From GreenBiz.com

Ray Anderson often asked a rhetorical question: does business exist to make a profit, or does business make a profit to exist? With this line of questioning, Ray called upon us to understand that while making a profit is the lifeblood of a company’s survival, it shouldn’t be the only reason for a company to exist.

With his talent for translating lofty vision into everyday reality, Ray would ask: what you would rather get out of bed to do each day: make carpet, or make history?

Making history by making carpet is a unifying sentiment for the people of Interface. How, exactly, are we making history? By proving the business model for sustainability, while taking on Ray’s challenge to eliminate our negative environmental footprint.

Ray believed there must be a better way for business to thrive on our planet, without the assumed ecological and social impacts that our current industrial take-make-waste system creates. With such ambitious goals, where do we look for inspiration in redesigning a system as pervasive and complex as business?

As an avid student of biomimicry, I believe nature offers inspiration for exactly these types of system-level design challenges, not only product innovation. Recalling Ray’s question about the purpose of business, is there something to learn by reflecting on the “purpose” of all the other forms of life in the natural world?

Based on our understanding of biology, we may surmise that the purpose of life is to pass along DNA through reproduction. That response stems from our mechanistic, Cartesian view of the natural world. A systems view, however, yields a different answer — an answer that reveals a hidden secret of life.

To understand this secret, consider what our planet was like four and a half billion years ago, and contrast that to how it is today. Our primordial planet had no ozone layer to protect against solar radiation, little atmospheric oxygen, and, of course, no life.

Roughly 3.8 billion years ago, life mysteriously appeared and persisted. Over billions of years, life has shaped its surroundings to be more conducive for even more forms of life: photosynthesis converted carbon dioxide into oxygen and sunlight into chemical energy, opening doors for aerobic organisms (like us!); microbes transformed rock substrates into soil providing fertile ground for plants; food webs balanced predators and prey yielding environmental niches for diversity to flourish.

In essence, life has survived and thrived for billions of years through adaptation and evolution, and by each species continually shaping the surrounding environment with a net benefit to the biosphere. Wielding an ecological, systems view of the natural world, we see that the secret of life’s 3.8 billion year success story is — as Janine Benyus so eloquently states — life creates conditions conducive to life.

Creating conditions conducive to life could very well be considered life’s “purpose,” and this secret of life is one that we have forgotten in our industrial system design. We can’t currently claim that business creates conditions conducive to all life — but imagine if we could.

At a systems level, life is more than simply sustainable; it’s regenerative. Which brings to bear the question: should we be striving for merely sustainable business, or should we aspire for business to be regenerative?

This isn’t just a theoretical conversation; regenerative design is practiced today. There is a growing movement in the world of green building design that offers an inspirational vision of a thriving, living future heralded by regenerative design. Inspired by biomimicry, the Living Building Challenge calls for transformative change. After all, if collective efforts of reducing our impacts are not enough to ensure a healthy planet for our children’s children, then we must aspire to actually improve the ecological fabric of our planet.

Looking beyond the green building movement, what would our world look like if our products and processes created conditions conducive to life? Imagine inhibiting bacterial growth on surfaces through structure (not chemistry) and without creating antibiotic resistance. Sharklet Technologies‘ designs do just that. Or imagine converting ambient carbon dioxide gas into cement, much the way coral does, shifting a carbon source to a carbon sink. Calera is emulating coral and flipping the carbon equation on its head.

While products and processes are making great strides, ultimately, we must redesign commerce itself to be regenerative, so that the system-level impacts of industry improve the ecology of our planet. Do we know what this would look like or where to begin?

Factories where the only energy input is direct sunlight and the only effluents are clean water (a la photosynthesis)? Incredibly, we have a great start to understanding life’s regenerative strategies, thanks to Dr. Dayna Baumeister and Janine Benyus, co-founders of Biomimicry 3.8.

Dayna and Janine have distilled the deep principles that allow life to create conditions conducive for more life. These “Life’s Principles” [PDF] offer design lessons for how nature has solved countless challenges — providing an invaluable guide for how we may solve our own challenges — and a critically important starting point for understanding how to approach this ideal of regenerative commerce.

