Environment | Epilifeconsulting's Blog

Social Entrepreneurship…Developing Community Capital, Beyond Sustainability Training

October 7, 2010 Leave a comment

by Kene Turner

“For any organization whose external environment is changing faster than it is changing internally, the end is in sight. It is only a matter of time.” — Jack Welch, Letter to GE Shareholders, 2001

The above quote was apart of my opening at the west coast green conference (West Coast Green is the world’s leading interactive conference on green innovation for the built environment). Myself and two very distinguished gentlemen, Wilford Welch and David Hopkins (pictured above) who are co-authors of a book called, “The Tactics of Hope,” delivered a workshop at the conference titled, “Developing Your Community Capital Beyond Sustainability.”

Wilford Welch first spoke about the causes of the sustainability crisis, why a shift in values and priorities are imperative, and these values & priorities for sustainable communities consist of — a shift in thinking from former thoughts such as “more is better” to “enough is enough.” From “me” to “we” from “Growth/Profits” to “People, Planet, Profits.” Wilford encouraged us as social entrepreneurs to move to a system that creates long-term abundance rather than short-term profit margins.

Next David Hopkins spoke about lessons learned from Social Entrepreneurs. David spoke of characteristics of social entrepreneurs like the fact they focus on social and environmental challenges; they seek systemic solutions; they implement using for profit, not-for-profit, and hybrid models. He taught that Social Entrepreneurs collaborate beyond the local workplace to design solutions that are communal within its makeup, in which the community becomes the marketplace of opportunity to exchange social and financial capital. David gave examples of social entrepreneurship models such as KIVA, IDEA VILLAGE, OPEN ACTION, and PLAY PUMPS. More examples are written within the book, the Tactics of Hope.

Lastly, I rounded out the presentation, speaking about how small businesses can implement community engagement. As a product of community engagement myself (read about my story), delivering the content about community engagement was almost second nature. I defined community engagement for the audience using key words like collaboration, affiliation, special interests, bring out change, mobilizing resources, etc. We discussed the importance of viewing business as ecology and valuing the impacts of community engagement. I spoke of internal and external impacts of community engagement such as human/social capital, local support, stable customer base, and developing niche markets. My case study was about Steve Mariotti, the Founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and how his decision to apply community engagement positively impacted many others. It’s up to us, as small business owners, to do the same.

If you are interested in having this workshop at your organization, please feel free to contact us at info@epilifeconsulting.com or call us toll free at 888-751-7773. FEEL FREE TO VIEW OUR POWER POINT BY CLICKING ON THE LINK BELOW!

SPECIAL EVENT Social Entrepreneurship Training: Developing Community Capital “Beyond Sustainability”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=wcgseslideshareversion-101007035532-phpapp02&stripped_title=special-event-social-entrepreneurship-training-developing-community-capital-beyond-sustainability&userName=DavidHopkins

View more presentations from DavidHopkins.

Filed under Community Engagement, Environment, SOcial Entrepreneurship

The Truth About Millennials | GreenBiz.com

March 9, 2010 Leave a comment

The Truth About Millennials | GreenBiz.com.

Filed under Environment, Sustainable Business Practice

The Age of Sustainability: Why ‘Less’ Should Be More of Your Business Strategy | GreenBiz.com

February 10, 2010 Leave a comment

Business has officially entered “The Age of Sustainability.”

Most people relate sustainability to climate change and our efforts to sustain Earth’s limited resources.

In the corporate world, it means businesses are being asked — or even expected — to take Earth’s climate into consideration in normal business operations. In this new age, business strategy has been required to adapt to profound changes in how consumers and partners buy, use, interact with and view their products and services. This is particularly true over the last 10 years and will likely continue for at least the next 20 to 30 years.

We have all heard of the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” as the call to think about environmental sustainability when making decisions about products and services. But have you considered that this directive may be in conflict with the common business goal of selling more to achieve higher revenues and profits?

Recycle and Reuse

In general, businesses have adapted reasonably well to recycling. In many cases, it is an integral part of the business model. There is high consumer awareness of what and how to recycle, and there are great examples of businesses profiting from this trend such as the recycling of certain plastics to make outdoor furniture or recycling paper products into boxes.

The trend to reuse is more of an individual attitude. Awareness of reuse has increased significantly over recent years. Secondary markets are quite mature with reuse today. If you look at the success of eBay, Amazon, and craigslist, you can see how this trend has taken off and how businesses have taken advantage of the reseller marketplace.

Reduce

Less in use today, however, is the reduce portion of the formula. There are few business models or strategies that take advantage of a reduction in consumption. Using fewer resources in the first place, makes reduce strategies among of the most effective for increasing sustainability.

