Review of Ecology of Commerce

I just finished The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, 1993.

It was really interesting and had a lot of good stuff. It is also popular within the sustainability and environmentalism community so in that context, it is important background reading to better understand where the movement is today.

Stylistically, Hawken seems like he wants to talk about the facts and make rigorous policy arguments, but he frequently slips into flowery righteous and tender prose. This sort of makes it difficult to read since there is a lot to wade through and since his points are not as salient or structured as it could be.

I'm going to do a basic overview of his main points, and then list some of his case studies and projects that I want to investigate more.

1. Main point of the book - we need a "restorative economy." In other words, for our processes to produce no waste. Every by-product of industry should be the inputs for another process just as all natural processes are cyclical.

2. As a corollary, the economy does not NEED to grow. Hawken hates the argument that economic growth is needed in order to have enough profit to protect the environment, asserting that it is a contradiction. I was glad that he said "'Environmental' companies that limit the damage done to the environmnet and to human beings by other companies, stricktly speaking, do not add value. Reducing the harm caused by 'growth' is a self-cancelling contribution at best, no more a factor in real economic growth than the rescue of a man who has been thrown overboard is an act of mercy."

3. He makes a good case for why "cleaning up" our dumps and chemical byproducts is a losing strategy since it usually just involves putting chemicals such as organochlorines in barrels and then burying them. Incinerating our trash is especially bad since it creates even more "dioxins." We have no way of detoxifying them.

4. Describes and promotes "industrial ecology" (Robert Frosch and Nicholas Gallopoulos in "Strategies for Manufacturing."), "dematerialization" (Buckminster Fuller), and "intelligent product design" (Dr. Michael Braungart and Justus Englefried of the EPEA in Hamburg, Germany). Braungart and Englefried had a idea that Hawken likes a lot, which is to have the state rent space in "parking lots" to companies to temporarily store their waste. This way, the waste remains tied to the original polluter instead of being left to local communities. It would also make sense to have a severence tax for virgin resources since currently multinational companies get resources from developing nations in a sort of perpetuation of colonialism and exploitation.

5. Hawken is adamant that the costs of pollution are internalized by companies in order to drive innovation and the creation of a truly sustainable marketplace. He refers to this as Pigou's solution, and it basically amounts to imposing hefty taxes on carbon and pollution. The idea is that a market can only function if all the costs to humanity and the environment is reflected in its price.

6. Globalization has been bad for developing peoples and the environment. Hawken talks about the various treaties and how they make it difficult for local communities to protect themselves. He also summarizes the history of the rise of the corporation and how they have become much more powerful than individuals to the detriment of people and the environment. They have taken over the political system and it is up to grass roots efforts to take it back from the ground up.

7. Small businesses have an opportunity to explore new restorative business models and practice industrial ecology to one day replace the current corporations which are resisting change.

8. Hawken describes his view of government's role. "Society can be viewed as encompassing two moral syndroms, the 'guardian' (government) and the 'commercial.' (trading) " (Jane Jacobs in Systems of Survival). Governments should impose green taxes that must be revenue neutral.

9. Utlities should be created as a good system for meeting the needs of the people while stewarding the environment.

Examples/proposals
- industrical ecology - Kalundborg, Denmark started by the Asnaes Power Plant in the 1980s.
- utilities - "negawatts" - Amory Lovins
- green fees - have the UN tax military sales