By embedding Life’s Principles into our business operations, I believe we can turn Ray’s dream of a restorative enterprise and a living, thriving future into a reality. Making history by making carpet a regenerative business? That’s enough to get me out of bed every morning.

On Women Of Green:

• Janine Benyus’ Emulating Nature (because all life depends on it)

• Interview with Janine Benyus

From Fast Company

It’s springtime in the northwest. The endangered frog eggs are now tadpoles, and the butterflies are beginning to pupate. But the people tending to these ecological projects aren’t grad students or forest-loving yuppies. They’re prisoners in the care of the Washington State Department of Corrections, where the Sustainable Prisons Project is in its seventh year.

Back in 2004, the Washington State Department of Corrections started a partnership with the Evergreen State College. A forest ecologist, Nalini Nadkarni, brought together staff and incarcerated men from a nearby corrections center to start the Moss-in-Prison Project. Using prison facilities as a controlled environment, the project explored how to “farm” mosses for the horticulture trade.

In that pilot project, participants had to figure out which species of moss could be cultivated to alleviate pressures of unsustainable moss harvesting in old-growth forests. Nadkarni also intended to provide intellectual and emotional stimulation for the inmates, who typically have little or no access to nature but could provide fresh perspectives for ecological research. The project was a huge success, and one inmate even coauthored a peer-reviewed paper for an international sustainability journal with Nadkarni.

Now, the Sustainable Prisons Project works in four low-security corrections centers–and wants to go national. “We’ve been getting interest from correction centers, and around the world,” Kelli Bush, a project manager, says. “Our hope is to be able to share what we’ve learned in developing this program.”

The program also wants to show how prisons can have a positive impact on society. The inmates get connections to living things in a nature-starved environment, as well as knowledge and experience in green jobs–and the ecologists get a willing work force for sometimes-tedious work. They are in the process of evaluating whether participants have a lower rate of re-offending or a higher rate of employment upon release.

This year, inmates are working on several ecological projects. They have raised 311 Oregon Spotted Frogs in the past two years, bolstering local populations. Ecologists say that the frogs raised by the inmates grow bigger than those raised at other sites because the inmates have time to look at them every two hours and feed them at a higher rate.

Inmates are also raising native prairie plants, rearing Taylor’s Checkerspot butterflies, keeping bees, and building bird-boxes for endangered local birds. The projects are voluntary, says Bush, and the inmates have to apply for the jobs. Most of them have an interest, but no exposure to science or sustainability.

In addition to the hands-on experience, the project has held more than 100 lectures at five prisons, with more than 2,400 inmates and 280 corrections staff in attendance. The inmates can request topics for lectures, says Bush, and hot topics recently have been climate change, wildlife biology, and native plants.

From Washington Post

by Emily Wax

“Let’s throw some bombs,” a young woman calls out, waterproof floral purse swinging on her shoulder and Laura Ingalls braids flying behind her as a band of 25 followers cheer, “Cool!”

They rush toward a drab vacant lot in Shaw. Some climb up onto the back of a truck to get better aim at their target. But these bombers aren’t likely to appear on any terrorist list or even get arrested. They’re throwing “seed bombs,” golf-ball-size lumps of mud packed with wildflower seeds, clay and a little bit of compost and water, which they just learned to make at a free seed-bombing workshop for Washington’s guerrilla gardeners.

The benign bombing is part of a larger phenomenon known as activist gardening that is taking off this spring in cities such as Portland, Detroit, Baltimore and the District, where young urbanites are redefining the seemingly fusty pastime as a tool for social change. This is civil disobedience with a twist: Vegetable patches and sunflower gardens planted on decrepit medians and in derelict lots in an effort to beautify inner-city eyesores or grow healthful food in neighborhoods with limited access to fresh food.

