Stirring it Up
I’ve been becoming a bit of a health nut over the past few months. Don’t fear - I’m still drinking plenty of good beer (Guinness is good for you..Right?) but I’ve cut back on over-processed foods in favor of organics, whole grains, and flax seed (keeps you regular). Anyhow, my wife’s cousin works for a very cool bookstore called Rock Point in Chattanooga and gave me an advanced reading copy of Stirring it Up: How to make money and save the world (comes out Jan 8th if you wanna get it) by the CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt. It’s less of a single organized story and more of a collection of numerous stories of what Stonyfield and other companies are doing to create sustainable businesses with minimal environmental impact. My major takeaways are:
1. Government cannot solve our environmental problems (or many problems at all for that matter). Businesses have the creativity and technology and consumers have the buying power to bring about change. Example: the consumer demand for organic produce is now starting to force large suppliers to change from pesticide driven farming to sustainable organic farming…all with zero interfer nce from the government.
2. While going “Green” has long been a term associated with whackos it is far from the truth. Being efficient stewards of energy resources and the environment can actually mean lower costs AND higher sales (by leveraging the marketing) - ultimately the aim of every business. One example cited in the book is New Belgium brewery in Colorado - they pioneered the use of a steam based brew kettle which used 65% less energy AND also aids in producing more consistent beer. In addition to this 20% of their power is created onsite by treating their wastewater and utilizing the escaping methane to produce electricity.
While I’m not turning into a full-fledged environmental whacko what I do think I’m realizing is the increasing need for businesses to step up to the plate and start to think about how we can be more efficient. Our generation has the resources and technology at our fingertips like never before in history yet we are by far the most wasteful. There is something extremely beautiful and good about striving for efficiency. Now I’m not quite yet sure how we can apply some of this to our MNB sessions yet. We do produce some occasional methane (especially Jonathan) but capturing it may be difficult…
Jonathan, Joel & Jeff
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
This would require selling the pick-up (gun rack and all), are you really ready for that?
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:49 am
For a moment I will disregard the unflattering picture of myself so that I can address the issues at hand. First, WHO IS LAUGHING ABOUT MY STEAM-POWERED KETTLE IDEA NOW?!
Second, New Belgium also uses wind power. Maybe we could use methane AND wind? The two usually go hand in hand…
December 27th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Trav,
I’ve seen the picture of the MNB vehicle when they bought ingredients, and it didn’t look like a pickup… I’m out here in sunny SoCal, and I’m the one with a pickup truck… Might want to upgrade soon to an environmentally-abusive Jeep Wrangler, so that not only can I burn a lot of gas, I can flatten endangered critters all across CA. Woohoo!
As for the original post, I’m in complete agreement on both point #1 and #2. Government doesn’t solve anything. There’s no economic incentive for them to actually solve problems, the economic incentive is for them to reward campaign contributors through friendly regulation. In the few times where government regulation actually does solve problems, it’s only brought about because so many people clamor for it that the market would have solved it anyway. For point #2, I’m by no means a whacko for the religion of environmentalism, but I completely understand that it usually makes economic sense to do things in a less environmentally-damaging way, and that it’s the market, not the government, that will bring those things about.