S: Is for starting Green

Today's green revolution is being driven by a whole new set of entrepreneurs. Every few years or so, American companies and consumers embrace the concept of green business. We're certainly in the midst of one of those moments right now. But something seems different about our current green awakening. This time, the action is being driven as much by markets as morality. High oil prices, global warming, the sense that chemicals cause real harm and the earth's resources are indeed finite. Wall Street and Silicon Valley certainly understand this: Venture capital firms invested $958 million in renewable energy companies in the first half of 2006 alone. If you believe Ray Anderson, we are at the dawn of the New Industrial Revolution.

Ray Anderson at 72 years old, may well be the most visionary figure in American business today. As chairman of the textile manufacturer Interface he has transformed the company he founded 33 years ago into the world's first industrial firm devoted to sustainability and he means sustainability in the strictest sense: "taking nothing from the earth that is not rapidly and naturally renewable, and do not harm the biosphere." A book published in 1994, came to his attention: The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken. Anderson asked his engineers to determine what had been extracted from the earth to produce the company's income. That year Interface was enjoying some $800 million in revenue, and the engineers concluded that to get there they had used 1.2 billion pounds of raw materials, most of it oil and natural gas, and much of that incinerated. "I was staggered," Anderson stated. "I wanted to throw up. My company's technologies and every other company I know of anywhere, in their present forms, are plundering the earth. This cannot go on and on and on. In 1999 he published his own book, Mid-Course Correction he states "I am a recovering plunderer". Last year he spent much of his time on the road--151 speeches.

Companies are taking this seriously as consumers cry out for "Green". Honda, Continental, Suncor, Tesco, Alcan, PG&E, S.C. Johnson, Goldman Sachs, Swiss Re and H-P have been cited as the top "Green Companies. But how do you go "Green"? I am enclosing some valuable sites to help. www.fedcenter.gov/programs/buygreen/ www.coopamerica.org/programs/shopunshop/buyinggreen/index.cfm
and www.buygreen.com
We are all responsible for our world and that is a weighty F.A.C.T.