Here are some of the ways to practice the reduce philosophy, according to an article from the National Resource Defense Council:

Choose energy-efficient electronics and appliances.
Ditto for cars. Try sharing a car and rides, and try to combine trips.
Buy local. Purchase items made close to home. Less energy was used transporting them to the store. This includes food grown locally.
Avoid goods made with materials whose extraction or processing are especially destructive to the environment, such as tropical woods and most gold jewelry.
Avoid overly packaged goods. The packaging is a total throw-away.
Cut back on water use.
Waste less energy on lights and related equipment. Using smart everything (grids, meters, switches, clean energy, etc.) can significantly help reduce energy consumption.
Eat less meat. The environmental footprint of a pound of meat is 10 times or more greater than that for a pound of grain or produce.

What is interesting about these recommendations is that when consumers change their behaviors, the impact on virtually every industry and type of business will be profound.

See the rest of this blog:

via The Age of Sustainability: Why ‘Less’ Should Be More of Your Business Strategy | GreenBiz.com.

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IT Aims to Save the World: The State of Green Business 2010 | GreenBiz.com

February 10, 2010 Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: To celebrate the launch of the third annual State of Green Business report, we will be highlighting over the next two weeks the 10 big trends that are shaping the future of the greening of mainstream business. You can download the report for free here, and read all 10 trends on GreenBiz.com.

Information technology’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for energy has been well established. But when you add up all of information and communication technology’s energy footprint — the increasing need for computational power, data storage and communications — it amounts to about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, growing to 3 percent by 2020, according to McKinsey & Co. That’s non-trivial, of course, but there’s a countervailing force to consider: the potential for information technology to make the world far more energy-efficient, and to address some of the world’s other pressing environmental and social problems.

At least, that’s the story some of the largest IT companies are telling. And they’re backing it up with a seemingly impressive array of capabilities to make the world not just more efficient, but to make it better.

One way IT can have a big impact is by replacing carbon-intensive activities with much more efficient and less-energy-intensive technologies. Well-established examples include the use of telepresence and virtual meetings to replace conventional business travel (something that will become increasingly common as Ciscoexpands its TelePresence program and HP launches a desktop telepresence program) and using secure networks and virtual meeting technologies to allow employees to work remotely.

A host of companies large and small offered up software solutions in 2009 to help consumers and businesses monitor their energy use. Google and Microsoft, for example, each launched its own home energy solution — Google’s PowerMeter and Microsoft’s Hohm. Tririga launched a software line designed to help large organizations measure, manage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their real estate holdings. Energy management startup Hara Software entered the market with a software-as-a-service corporate application that enables companies to track their use of resources, energy efficiency and emissions systemwide — and take steps to reduce them. Webcor Builders, one of the largest contractors in California, and Climate Earth, a greenhouse gas accounting firm, joined forces to develop a database of the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in construction materials to help design buildings with smaller carbon footprints.

Google, Tririga, Hara and the others are part of a much larger group of companies eyeing a largely untapped opportunity. According to a study by IFS North America, the vast majority of manufacturers do not have the software technology in place to manage their environmental footprints. The study revealed that almost half of manufacturers lacked the enterprise technology to manage their environmental footprint at all, and another 28 percent had only limited capabilities.

IT’s salutary impact is not just about energy. For example, Microsoft isfocusing on accelerating breakthrough solutions to environmental challenges. In one project, Microsoft research shows how specific groups of trees interact with one another and the environment and whether and how tree species will need to migrate in a warming climate. Research shows that a new generation of realistic forest computer modeling could greatly improve our understanding of how forests work, how tree species respond to deforestation, and how forests impact climate regulation and environmental change.

Perhaps no one has articulated the scope of the opportunity better than IBM, whose Smarter Planet campaign went into full gear in 2009. That campaign aims to showcase Big Blue’s technology and competency in a wide range of fields — retail, buildings, healthcare, government, banking, education, food and more — including how it leverages IT solutions with consulting and other services. During the year, IBM launched a Sustainable Supplier Information Management Consulting service to help companies collect supply chain data such as energy use, labor practices and greenhouse gas emissions; launched a line of services and research called Strategic Water Information Management to work with utilities, government agencies and businesses in managing water consumption; and implemented these and other solutions globally — managing everything from smart grids to urban congestion.

These aren’t simply a matter of doing good things for the world — they’re enormous business opportunities. If IBM and its IT brethren can successfully deploy their technologies to propagate breakthrough infrastructure solutions (while simultaneously reducing their own footprints), they’ll be well placed to tap the many trillion-dollar markets that await them. Smarter, indeed.

via IT Aims to Save the World: The State of Green Business 2010 | GreenBiz.com.

Filed under Environment