COUNTING THE STUFF THAT MATTERS
A few years ago, I bought some herbal soap from a Prince St pharmacy. The packaging looked ‘green’ – recycled unbleached card – but this was just marketing. This soap was a jet setter – manufactured in Turkey, packaged in Canada and then exported to Australia. The energy investment in transporting it two-thirds of the way round the planet was not costed in the final price paid by the bargain-hunting Grafton consumer. How did they do it? The natural capital used up in the process had obviously not been counted.
Wasted energy is a key theme underlying the need for a new form of capitalism in Natural Capitalism (by P. Hawken, A. Lovins and HB Lovins, published by Earthscan in 1999). In a book packed with examples (primarily from Europe and the United States), they describe how it is possible to accomplish 75% (Factor 4) or even 90% (Factor 10) reductions in material and energy use without diminishing the quantity or quality of the services people want. Their equivalent to my bar of soap is the manufacture of strawberry-flavoured yoghurt in Germany. After thousands of kilometres of travel, the ingredients are processed at a central factory, and the yoghurt shipped across the country. A better alternative is produced locally from locally-grown ingredients.
Apart from producing food locally, the book deals with a number of other key recommendations to improve sustainability, including: removing perverse incentives to consume energy and resources; imposing taxes on waste; planning and building smarter houses and offices in user-friendly communities; and considering efficiencies of entire systems rather than individual components.
They explain that the key is to explicitly consider what services people require and to count the whole system of supplying that, from cradle to grave. Think about renting carpet, instead of buying it so it can be recycled more easily. Maximise the use of natural lighting and passive solar design in new buildings. Think about valuing the natural capital that will be invested.
Their definition of natural capital includes social capital – from a company’s workers to the broader community. One chapter is devoted to the Brazilian city of Curitiba, which can teach the rest of the world how to integrate urban planning and services to overcome many of the social and environmental problems of large cities. It’s an inspiring story of how local participation in decision making, provision of extensive public transport, improving education services, assisting slum dwellers to build well-designed housing and devoting flood-prone lands to forests and parks, has created a livable city brimming with civil pride.
This book advocates a new form of capitalism, where triple bottom line accounting (which counts the environment and society) is the norm. It should become a major influence on future industrial development.
-Janet