I watched a brilliant story on ABC today regarding entrepreneur and author of The Blue Economy, Gunter Pauli. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities that exist within grasp to really improve the quality of life for everyone in our world as well as achieving a green and sustainable future. It’s just a matter of avoiding waste of anything and everything. Focusing on increasing revenue as opposed to cutting costs when it comes to the business world. Byproducts always have another use instead of just being seen as rubbish, we need to be sure to harness everything and use it to our benefit.
Here’s a bit on the book:
The book expresses the ultimate aim that a Blue Economy business model will shift society from scarcity to abundance “with what we have”, by tackling issues that cause environmental and related problems in new ways. The book highlights potential benefits in connecting and combining seemingly disparate environmental problems with open-source scientific solutions based upon physical processes common in the natural world, to create solutions that are both environmentally beneficial and which have financial and wider social benefits. The book suggests that we can alter the way in which we run our industrial processes and tackle resultant environmental problems, refocusing from the use of rare and high-energy cost resources to instead seek solutions based upon simpler and cleaner technologies. The book aims to inspire entrepreneurs to adopt its insights, by demonstrating ways in which this can create economic benefits via job creation, reduced energy use, and more revenue streams from each step of the process, at the same time benefiting the communities involved. ‘The Blue Economy’ is presented in 14 chapters, each of which investigates an aspect of the world’s economies and offers a series of innovations capable of making aspects of those economies sustainable.
Gunter Pauli has started 12 businesses, only 2 of which have since failed. They are incredibly variable in what they produce, but all have the same business model his uses and its aim all have the same emphasis on sustainability. They work all over the world producing things such as the worlds most environmentally friendly (biodegradable) soaps, bamboo houses that require only 65 sticks of bamboo and are incredibly affordable at $1200 per house (they’re 2 stories high I might add), farming maggots that are fed on waste from abattoirs in order to harvest their saliva which can be used to heal wounds. Another used the waste produced from coffee to grow mushrooms, some of which was sold and some of which was fed to live stock, which generate manure that can then be used to create biofuel. Another business based in Brazil used spirulina algae to sequester CO2, after which they could give 1g per day of the dietary supplement to children, but they soon ran out of children and started producing biofuel.
Gunter is leading the way for those who want a healthier world and better future for them and their children. He’s changing the rules and changing the way that people think. He has definitely opened my eyes and as they say ‘one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure’, and hopefully more and more of us realise that the idea of ‘waste’ does not exist. Everything can be used and reused to improve sustainable living.
I thoroughly recommend you all visit this link and watch his lecture. He’s a captivating speaker and it will undoubtedly change your view on sustainable living for the future. There is yet hope!
Here’s a lecture by Gunter Pauli in Tokyo for TED.
