Paul Hawken’s research while affiliated with Natural Heritage Institute and other places

No one would run a business without accounting for its capital outlays. Yet most companies overlook one major capital component--the value of the earth's ecosystem services. It is a staggering omission; recent calculations place the value of the earth's total ecosystem services--water storage, atmosphere regulation, climate control, and so on--at $33 trillion a year. Not accounting for those costs has led to waste on a grand scale. But now a few farsighted companies are finding powerful business opportunities in conserving resources on a similarly grand scale. They are embarking on a journey toward "natural capitalism," a journey that comprises four major shifts in business practices. The first stage involves dramatically increasing the productivity of natural resources, stretching them as much as 100 times further than they do today. In the second stage, companies adopt closed-loop production systems that yield no waste or toxicity. The third stage requires a fundamental change of business model--from one of selling products to one of delivering services. For example, a manufacturer would sell lighting services rather than lightbulbs, thus benefitting the seller and customer for developing extremely efficient, durable lightbulbs. The last stage involves reinvesting in natural capital to restore, sustain, and expand the planet's ecosystem. Because natural capitalism is both necessary and profitable, it will sub-sume traditional industrialism, the authors argue, just as industrialism sub-sumed agrarianism. And the companies that are furthest down the road will have the competitive edge.

396 p., graph., ref. bib. : 28 p.1/2 In this groundbreaking paradigm for the economy, three leading business visionaries explain how the world is on the verge of a new industrial revolution, one that promises to transform our fundamental notions about commerce and its role in shaping our future. Over the past decade many farsighted companies have begun to discover remarkable opportunities for saving both money and resources through the ingenious application of novel technologies and business practices. Consider the following. The automobile industry is undergoing a transformation that will spell the end of the petroleum industry and a shift away from traditional car models to Hypercars"―fuel cell-powered vehicles that would be both lighter and safer, produce negligible pollution, cost both the producer and consumer less, and have fuel efficiencies as high as 200 miles per gallon. : New houses designed with heat-trapping "super-windows" can remain cool in temperatures as high as 115° F with no air conditioner and warm at - 47° F with no furnace, and cost less to build. Atlanta-based Interface Corporation is shifting from selling carpeting to leasing floor-covering services, using a new material that's more attractive, requires 97 percent less material, is cheaper to produce, and is completely recyclable. Today's best techniques for using wood fiber more productively could supply all the paper and wood the world currently requires from an area about the size of Iowa. In the long-anticipated new book by Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins, these durable, practical, and stunningly profitable principles are synthesized for the first time into the foundations for a system called natural capitalism. With hundreds of thousands of copies of their works in print worldwide, the authors are leaders in set-ting the agenda for rational, ecologically sound industrial development, and in Natural Capitalism they have written their most significant and genuinely inspiring work. Traditional capitalism, they argue, has always neglected to assign monetary value to its largest stock of capital―namely, the natural resources and ecosystem services that make possible all economic activity, and all life. Natural capitalism, in contrast, takes a proper accounting of these costs. As the first step toward a solution to environmental loss, it advocates resource productivity-doing more with less, wringing up to a hundred times as much benefit from each unit of energy or material consumed. Natural capitalism also redesigns industry on biological models that result in zero waste, shifts the economy from the episodic acquisition of goods to the continual flow of value and service, and prudently invests in sustaining and expanding existing stores of natural capital. Drawing upon sound economic logic, intelligent technologies, and the best of contemporary design, Natural, Capitalism presents a business strategy that is both profitable and necessary. The companies that practice it will not only take a leading position in addressing some of our most profound economic and social problems, but will gain a decisive competitive advantage through the worthy employment of resources, money, and people.

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