Natural Order
Struggling to Be Green
Stumbling into natural capitalism isn't always an easy fall.
Just ask Eloise Gonzalez-Geller, founder of Miami-based interior
finishing contractor Commercial Interior Contractors Corp. (CIC).
Her $1.2 million company does everything it can to help the
environment. Employees write notes on waste paper. Recycled glass
is used as an aggregate in the company's terrazzo floors, and
CIC donates leftover tiles to a local school's art department.
Then Gonzalez-Geller decided to expand her effort and successfully
bid on removing carpet from government renovation projects, usually
at airports, where it frequently contains trace amounts of jet
fuel. But the program is a frustration: "No private companies
will pay to recycle their carpets. It's cheaper to throw them
in landfills," Gonzalez-Geller, 39, laments. "At this
point, I'm losing both money and energy with the
carpet-recycling project." Even so, she believes that in the
long term, she'll overcome those companies' hesitation and
earn not just environmental benefits but financial ones as
well. A Crackdown
Cometh Just can't bring yourself to care enough about natural
capitalism's financial and environmental advantages? Take note:
As an entrepreneur, you're the new target of federal and state
environmental agencies. Content Continues Below
Regulators increasingly view aggregate small-business waste as a
potentially large source of air and water pollution, which experts
say may lead to a crackdown. Therefore, it makes sense for
entrepreneurs who aren't already thinking green to start. As the environmental practices of small companies are placed
under the microscope of regulators, you need not go it alone. A
growing number of government and private-sector programs have been
developed for the small-business market. For example, the EPA has a
Web site tailored to entrepreneurs, marking an end to the purely
adversarial approach of days past. It's a dramatic change. On that first Earth Day in 1971, a canyon of enmity and
misunderstanding sat between business executives and
environmentalists. Thirty years later, that canyon has narrowed to
a crack, which environmentalists and entrepreneurs easily hop.
Maybe it's because today's entrepreneurs have greater
control of their companies. Maybe it's because many of them are
from a more environmentally attuned generation. Maybe it's
because being environmentally sensitive is just the right thing to
do. In the end, the reason doesn't matter. What does matter is
that more entrepreneurs are discovering the benefits of natural
capitalism. More are working to do what they can to strike a
balance between business and the environment. In doing so,
they'll not only preserve the environment, but they'll also
create more efficient companies, a concept even Adam Smith would
applaud.
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