good News for a Change, Allen & Unwin, 2002.