QuestionsWeb LinksClass OutlineClass notes
Question for Discussion: According to Hawken, what
are the major economic and social reforms that are
needed to create a restorative economy?

Readings: Hawken, pp. 91-136; Hawken, "A Declaration
of Sustainability "

Video: DVD: Consumerism: Waste as Art (2007)

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Imagining a Sustainable Economy

What is Corporate Responsiblity?

Paths to a Restorative Economy


Hawken's Writing

Daly on Sustainable Economics

Rocky Mountain Institute

Sustainable Economic Principles

The Natural Step and Factor Four

Natural Capitalism Consulting
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A Declaration of Sustainability

There must be an integration of economic biologic, and human systems in order to create a sustainable and
interdependent method of commerce that supports and furthers our existence. As hard as we may strive
to create sustainablility on a company level, we cannot fully succeed until the institutions surrounding
commerce are redesigned. Just as every act of production and consumption in an industrial society leads to further environmental degradation, regardless of intention or ethos, we need to imagine--and then
design--a system of commerce where the opposite is true, where doing good is like falling off a log,
where the natural, everyday acts of work and life accumulate into a better world as a matter of course,
not a matter of altruism. A system of sustainable commerce would involve these objectives:

1. It would reduce absolute consumption of energy and natural resources among developed nations by
80 percent within 40 to 60 years.

2. It would provide secure, stable, and meaningful employment for people everywhere.

3. It would be self-actuating as opposed to regulated, controlled, mandated, or moralistic.

4. It would honor human nature and market principles.

5. It would be perceived as more desirable than our present way of life.

6. It would exceed sustainability by restoring degraded habitats and ecosystems to their fullest
biological capacity.

7. It would rely on current solar income.

8. It should be fun and engaging, and strive for an aesthetic outcome.

.....................................................

Let's now look at Hawken's larger steps for creating a Sustainable Society. (See A Declaration of Sustainability: 12 steps society can take to save the whole enchilada.):

1. Take back the charter

Hawken argues that state and national governments should reclaim their power to regulate corporations by rewriting and renewing current corporate charters. Corporate charters are state licenses governments grant to companies to do business in their jurisdiction. Currently, corporations act as if they were natural entities who rightfully have more power and independence than governments or societies. But Hawken argues that corporations are the products of state licensing and should be made socially, financially, and environmentally responsible for their actions. If companies violate the law, damage the environment, hurt the consumer, or try to undermine the power of government, they should be threatened with losing their charter--their right to do business in that state. By making companies responsible once again to government and society, Hawken believes they
will have real incentives to be responsible.

2. Adjust price to reflect cost.

Hawken argues, as I have already discussed, that companies and consumers should be forced to include all the environmental and social costs in making, producing, using, and disposing of products in the cost
of goods. By including such costs, companies would have real incentives to reduce the social and environmental costs of their products.

3. Throw out and replace the entire tax system.

Hawken argues that instead of basing taxes on incomes and corporate profits, we should base taxes on environmental and social impact. We should tax the amount of non-renewable resources, the amount of
fossil fuels, the amount of waste, the amount of environment destroyed or abused, and tax other such environmental and social costs caused by production and consumption. These green taxes would be revenue neutral, that is, they would impose no new additional taxes. Instead of paying taxes on incomes and profits, companies would pay taxes on environmental and social impact. Companies will have real incentives to reduce their environmental and social impact in order to reduce their taxes. Those companies who can reduce more of their tax burden will be more competitive than those companies that do not.

4. Allow resource companies to be utilities.

Hawken argues that governments should lease companies the right to use and control certain resources such as fisheries, forests, grasslands, waterways, etc.
By making these companies' profits dependent on how productive these resources are, they will have a real incentive to protect and even restore these environments to health, knowing that a healthier environment will be a more productive environment.
By giving companies incentives to protect environments and resources, they will protect resources that are currently exploited because no one currently owns or is responsible for them, except maybe the public or the government. In addition, companies will actually take legal action to protect their resources from other nearby companies whose actions might harm them. For example, a company that held the right to fish at the mouth of the Columbia river would sue the logging company that was clearcutting forests and destroying the fisheries that provide fish for the Columbia river.
This would lead corporations to use corporate profits as an argument and incentive to protect these resources and environments.