“Guerrilla gardening is urban gardening and food justice. It’s just this really cool mix,” says Emmy Gran, 25, who is teaching seed-bombing in a floppy sun hat at a recent Saturday morning workshop in the courtyard of Old City Green, a gardening store in Shaw. “But it’s controversial, too. If you see an abandoned, neglected lot and you decide to do something about it by planting vegetables and herbs, are you an occupier? It’s kind of radical, in some ways.”

And every radical movement needs graffiti. Gran hauls out her Cuisinart to make the green “spray-paint” required for gardening activism’s biodegradable moss graffiti. Ingredients: moss, a half teaspoon of sugar and beer or yogurt which, when blended, will stick to walls. (“You can also use buttermilk,” she adds.) With a light rain starting to fall, the group walks over to a curb near the garden store and uses the gloppy mixture to write “Nourish, Grow, Shaw” in big, moss-green letters.

Activist gardening is the latest face of social justice in the District. Forget living in a tent in McPherson Square. Instead, try pulling on muddy work boots and hauling fertilizer and mulch to a forlorn lot, then persuading your housemates to get off their iPads and go outdoors to plant snap peas and garlic. The group at the workshop includes former Peace Corps volunteers, environmental activists, plaid-ensconced hipsters and social justice workers, all eager to learn more about subversive or sneaky gardening, as it is also known.

“It’s all a lot less devious than it seems,” says Ellen Abramowitz, 22, who works for the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit group that educates schools about energy efficiency. “Besides, who doesn’t love flowers?”

One flower at a time

Gran tells her students — most of whom were born in the 1980s — that guerrilla gardening dates from the late-1960s establishment of People’s Park in Berkeley, Calif., when a disused patch of land near the University of California campus was co-opted by the community and reimagined as a public green. Today, she says, it takes place in more than 30 countries, with much of the activity documented on the British-based website guerrillagardening.org. It has spread in the United States in recent years, spurred by the “green” movement and the increased demand for locally grown, healthful food.

From Global Forest Coalition

Keith Brunner from Gears of Change Youth Media Project reports back from the side event “Women’s critical perspectives on the green economy” carried out during the UN Rio+20 intercessional (March 25-27) at the UN headquarters in New York.

The “green economy” will be a shot in the arm for ailing global markets – a rush of new commodities and investment frontiers, packaged neatly within a UN mandate for “sustainable development.” But how will it affect those who are already the most marginalized?

This afternoon I attended an event entitled “Women’s critical perspectives on the ‘green economy.” Participants painted a picture of a future far different from the heady visions on display at the corporate side events. The “green economy,” according to the panelists, will exacerbate already growing gender violence, urban migration and loss of traditional skills and knowledge amongst women, with women in the Global South being hit the hardest.

Isis Alvarez, with Global Forest Coalition, began the panel by noting that: “Biodiversity and the environment turned into marketable goods seems to be the current approach to conservation. And markets necessarily need privatization. But what are the consequences for women, if a resource which used to be accessible is now privatized?”

She continued: “Women usually provide their families with key resources for their livelihoods, such as fuel wood, medicinal plants, fodder, food, nuts, they collect seeds, so biodiversity means everything to them, as they depend on the non-monetary benefits of biodiversity.”

Alvarez noted that for the majority of Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes, such as forest carbon schemes under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program, men often negotiate the deals, and women, due to language skills and other reasons, are left out of the process. Women cannot assume the high costs of certifying forests and other ecosystems through these schemes.

As well, when forest-dependent peoples are excluded from traditional territories due to newly implemented conservation zones, it is often the women- especially single women- who must move to the cities to find work, which can mean prostitution in some areas.

Rachel Smolker of Biofuelwatch in the US noted that bioenergy- referring not just to ethanol and biodiesel, but to the “entire replacement of petroleum and uses of fossil fuels by plant material”- is central to the green economy agenda. Governments like the EU, and commercial sectors such as the aviation industry, are setting bioenergy mandates to meet “renewable” energy targets. This rapidly expanding field, investment in which overwhelms the solar and wind sector, is already driving conflict between traditional uses, such as rural cook stoves, and new commercial and industrial uses.

