This article is part of the Building a Sustainable Business series about starting and running a sustainable business. Read all the articles here.
Cleantech, renewables, green tech, and sustainable businesses (CReGS) — it seems that many new businesses claim to be one or another. But if you look closely, there seems to be little agreement on what makes a clean, green, sustainable company.
I think the original idea of the sustainable movement was to stop gobbling up everything on the planet so our children, and their children, would have access to a non-polluted, fruitful world. Some CReGS are trying to develop renewable sources of energy that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. There is awareness that perhaps moving entire industries offshore might not be in the best interests of our people. And if we douse the earth in pesticides and other chemicals, what will our children’s children eat?
Wind farms, solar energy, geo-thermal capture, and bio-fuels are some of the alternative solutions being explored and funded as cleantech. However, while the goal is to reduce the use of non-renewable energy, most of these companies use dangerous materials to build their products, use energy to run their cleantech systems and their offices and travel, and in general, work like any other company, CReGS or not.
Has anyone figured out the balance? If a cleantech company uses poisons and heavy metals to manufacture their “clean” technology and more non-renewable resources than it conserves, does this make it a CReGs?
And given the terms used to describe this industry, such as cleantech, each product or service is based on technology. Is computer technology the only way we can save the planet? According to Greenpeace, our defunct technology, regardless of how green the application, ends up as poisonous waste. If you burn a computer, heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, and mercury, in addition to dioxins and furans, are released into the atmosphere and absorbed into our food chain. Recycling the waste in Asia is seen as one way to protect our children and our environment.
However, children as young as four are working in these Asian recycling centers picking apart our cast-off computers and exposing themselves to poisons that will eventually kill them. In our rush to create ever newer and sexier technology, we are also creating a crisis in waste disposal.
What about products that don’t use poisonous or nonrenewable materials? If there’s no chip, it’s not CReGS, regardless of the benefit the product could bring. I recently read that the ink used on store receipts is poisonous – where are the folks inventing safe ink? They are probably banging their heads against a wall because their ink has no chip therefore they don’t get funded.
The entire CReGS industry has been channeled towards technology when technology is not the only way nor even the best way to save the world. But for VCs searching for the next Google or Facebook, the only companies worth investing in are technology companies.
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This kind of tunnel vision where one solution must solve all problems has created a skewed focus in medicine, where the power of pharmaceutical companies controls patient treatment. Every complaint has a pill. If the pill doesn’t work, get out the knives and remove the offending part.
My prescription for startups wanting to save the world is to examine every step of the product’s manufacturing and ultimate disposal. I agree that the cradle-to-cradle concept is a great way to invent. However, I think the future of CReGS should include mandatory safe manufacturing and a plan for the ultimate disposal of the product, not just its use.
When I was considering an LED product, I rejected it because of the mercury and arsenic required for manufacturing, even though no one would have objected to the use, which would have been to provide cool, diffused, perfect light for museums. What if I had persevered and instead of rejecting the product, turned my attention to finding safe alternatives to the poisons?
Apparently, no one is doing this. A great example of misplaced enthusiasm is the curly fluorescent bulb. They do indeed take less energy to light up a room but that’s where the benefits stop. The bulbs give off a weird, diffuse light that is not comfortable to live with. The heat from the incandescent bulbs meant that I used my heater less, although I’m not sure which is worse — using the electricity and the incandescent bulb or just firing up the gas furnace. Recently I read that the curly fluorescent bulbs, when on, create a halo of invisible, cancer-causing particles, so I have to be sure I’m as far as possible from the bulb when it’s on. And if I want to read, I have to sit far from the light and squint.
At a presentation of the California Product Stewardship Council, CEO Heidi Sanborn showed a photo of acres of broken glass somewhere in the California countryside that was the graveyard of fluorescent bulbs. How is it better to have light bulbs that reduce the quality of life at home? How is it better to enforce the use of a cancer emitting light for a heat emitting light? Someone needs to go back to the drawing board.
In my research for the perfect deep green product, I was shocked to discover that of approximately 700 new chemicals introduced each year, only about 4 percent are actually evaluated for safety.
Today, there are some 33 million organic and inorganic chemicals in use. Are these chemicals essential to life? Do they contribute to our well-being or is their purpose simply to poison us and our environment while someone gets rich in the most cynical manner possible?
I think every company claiming CReGS credentials should be required to find alternatives for poisonous manufacturing materials and to set up a safe end-of-life disposal process. Otherwise, they are simply a regular company, doing their best to satisfy their investors, with no consideration for people or the environment. I’m very happy that so much attention has been focused on saving the earth. The next step has to be making sure that every CReGS is actually doing more good than harm.
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Priscilla Burgess is CEO, Co-founder, and Co-inventor of Bellwether Materials, an award-winning, triple-bottom line company that manufactures deep green building insulation made from an agricultural by-product. Before founding Bellwether Materials, she ran her own management consulting business. She has traveled all over the world, asking questions about how people work and from that, has developed several models and many opinions about the best way to grow a flourishing business.
image: Jeff Kubina via Flickr cc (some rights reserved)