5. Change linear systems to cyclical ones

We have already talked about this step. Here Hawken argues that we should create an economy that doesn't produce waste, but sees and uses what we now see as waste as inputs into the productive process. Companies would compete to create industrial design processes in which they greatly reduce their waste, fearing they will be taxed on the waste they create, and what waste they still produce they will sell to other companies who will use it as a productive resource. Instead of depending on polluting the environment with their wastes, companies should figure out how to reduce wastes and actually make them a source of profits.


6. Transform the making of things.

We have already discussed this proposal as well. This is what Hawken refers to as the intelligent product system. Consumers would lease the right to use products such as TVs or cars from companies, and the companies are responsible for recycling and disposing of those products when the consumer is done using them. If we tax companies on the basis of the natural resources they use in production, encouraging them to recycle and dispose of their old products would save them a lot of money because they don't have to pay taxes on new resources to make a whole new TV or car. Companies and consumers would be rewarded by recycling their products.

7. Vote, don't buy.

Here Hawken encourages consumers and citizens to put pressure on their politicians and governments to create and enforce strict environmental, health, and social standards. In addition, he argues that consumers, citizens, and even governments should refuse to buy from companies that are not living up to their environmental and social responsibility to protect the public and the natural world. If consumers and governments reward companies for good environmental and corporate behavior, then they will have real economic incentives to protect the public and nature.

8. Restore the ``guardian.''

Hawken argues that local, state, and national governments must once again be active overseers and regulators of corporations and businesses. Currently corporations argue that governments should not interfere in business and disrupt the magic of free enterprise and the market. But Hawken argues that because corporations only focus on profits and economic returns governments must regulate them in order to force them to take other larger values into account, such as the public health and safety, the health of the environment, and the needs of the larger society.

9. Shift from electronic literacy to biologic literacy.

Hawken argues that we need to teach children and citizens of all ages ecological literacy. People need to be taught to understand and consider the larger environmental and social impacts of their actions. If the public better understand the environmental risks and benefits of their actions, they would have real incentives to take actions that would protect the environment, their health, and the well-being of their society. Such ecoliteracy is essential for creating a restorative economy.

10. Take inventory.

Hawken argues that we need to do local, state, national, and global surveys of the environment and the impact of our activities on nature. Such surveys would provide governments, businesses, and societies baseline information to measure the success of their actions in preserving and restoring the environment. We cannot understand the full extent of the environmental and social problems we face in the present and the future without such an scientific inventory.

11. Take care of human health.

Hawken argues that environmentalists will only successfully win the support of the poor and Third World peoples if they convince them that such environmental and economic reforms will improve their health and standards of living. These reforms must focus on improving human health and well-being. By doing so, environmentalists can more effectively convince peoples throughout the world that creating a restorative economy and protecting and restoring the global environment is in their short- and long-term best interest.

12. Respect the human spirit.

Hawken concludes that these economic and environmental reforms can not be solely based on economic incentives and profits. These reforms must also be focused on the individual, social, cultural, environmental, and religious benefits of protecting and restoring the environment. At the heart of Hawken's larger strategy for creating a restorative economy is the belief that our present economy violates the human spirit and the larger needs of individuals and societies in its tendency to only consider the bottom line of profits and economic returns. A restorative economy will expand the range of values and goals for businesses, governments, individuals, and societies to achieve and support.

There are at least two major weaknesses in his strategy for creating a sustainable society. First of all, he doesn't address how state and national governments can regulate and reign in the growing power of global corporations, who increasingly flaunt their power and challenge the right of governments to regulate them. Secondly, Hawken implicitly assumes that the major force promoting these changes will be businesses. He addresses his major arguments to businesses instead of individuals. Let's look at how he might respond to these criticisms of his strategy for creating a restorative economy.

