Angela Fields
Environmental Yoga
10/17/2015
A Business in Earth to Sidestep Non-Green Businesses
What better big purchase for sustainability, than a business to facilitate others to be sustainable, furthering the effort
towards community wide green progress? This paper will review in moderate detail my idea and hope in forming and maintaining such a venture. A green business model is the necessary change if the
world ever hopes to reverse the harm caused from the industrial age. Our use of fossil fuels in every aspect of business has been both hammer and nail to success and also eventually our collapse
as a major power around the world if the trend continues. I will show new ideas and how they can be incorporated without interfering with the ‘status quote’ that is uniformly accepted as proper
business growth and development. I will also give proof of others stating the need and demand of such ventures both environmentally and prosperously viable for those wishing to enter the ‘rat
race.’
Ever since I was young and started hearing about solar powered cars and watched the races they conducted in desserts around the
world, I was awed by the notion. Solar panels became just one of the many means humans have invented, that furthered sustainability, that are capable of powering houses, cars and many other
electrical based applications. Starting to be seen in everyday life as well as being a growing market, the solar panel industry has “the cumulative investment in installed solar installations in
the U.S. from $2.6 billion (in 2004) to $71.1 billion (in 2014) according to the Solar Energy Industries Association in 2014. According to the EPA in 2013, the electricity sector was the largest
source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 31% of the U.S. total. Solar panels are just one solution to that harmful fact. We, all of us as individuals, have the power to make
easy green changes in not just one area, as in the growing solar trend, but in every aspect of our daily lives.
My proposal is a green market. In this market, a collection of sustainable formatted products will be found such as organic, local, post
consumer, and sustainable practice industry products like line caught canned seafood. All products can be in one place for convenience to the public. The idea doesn’t stop there. One of the
leading forms of waste in our culture is packaging and one idea for the market is after you use what you purchase, you bring back the excess and recycle it. Many of us know the three R’s “Reduce,
Reuse, Recycle” however there is a forth which sums up the whole of the business “Redesign.” This is an idea from Paul Connett’s, The Zero Waste Solution. In one location all 4 of the R’s will
occur. Though some say that the R’s are costly and inconvenient; is it an extra hassle to recycle if you’re going back to the place you bought it to replace it and get credit towards the new
purchase which filters into a reward program that helps you or others alike?
This market will be a collection of products outside the grocer types and include others such as refurbished e-waste supplies and
electronics, Eco-friendly cleaning supplies, green literature, gardening materials from recycled compost to tree tee-pees from the paper Shea wrote in our class. It will also be a market for
recycled clothes made sustainable, with direct access to other green industry in the case of solar, wind and others. The market will have a calendar of free workshops given locally by a network
of non-profits in order to teach the public how to do the things they want to incorporate into their lifestyles to either decrease their personal cost by ways of food, water, energy and
transportation or simply have a hobby which could be gardening or crafts done for community projects. An electric bus provided by this market will offer zero waste transport to and from workshops
at no charge to participants beyond time expenditure. The market itself could be run by students to learn and educate as well as community volunteers that will cut down labor cost that makes the
market more closely resemble a non-profit and not a standard business model.
The “market” itself will be living active proof that we as people are capable of equipping the green ideals in a practical structure that
can be raised higher than any other before it. The building becoming a museum of these ideas and an approachable safe haven to build new ones. People will come to us if they have an idea or dream
that can better mankind and we will get them to the people that have the know-how and abilities to make it a reality. Schools around the globe all connected in education of the people towards
this green market, improving locally and abroad, and acting as both its service learning base and a venue to future occupations.
Funds or profit from the sale of goods will be recycled into the growth and improvement of the structures as well as personally
chosen non-profits at checkout, to prove how you have a say with every dollar spent of your support for your community, your environment and your membership of the human race. A cause I also wish
to support with this process is relations with other nations. After global climate change has struck with a natural disaster, instead of rebuilding a community endorsing the standards that
perpetuate the problems, instead we rebuild by our sustainable means in order to stop the continued non sustainable cycle. Great examples of this are those buildings Mike Reynolds designed in my
paper “The Garbage Warrior.” Small nations that are hit by disasters suffer from nature’s intensity but are not the leading contributors to the climate changing factors. This is indicated by
Naomi Klein after a meeting conducted in Geneva, speaking with the Bolivia’s ambassador to the WTO (World Trade Organization) in the opening chapter of her book This Changes Everything. With the
longevity of this planet in mind, as well as our species, it only makes sense to assist these nations to rebuild with the well-being of all in mind. If we build a recycling facility for them to
keep every resource they have hard-earned as collateral for their nation’s futures then they don’t become just a dollar spent and thrown away. Why not build their houses back with reused material
instead of chopping down more forests which help to remove pollutants from the air? Why not show them a better way to clean and filter water or use that which falls from the sky during the rainy
seasons before it collects as runoff adding more pollutants to the hydrologic cycles and water resources used for sanitation and consumption? We have the knowledge and capability and they have
the need. When will we learn that helping others in sustainability helps ourselves?
Our hard earned money doesn’t have to go into the ever-feeding pit of the 1% versus the 99% instead let’s make 100% of our goals one that helps
everyone. We can make these choices and build a better way together. Small businesses everyday grow and fail, with the help or the dismissal of the surrounding communities. This is a business
built by a community, for a community, with only the community’s future in mind. The earth is telling us daily how we can no longer dismiss or attempt to ignore it any longer. Now is the time to
act and to build the answers, not pay the problems. We have the power and this world has the need; we simply need to invest in ourselves and we can do it!
Work Cited
Connett, Paul. The Zero Waste Solution. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. Print.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything. New York: Simon &Schuster Paperbacks, 2014. Print.
“New Analysis Shows Huge Growth in Solar Over Past Decade.” seia.org. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
“Transportation.” epa.gov. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
“Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” epa.gov. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Wehrmeyer, Walter. "Editorial." Greener Management International 1999: 5. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
More can be
found on the growth and benefits of solar power of a decade 2004 to 2014 @ https://youtu.be/wFMkL2QIduY