Smolker noted that: “The vision that you see, for example being portrayed by the Department of Energy in the United States, is that we have massive biorefineries that bring in plant material from the surrounding area, produce energy, electricity, plastics, pharmaceuticals, all of those things, in one gigantic consolidated biorefinery. So where is all that plant material supposed to come from? Most of the biomass that is available on the planet is actually in the Global South. And that’s why we see the European Union now importing woodchips and wood pellets from Brazil and from other South American countries, because they don’t have enough where they exist, they have to get it from somewhere else, and this is what’s driving land-grabs for bioenergy.”

She continued: “Women are the most vulnerable to the land-grabs that result from this increased demand for wood. Women are the main food producers, they’re responsible for children, they’re the first to go hungry when food shortages occur, they have less secure tenure over their lands, they have less decision-making over their lands, they have less of a role in the cash economy and are often viewed as cheap labor. Women are the most vulnerable.”

Neth Dano, from the Philippines with the research group ETC Group, addressed one form of bioenergy, biochar. “Biochar mainly relies upon things that they call waste, farm waste, like rice husk. But rice husk is never considered waste in a farm-based operation. Rice husk is the fertility. It is the fertilization for the soil. Rice husk, in many households, is the fuel that they use for cooking, or maybe for heating in some parts. So you have rural women directly competing with the “biomasters”, who are aiming to concentrate the extraction, to concentrate the transport from the source to a factory to centrally process this biomass, this ‘waste,’ into energy that will fuel unsustainable production and consumption patterns.”

Dano also addressed the gendered impacts resulting from the introduction of new technologies, a major piece of the “green economy” agenda. She noted that:

“The Green Revolution technologies, from pesticides, fertilizers, to mechanized farming, have actually marginalized women- have actually made women invisible in the agricultural sector. And when you think of a farmer under the Green Revolution, it’s one who is macho, using mechanized tools, using pesticides and new seeds developed by industry, and yes, using fertilizers and taking advantage of irrigation built by men. So we also have to raise critical questions on technology- the nature of technology, the patriarchy that is bred and also facilitated by technology in recent history. You don’t have to look far on how technology designed by men, for men, has actually reaffirmed and strengthened patriarchy.”

Dano mentioned that “in the green economy, we hear a lot of words, of rhetoric about clean technology, green technology, environmentally sound technology, but none of them are actually offering a common definition, because there is none.” She continued: “There is no mechanism to assess, no mechanism to monitor, no mechanism to verify what we are talking about when we say clean technologies, environmentally sound technologies, green technologies. As Pakistan said this morning, you just have to add the word “green” and magically it becomes environmentally sound.”

Dano noted that nanotechnology, which takes place at one billionth of a meter, has already been introduced into consumer products in some countries. She pointed out that “beyond our will, beyond our knowledge, 1,300 products in North America are products of nanotechnology, without us knowing that we are eating, that we are using in our faces, in our skin, everywhere, Nano products that are not regulated, that are not meeting any standard because there is no standard- and nobody’s looking into this.”

Dano also drew attention to a paragraph in the Zero Draft text proposing a moratorium on ocean fertilization, a form of geoengineering, which has been introduced by the G77 and is supported by the EU, but opposed by the US, who states that “there is no room to discuss any particular technology in this discussion, particularly geoengineering.” With billionaires such as Bill Gates sinking money into geoengineering research, who will own and control these climate-altering technologies, and who will have access to participate in decisions to use them?

So how are women responding?  It’s obvious that even if passed, institutional solutions to some of these issues such as an effective and participatory technology assessment mechanism would not eliminate the patriarchy. And it seems that even these proposals stand little chance of getting passed, as delegates with dollar signs in their eyes kill any proposals that could be seen as hindering the profit-making opportunities of multinational corporations.

At the end of her presentation, panelist Rachel Smolker offered a story from a few years ago, whereby local women affiliated with the International Peasant Farmers organization La Via Campesina actually uprooted an entire plantation of eucalyptus trees, which had been a part of a land dispute in their community. Maybe there’s something to that story that we can take away.

What is it for you?