Hawken would be forced to admit that only if the largest and most powerful of the national governments came together and formed an international consensus on reforming their economies and societies would his program even have a chance of working. Because if the United States tried to reform its economy and society alone, global companies would threaten to leave the country and undermine our economy. Only if the major economic powers, such as the G-8 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations got together and agreed to press for the creation of a new global system of economic and social reforms could a restorative economy be created. But Hawken doesn't address the real difficulty in getting the global community of nations to agree to work together to create, implement, and enforce these reforms. Even if these nations tried to do so, could they stand up to the increasing global power of the TNCs. This is a real weakness that Hawken doesn't fully address, though he discusses it in his chapter, "The Size Thing."

Finally, Hawken doesn't focus enough on how individuals, political movements, and governments can challenge and push corporations to begin to accept and implement these reforms. He is right that national and global corporations would be the major obstacle to creating a restorative economy, but he tends to assume that they will lead these changes after they have become convinced that protecting the environment will be profitable for them. If we expect governments and societies to demand that corporations not only focus on profits but also on environmental protection, consumer safety, and social well-being, how can this happen without the pressure of consumers and citizens? Hawken needs to address the ecology of social and political reform as well as the ecology of commerce. In focusing so much on reforming business and economic reforms, he tends to forget the central importance and power of citizens and political activism for creating the large-scale reforms needed to develop a restorative economy.

I think Hawken focuses on economic reform and addresses his argument toward business because he believes that will be the most effective and persuasive argument. If he focused on social reform and political activism, he might frighten many of the supporters of business that he wants to convince should lead the way in developing a restorative economy. This is a calculated gamble that Hawken takes. We will see if it pays off by looking at the remaining chapters in The Ecology of Commerce.

Hawken, A Size Thing

"While the world economy grows at a rate of 2 to 3 percent, the largest multinational companies as a group are growing at a rate of 8 to 10 percent. While the GNPs of the larger industrial countries continue to rise, the largest corporations in the world are growing at such rapid comparative rates that they resemble, at least in their political and economic power, separate nations without boundaries. The arithmetic is simple: In 1991, the ten largest businesses in the world had collective revenues of $801 billion, a greater turnover than the smallest one hundred countries in the world. The five hundred largest companies in the world control 25 percent of the world's gross output while employing .05 of one percent of the world 's population. " (91-92)

"And since financial capital is at the very heart of corporate capitalism, this geographical amorphousness means that the control and regulation of capital flows is shifting away from nation-states and toward systems organized by the corporations themselves. This leads to a tendency toward conglomeration, mergers, and megacorporations. National differences are no longer competitive factors.

"Globalization makes it easier to shift money rapidly around the globe, leveling out interest rates, introducing competition between an AA-rated bond in New Delhi and an instrument of like quality in London or Mexico. Money can seek its "highest and best " return instantaneously from around the globe, arid it has round-the-clock liquidity."(93)

"Most of the financial capital in today's markets is used to finance the growth of multinational corporations. It is this growth and the attendant profits that determine whether investors flock to the company's securities or consider them mediocre. The problem is that social or environmental gauges of the effectiveness of capital are all but absent, and even if they are applied from the outside by other agencies, they do not enter into the consideration of the marketplace. Financial markets, however they are constructed and organized, know nothing about whether corporations support corrupt governments or the local Little League team. They have no feel for habitats or ecosystems; they have no compassion for peoples that are harmed, cultures degraded, or watersheds eroded." (94)

"Without effective means of cost-internalization--green taxes or their counterpart--companies are required to focus as much of their attention on the manipulation of money as on the production of goods and services. Either way, the sheer size of the largest corporations tends to grant them the political and economic power to externalize costs that should properly be absorbed by the company and therefore be factored into the price it sets for its product. For example, when a forest products company buys logging rights from the Forest Service at pennies to the dollar and then clear-cuts the area, leaving it degraded for the next hundred years, the "profit" from the sale of the wood goes to the corporation, but the loss of habitat and biodiversity is borne by society." (95)

"The measures we use to determine which companies get our money is completely removed from how those companies affect human and natural life. In fact, if there is a connection, it may be inverse. The more able a company is to externalize its cost of doing business and to be ruthless in its practices, the greater return on capital it may achieve in the short term. While this is not always the case, it is true often enough to substantiate the point that the growth of money and enhancement of human welfare are not coincident. " (95-96)

