Do Sustainable Business Practices Appear Expensive? Look to Biomimicry

by Craig ShieldsPosted on April 24, 2010 Posted in Renewables - Business

I’ve noticed that discussions of sustainability generally boil down to cost, e.g.:

1) Do the additional costs of green products pass muster with consumers?

2) Should the government take us further into debt to fund green R&D and to create incentives?

3) Can we “internalize the externalities,” i.e., get people to pay the true costs of the what they’re doing?

I would suggest a different approach — one taken by people like the Biomimicry Institute, who point out that learning from nature actually decreases costs — even if you don’t look at the long-term.  Teaming with Ethical Impact, we at 2GreenEnergy are putting together as series of webinars for corporate sustainability folks that will lay out the net business advantages of learning from nature — a system that has been solving design problems quite effectively and efficiently — and incorporates a vision of what the environment needs to be like 10,000 generations hence.

The series will lay out:

• What business leaders can learn from natural systems and processes — as well as how they can do that

• The process by which business leaders can extract themselves from old-line thinking, and begin to think like the planet

• A set of paradigm-breaking exercises that stimulate new visions for business products, services, and processes — each inspired by 3.7 billion years of evolution

How does that sound?