How to Spawn more Green Business

Many of the essential elements of local living economies are already in place. More are being created every day by people who believe a better world is possible and are doing their part to live it into being. These elements include local organic farms and farmer’s markets, enterprises producing and marketing innovative environmental services and products, community supported agriculture initiatives, local restaurants specializing in locally grown organic produce, community banks, recyling business, green business directories, and many more.
Trying to live by authentic values in an inauthentic culture leads to a growing sense of isolation from family, friends and work associates that can be broken only by joining with like-minded persons to form communities of congruence. Initially small and isolated, these communities eventually grow and meld into larger alliances.
This pattern is playing out in many ways, including in the world of business. The search for authenticity leads one more green entrepreneur to launch a living enterprise, which in turn attracts mindful customers who want to live their values through their purchasing decisions, and mindful employees who want to live their values through their work. Each living enterprise forms the nucleus of an expanding community of congruence and demonstrates practical alternatives to the ways of the suicide economy.
The search for congruence in all its dealings leads the living enterprise to buy from suppliers that are also living enterprises.
Grow the web: To take BCIL as a case in point what it has done in recent years is facilitate the extension and deepening of the web of relationships.
Ground it locally everywhere: BCIL also has sought to maintain an active local preference in both purchasing and sales. This applies to individuals, as well as living enterprises.
Another step, by default, that BCIL has taken is to walk away from relations that strengthen the dysfunctional institutions of the suicide economy. Walking away from the evil they opposed. That was key to the successful change strategies of both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In BCIL’s instance, it is a matter of choosing life values over money and exercising all reasonable opportunities to transfer life energy from the suicide economy to the living economy
Walking away from dealings with the institution of the suicide economy may be the most difficult part of growing a living economy. It is also one of the most essential. The living economy is about mutuality and partnership, democracy, equity and sustainability.
It is important for those who own and lead living enterprises to be mindful of the pressures to grow beyond a natural human-scale placed on them by the culture and structure of the suicide economy. Growth creates a need for financing, which creates incentives to sell public shares, which creates demand for larger profits, and makes the enterprise vulnerable to take over by a still larger publicly traded corporation.
BCIL is currently facing, and resisting this threat. That means the walking away needs greater resolve, beyond the pressures of financial costs, at times.
One of the challenges before us is finding ways to replicate the success of a living enterprise such as BCIL by helping others with similar drive and values to create similar businesses.
In many communities, those interested in growing a living economy will find food and agriculture a logical place to start. Everyone needs and cares about food. It can be grown most everywhere, is freshest and most wholesome when local, and is our most intimate connection to the land. A farmer’s market or a restaurant selling locally produced organic foods can serve as the initial organizing catalyst.
We choose to start with the formidable challenge of creating housing solutions. And so are lost, or invested many years, in creating a living enterprise.
Ask yourself: What do people and businesses regularly buy that is or could be supplied locally by values-based, independent enterprises? Which existing local businesses are trying to practice living economy values? In what sectors are they clustered? The answers will point to promising opportunities.
There is a wealth of possibilities. For example, a cluster of businesses devoted to energy conservation and the local production of solar, wind and mini-hydro power may form a living economies web devoted to advancing local energy independence.
We have become so dependent on the institutions of the suicide economy for our daily needs that we see no viable alternative. Thus, we remain hostage to their dehumanizing demands even though we may know they are killing us.
Many of the elements of healthy living economies are already in place. The stronger and more visible these webs become, the easier it is for each of us to move from the suicide economy to the living economy by our individual investment choices. Each choice for life demonstrates the possibilities of a more attractive and satisfying way of living.
David C. Korten