"After passage of the latest GATT treaty (WTO), the Congress of the United States would assume a "positive obligation" to bring our laws into conformance with those regulations. The inevitable result of the present GATT treaty is that the rewards of international trade would go to the cheapest producer, not the most responsible producer. A company that allowed child labor, that allowed workers to be exposed to unnecessary and dangerous amounts of pesticides, that took few if any measures to mitigate its impact upon the environment, would be in a stronger competitive position than a domestic producer that obeyed more restrictive labor and environmental laws. International economic advantage would go to the companies that were best able to externalize environmental and social costs; companies that internalized those costs and took full responsibility for their environmental impact would be placed at a disadvantage." (99)

"In 1983, Harry Gray, former chairman of United Technologies, said, "Such barriers as quotas, package and labeling requirements, local content laws, inspection procedures ... inhibit worldtrade. We need conditions that are conducive to expanded trade. This means a world-wide business environment that 's unfettered by government interference" But, of course, government is the primary way that the public can participate in the formulation of policies that protect local peoples and their region from what big business demands." (100)

"Big corporations take care of what they know how to take care of, and that is other big things: factories, mass markets, mass production. In this respect, corporations are the opposite of nature. In habitats and ecosystems, we sense how important the small things are. We humans have yet to create anything that is as complex and well-designed as the interactions of the microorganisms in a cubic foot of rich soil. No ecologist would claim to fully understand the workings of an ecosystem, but all praise the minutiae within, the economy that governs, and the wondrously designed interaction and diversity that marks that cubic foot of soil, that produces the maximum amount of life with the absence of waste." (103)

"Instead, corporations are creating a second world, an environment of deadening commercial strip centers leading in and out of our towns and cities, garbage trains loaded with trash and toxins, and Bhopals where 200,000 people are sick or dead or dying. It is a world where fewer and fewer people benefit from the grosser and more swollen acts of commerce, a world in which the small things, the seemingly inconsequential forms of life, are extirpated with disdain, but to our ultimate peril."
(103)

Hawken, Private Lives and Corporate Lives

"Despite these efforts, legislatures inevitably began to lose their control over big business, state by state. Government corruption became particularly rampant after the Civil War, and with it came a loosening of laws regulating interlocking trusts, factory towns, and sequestered private fortunes. Child labor flourished, along with Pinkerton and other private armies that kept protests in check and workers in line. The Civil War had transferred great amounts of wealth to corporations, and with this concentration of power they began to clamor for "equal rights" and new simplified chartering laws that would treat every corporation equally. (This is the means of incorporation we have today: anyone can do it, and for a nominal fee.) " (107)

"There quickly followed a wholesale reinterpretation of the Constitution by the judiciary, granting new powers and rights to corporations. The primary thrust behind these precedents was the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment protected the rights of freed slaves, but it was subsequently interpreted to give corporations the same status before the law as that of a natural person. On that basis, judges reversed hundreds if not thousands of state laws controlling wages, working conditions, ownership and corporate tenure. " (107)

"Money now creates the milieu in which debates are framed, voices heard, decisions made. Corporations have created a multi-billion-dollar industry of lobbyists, public relations firms, scholarly papers prepared by conservative think tanks, artificially generated "people's" campaigns, "expert" witnesses at public hearings who work for, or are paid by, corporate interests, and lawyers based in Washington, D.C., whose sole purpose is to influence lawmakers and regulators in their offices, in four-star restaurants, at lavish receptions, on overseas junkets. Where do the congressmen go to bone up on issues? To Palm Springs to play golf, to Bermuda to snorkel, to Sunbird to ski, to Las Vegas to gamble." (109)

"Washington, D.C., has become a town of appearances and images, where sleight of (political) hand has largely replaced the clumsy system of payoffs, outright bribes and backroom deals of old. Sleaze has not disappeared-over four hundred members of the Reagan administra­tion were indicted or charged with criminal conduct, including influ ence peddling, conflict of interest, and perjury-but sleaze has been supplanted by a pervasive atmosphere in which, unless you have money, unless you control blocs of votes and deliver some form of power, your voice is a whisper. One percent of American society owns nearly 60 percent of corporate equities and about 40 percent of the total wealth of this nation. These are the plutocrats who wield the power and control this preeminent "company town" while trying to convince the other 99 percent of the citizenry that the system works in our best interests, too."

