Think of sustainable business as coming in two flavors.
First is the type of business that produces new sustainability tools and concepts of one kind or another. These strive for that strong, flavorful, entrepreneurial character: the kind of thing that the chef sets on your table and then lights on fire, while everyone applauds.
In this category I include some of the colorful new industries that are appearing in our neck of the woods: Mackinaw Power, the wind power company, headquartered in nearby Lowell; in Greenville, the new United Solar Ovonic (USO) installation, manufacturing Michigan’s cutting-edge photovoltaics. Highly-visible industries like these are the poster children of the sustainability revolution. They are joined by a host of fascinating new products, from waterless urinals to nontoxic cleaners, from compostable carpet tiles to packing materials you could eat if you wanted.
Such products constitute a new taste sensation. A lot of people think that when we talk about sustainable business and industry these are the companies we are talking about.
But there are also the types of businesses that have been here all along. Businesses with more familiar flavors, like the office furniture industry, auto suppliers, restaurants, hair salons, law firms. All of these are potential purchasers of sustainability products and services. They are not necessarily trying to save the world; they strive to cut costs. They strive to stay competitive. They are looking for a more efficient way to do things, or are looking to improve their products and services. Maybe they are looking for a way to stay a step ahead of the regulators. Or maybe just wanting to get a tax break.
Moving Forward
I make a point of this in order to clear up what is a point of confusion for some of us: you don’t need to be a manufacturer of hybrid engines in order to be part of the sustainability revolution. Maybe all you want is to save a few dollars – or a few hundred thousand dollars – on your electric bill.
While we are talking about the vanilla-flavored businesses, let’s not forget that governments, school systems and institutions of higher learning are also looking for ways to save money and do the sustainability thing. More on this presently.
Not to beat this metaphor to death, but of course, in practice the vanilla and chocolate flavors mix together in a wide variety of swirls, dips, marbles, and other welcome concoctions, as organizations that began mainly as sustainability consumers evolve into creative originators of fresh products, applications, trends, tools, measurements, and techniques unique to their own specific line of work.
So, all the tools and drivers are coming together in West Michigan, shimmying almost naturally together into a coherent structure, like nanocomponents, to create an atmosphere that stimulates new opportunities for growth and success. Like the air after a thunderstorm, it invites you to take a deep breath and smell the ozone. It almost makes me believe in Progress again.
An Inevitable Revolution
Here are just a few of the key components:
First, businesses producing new sustainability technologies and products that can be sold to others. Think Mackinaw Power, USO, Falcon Waterfree Technologies, and Crystal Flash. A lot of these companies are in fast-growing industries and profiting from being early birds to new ideas and innovations. Not to be forgotten here are groups like Cascade Engineering and even the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce who have provided leadership in the social responsibility leg of the triple bottom line.
Second, companies that can cut their costs and improve their operations by doing sustainability well, which typically requires buying new products and services that help them succeed.
Third, the combined purchasing power of governments, schools, and institutions of higher learning which need only to coordinate buying practices around triple-bottom-line products and locally available resources.
Fourth, the recognition that a new local economy needs to emerge and be supported here. Local availability and use – of sources and resources both – is a critical sustainability value.
Fifth, the LEED buildings highlighted in an earlier column makeup another growth industry in which West Michigan leads the nation.
Sixth, the drive to reduce, reuse, and recycle. The local movement was launched by the major office furniture manufacturers, aided and abetted by a rogues’ gallery of great industrial designers.
Add to these, finally, the pace-setting organizations that have emerged to foster the process. Of these, the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum is the oldest. Its membership is composed, not exclusively but centrally, of businesses and especially of manufacturers. It concentrates on networking, education, and technical advancements; it is a model for business organizations in other parts of the state, but its approach may be unique in the nation.
A more recent addition, the Community Sustainability Partners, began as a partnership of the City of Grand Rapids, local colleges and universities, and the Grand Rapids Public Schools. It has since added the endorsements of more than a hundred other groups. Norman Christopher of Grand Valley State University, who has provided most of the coordination of this group, describes the effort as “the shortest distance between two points” because of its potential to coordinate buying power and jumpstart local investment in sustainability.
There are other factors, too numerous to contain in a single column, that I could add to the list. So many, in fact, that as one ponders the landscape, one begins to believe in the irresistibility of the sustainability trend.
I do think that a sustainability revolution involving economics, environment, and social equity is irresistible and inevitable. But I don’t know yet that our region, or our state or our nation, are automatically destined to be among its primary beneficiaries. That depends on choices yet to be made. And the remaining barriers are significant.
You might as well get to know them too. So, in my next column, let’s create a little mischief, and talk about the things, maybe even about the folks, who are standing in the way.
Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved
Images:
Tom Leonard and his Cherry Hill home
Parking lot rainwater run-off is used for a garden at East Hills Center of The Universe building
Smart Car owned by the City of Grand Rapids