The Ecology of Commerce

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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. (Nov.)

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