"For years, evidence has been mounting that "cancer clusters " are. forming within communities located around industrial sites, including oil refineries. In 1990, Congressman Henry Waxman of California obtained information from the EPA showing that the emissions of 149 factories, refineries, or mills give nearby residents a greater than 1-in-10,000 risk of contracting cancer. In one-third of those sites, people have a risk of contracting cancer greater than 1-in-1,000. Six of the plants have risks as high as 1-in-100. The infamous Port Neches, Texas refinery owned by Texaco created a 1-in-10 chance for cancer among its neighbors. In the debate over key legislation regulating these sites, who speaks for the unknown people who will die? Usually it is an underfunded public interest group facing well-paid representatives of industry. " (112-113)

"The implication of such remarks is that the public's fears are not legitimate fears, that the public cannot be trusted to act in its own interest. It is as if we have come full, dark circle to a time when "we the people" are being asked again to subordinate our conscience, our common sense, and our collective will to a higher authority---in this case, one that would convince us that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to place chlorinated hydrocarbons on our lawns-chemicals that are toxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic, chemicals that seep into the water table, chemicals that have caused irreversible endocrinal damage in wildlife and humans-is good for us." (115)

"By nature, by law, and by tradition, corporations often place their interests above others, including those of the community, the state, and the environment. When the chairman of the board of Union Carbide first heard about Bhopal, he stated that he would devote his life to making right what had gone so wrong for so many victims. Within weeks he was on record with a correction; saying that he had previously "overreacted," and then sought to limit compensation to the people killed and injured. His first reaction was the human one, but his second and crucial response was corporate. The president of Union Carbide cannot publicly express grief, suffering, and compassion if it places the corporation in financial jeopardy." (116)

"Almost without exception in cases of illegal or questionable corporate activity, the trail leads back to the CEO and his responsibility for sales and profits. While growth goals are explicit in all companies, the insidious, implicit pressures placed on junior levels of the corporation are less obvious but no less powerful. We know that public officials try to maintain "deniability" when dealing with hot issues like Iran-Contra, but we are less aware that corporations allow a similar style of hands-off management that on the one hand encourages division heads and sales managers to be overly expedient or to cut corners, and on the other then allows the CEO to point the finger at individuals several rungs below on the corporate ladder whenever trouble arises. The corporate "rules" usually show that an isolated individual violated company policy and that the corporation as a whole should not be held accountable."(117)

"According to Russell Mokhiber, author of Corporate Crime and Violence, corporations kill 28,000 people and seriously injure 130,000 every year by selling dangerous and defective products. On the job, over 100,000 employees die annually owing to workplace exposure to toxins and other hazards. It is estimated that up to one-third of all cancer deaths are caused by carcinogens encountered at places of employment. The Senate Judiciary Committee has placed the cost of faulty products and monopolistic practices at between $174 and $231 billion per year. The Ford Pinto, Bhopal, the Dalkon Shield, Exxon Valdez, Love Canal, et al: The list is long in which the corporate system failed and individual judgment was flawed, but these episodes are usually viewed as random events." (118)

"The cumulative impact of corporate crime is a deep-seated, "free-floating" cynicism and distrust regarding big business. If we are to create a commercial culture that does no harm to natural and human communities, society will have to define commercial crime more effectively, and begin to see it as something less than inevitable, and more than excusable. In law, an individual is held accountable for his actions, even if those actions are carried out in ignorance of the law. A person is liable for what he does; he is also responsible for knowing what is right and wrong. Corporate crime, on the other hand, is perceived and handled differently. It is rarely even referred to as crime. No one was held responsible for the increased incidence of cancer following Three Mile Island, even though unsafe conditions and practices were known and sanctioned by Philadelphia Electric." (119)

