Product Description

A visionary new program that businesses can follow to help restore the planet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5898 in Books
• Published on: 1994-08-03
• Released on: 1994-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
Paul Hawken, the entrepreneur behind the Smith & Hawken gardening supplies empire, is no ordinary capitalist. Drawing as much on Baba Ram Dass and Vaclav Havel as he does on Peter Drucker and WalMart for his case studies, Hawken is on a one-man crusade to reform our economic system by demanding that First World businesses reduce their consumption of energy and resources by 80 percent in the next 50 years. As if that weren't enough, Hawken argues that business goals should be redefined to embrace such fuzzy categories as whether the work is aesthetically pleasing and the employees are having fun; this applies to corporate giants and mom-and-pop operations alike. He proposes a culture of business in which the real world, the natural world, is allowed to flourish as well, and in which the planet's needs are addressed. Wall Street may not be ready for Hawken's provocative brand of environmental awareness, but this fine book is full of captivating ideas.

From Publishers Weekly
Hawken ( Growing a Business ) touches on a raw nerve here. How might millions of people live and work in a complex business environment while causing "as little suffering as possible to all and everything around us?" Hawken, no Luddite, believes that "we need a design for business that will ensure that the industrial world as it is presently constituted ceases and is replaced with human-centered enterprises that are sustainable producers." Avoiding stormy rhetoric, Hawken thoughtfully reviews ecological theories and disasters and insists that "ecology offers a way to examine all present economic and resource activities from a biological rather than a monetary point of view." Calling for a restorative economy, he proposes rational, achievable goals: stop "accelerating the rate that we draw down capacity"; refrain from "buying or degrading other people's environment"; and avoid displacing "other species by taking over their habitats." This noteworthy study should kindle debates within the business community.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This important book envisions how the United States can construct "an economics of common good." Rather than worrying about saving the environment, we must worry about how we can encourage businesses to "re-imagine" and "re-invent" themselves as cyclical operations , "cradle to cradle." Hawken advises three broad approaches: observe the waste-equals-food (raw products) principle of nature; change from a carbon to a hydrogen/sunshine-based economy; and create systems that support restorative behavior. Businesses, nations, transnational corporations--all should recognize that the freedom to operate can only be experienced "within the discipline of social responsibility." Every product or by-product can be imagined in its subsequent forms, even before it is made. Restorative businesss can, in turn, teach consumers who don't truly consume. "Value is what we ascribe," asserts Hawken, and that is "by far the most adventurous path to take." Highly recommended.
- Diane M. Fortner, Univ. of Califor nia, Berkeley
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Get it now, no need to think twice
I'm pretty sure that after you've read this book, you'll feel the way I do: that this in the one book that everyone in the world should read. If there is a more eye-opening book on the same topic than this one out there, I have yet to read it, but it doesn't matter. That's because this book will do a sufficiently good job at shedding our ignorance about the most important, most dangerous issues of our time. It shows the very roots of the problems surrounding our treatment of the environment, not only from a scientific perspective, but from the perspective of what is fundamentally, intrinsically wrong with how our whole society is arranged, on a multitude of levels (not only commerce as the title implies). It shows exactly why inaction has been the status quo until now. It also shows the real nightmare-inducing dangers of continuing business as usual regarding how we treat the environment, on a scientific level. This doesn't mean that it's a book purposely architected to incite fear, uncertainty and doubt. It is simply one of the most profound, honest, right-to-the-point accounts of the problem facing us.

How do I know this? I don't. Therefore I'll now set off on a mission to read all of the other books by Amory Lovins and Paul Hawken, and possibly other books of the same caliber and on the same topic, and then decide if I want to revise this review, but I'm rather confident I won't have to :-)

I don't really want to allude to the content of the book in further detail, since anything not akin to stellar praise would not do it justice. What I can merely tell you is that you won't be disappointed by reading it. In fact, you will be enthralled by coming across a such an excellent verbalization of what has been bothering you all along.

Always timely and smart
Paul Hawken's book "The Ecology of Commerce" is one of those books one never forgets because it changes the way you think. I first read this book back when it came out in 1994 and just re-read it.

The author doesn't squawk about how bad humans are, but rather offers a sensible, deliberate perspective on how we can change our economic systems to accommodate our relationship with the rest of Nature.

To avoid being an ignorant, knee-jerk reacting activist ( or at least deciding to go down that route) read this book!

Reshaping industrialism
Looking for a book to explain how capitalism and environmentalism can coincide? This is it.
For years we've been led to believe that if we want progress and technology advances we should learn to accept there's a price---> pollution. Mega-Corporates keep polluting our world, poisoning the water we drink and the air we breathe, destroying habitats so thoroughly that our children will probably only see wild animals at Zoos. And it's all done in the name of progress.
Paul Hawken proves the concept of progress=pollution to be very wrong. He demands that companies cut their energy consumption by 80 percent and then use the money they save for research to help find better clean sources of energy. He demands companies reduce their waste and not simply dump it. He demands companies think of what they're doing to our world and not just the bottom line. He even thinks they can make money this way. He suggests a new, more moral way of doing business.
A very thought provoking book raising many very tough questions about the way companies today run their businesses. A must read for anyone interested in environmental issues and the business world.