"Author Russell Mokhiber proposes a fifty-point law-and-order program to curb corporate misdeeds. Mokhiber recommends several statutes including a federal homicide statute covering corporations, creating a centralized corporate crime data base, increasing penalties for corporate destruction of documents, prohibiting industry employees from taking regulatory jobs and vice versa, and invoking stiffer penalties for corporate executives convicted of crimes. As it stands now, in the case of any fine levied against a corporation, the cost of accompanying litigation is a tax-deductible business expense. When General Electric was fined $69 million for conspiring to falsely invoice the U.S. Government for parts not shipped or sold to Israel, you and I subsidized the $400 per hour lawyers who handled the case."
(121)

"The ultimate penalty a society can give a corporation is to demand that it cease to exist. In theory, this power still rests vestigially in the hands of the citizens according to the terms of every corporate charter. We have no problem granting ourselves, acting through government, the power to incarcerate individuals who willfully break the law and harm others. That same right must be renewed with respect to corporations.... The right to do business in the United States becomes mere license if there are not enforceable responsibilities concerning the health and welfare of citizens. It is interesting to note that the death penalty for individuals is less controversial than the mere suggestion that a few corporations may have forfeited their right to exist. How many people does a company have to harm before we question if it ought to exist? (121-122)

Hawken, When Is an Ethic Not An Ethic?

"The extension to corporate behavior is clear. We can become addicted to the deal, the power, the action, the excitement, the conflict, the aggression, the victories, the defeats, addicted even to the. chaos and the stress, addicted to the point at which we feel empowered to do anything as long as it is legal (and perhaps not even legal), oblivious to many if not all of the effects of our actions on the environment, on society, or on ourselves. But like any habit, corporate addictiveness leads to chaos. Pursuing productivity and efficiency, American corporations have found anxiety." (124)

"Our economic insecurity, drifting and corrupt politics, suffocating debt, and environmental degradation cannot help but be reflected in the workplace where we spend most of our waking lives. The connections may be more obvious than we are willing to grant. For example, federal debt reduces the supply of capital for investment, and thus diminishes innovation, jobs, and productivity. High deficits were an attempt to re-create with paper the industrial growth of the past, a type of growth that depended on a unique set of circumstances in relation to the environment and resources. In fact, the 1980s could be seen as a financial end run around the simple economic truth that prosperity can only come from adding value. We have reached a point where the value we do add to our economy is now being out-weighed by the value we are removing, not only from future generations in terms of diminished resources, but from ourselves in terms of unlivable cities, deadening jobs, deteriorating health, and rising crime. In biological terms, we have become a parasite and are devouring our host." (126)

"One source of the discomfort is apparent: An economy oblivious to the environment may be equally insensitive to its workers and managers. Employees will be used in wasteful ways, leading to workplace stress, overwork, ill-health or low morale. That the American workforce lives in a persistent state of anxiety further enlarges the power and control exerted over workers' lives by management. This relationship holds true in both successful and less successful companies, and it is made more acute when rank-and-file sees that a handful of executives and managers are lavishly compensated, in some cases with no apparent correlation to the performance of the company as a whole." (127)

"Denial will always prevent us from coming to terms with our actions as they affect the natural world but denial is an understandable reaction in the face of the great gulf between commercial reality and ecological reality. The fact is, if you work for a business--or even more so, if you own a business--it is highly inconvenient to fully acknowledge what is happening in the greater environment. That awareness runs counter to what we have been taught, and what we expect and want from our lives. America was founded on the "Go West, young man" principle of exploiting new lands and resources: Since World War II, we have expanded that principle, and now seek to grow more rapidly, drill deeper, speed up the economy, take more and do it faster. Today, we seem to be entering another phase, which is to deny the downside of present natural resource practices while pretending to be environmentally responsible. Our insatiable appetite for resources and the attendant waste caused by their consumption are being masked in meaningless eco-speak"
(128) .

"It was Simpson Paper Co. and Harry Merlo's Louisiana-Pacific that discharged 40 million gallons per day of toxin-containing effluents into the Pacific Ocean near Eureka, California. After documenting over 40,000 violations of the Clean Water Act, surfers who were
getting skin rashes and other ailments from the ocean sued both companies and won, forcing payments of fines totaling $5.6 million. The presiding judge wrote that Louisiana-Pacific "essentially exempted themselves from all environmental protection requirements and therefore [felt] free to discharge potentially chronically toxic effluent into the waters of the Pacific Ocean with impunity. The position is disingenuous and flies in the face of the Clean Water Act. " (130)

"Corporations do not perceive that present methods of production will deprive future generations, that there is a difference between supporting humankind with goods and services indefinitely and providing for them by relying upon environmental degradation as a means to overcome the carrying capacity of natural systems. What corporations do believe is that genuine environmental-ism poses an enormous threat to their well-being. If you define well-being as their ability to continue to grow as they have in the past, they are correct." (130)

"We have created, in essence, an artificial Iife, and in so doing, have lost some part of our human nature. Corporations extract resources and manufacture them into saleable products, leaving 11.4 billion tons of hazardous waste behind every year. On one level it appears that we are the customer for these goods, but on another level it is we who are being sold, offered up, and delivered to the corporations: It is we who are being extracted, mined, impoverished, and exploited. It is we who are fungible. Common wisdom holds that ecologists worry about nature while economists are concerned about human beings. But economists are in fact taking care of economics, and human beings are abandoned to the marketplace. What is for sale in America is our welfare. " (131)

"People are organizing to fight what they feel are the larger forces that infect their lives and values, forces that are almost invariably rooted in economic self-interest. The giant corporations are silent, immobile, and unmoved by our stirrings and longings. When they do speak, it is almost always through the disingenuous voice of "corporate communications. " Fixing, restructuring, and reorganizing the corporation to serve a restorative economy will not be a solution unless businesses level with their customers. As the therapist wisely counsels: honesty does not harm, dishonesty always does.. Today's deteriorating culture, environment, and economy are the fruits of decades of corporate dishonesty, a dishonesty that we have created, sanctioned, and supported." (133)

"Business can provide meaning for workers and customers but not until it understands that the trust it undertakes and the growth it assumes are part of a larger covenant. As long as nature, children, women, and workers are abused by institutions espousing free-market theories, the real deficit will continue to grow--the difference between what business has taken and what it has returned, the difference between value added and value subtracted. For most people meaning is derived from just the opposite relationship, one in which one gives more than one takes, where one's life is intricately bound to the promotion of the common good."
(136)

"When Jerry Kohlberg withdrew from the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts partnership, dismayed that KKR had changed from a friend of innovative small companies to a predator, he said that "Around us there is a breakdown of ... values in business and government ... It is not just the overweening, overpowering greed that pervades our business life. It is the fact that we are not willing to sacrifice for the ethic and values we profess. For an ethic is not an ethic, and a value not a value, without some sacrifice for it, something given up, something not taken, something not gained. We do it in exchange for a greater good, for something worth more than just money and power and position." (136)

What Matters Most: Hollender on CSR

Corporations for Social Responsibility

Can I buy Recycled Pens?:
Pilot's BeGreen Line of Recycled Pens

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.30.07
Design & Architecture ( recycled )

Before the BIC, there was no such thing as the disposable pen, one used a ballpoint with a refill or a fountain pen that you filled with ink, and you never threw your pen away.

However we have all been spoiled and expect to write with cheap disposables, so Pilot has introduced a new line of "same quality, same price" pens made from at least 65% recycled materials, using reprocessed water, and with a recovery program in stores so the dead pens can be returned and reprocessed. Ballpoint pens are refillable.

Still, the pens are collected, shredded, melted into pellets, and reformed into new pens. That is a lot of energy expended on an item that could be designed to be refilled by the owner or the manufacturer. Is this too much to ask? ::BegreeN available in Canada and the UK, we do not know about the USA.

I have been partial to Pilot fineliners for years and have gone through hundreds. Yet a box of leads for my Staedtler mechanical drafting pencils might last five years. I am off to Staples to see what the alternatives are.



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America, the Environment, and the Global Economy