Make Every Day Earth Day with Social Entrepreneurship
April 22nd was the 46th Earth Day, an annual event promoting environmental awareness that has become a yearly reminder to society to consider planet Earth and the importance of preserving its beauty and bounty for the benefit of ourselves and future generations. I myself am a huge fan of planet Earth and a dedicated environmentalist, and while it’s great to see such a profusion of media coverage and public discussion surrounding environmental awareness, it’s disturbing that only three weeks later the coverage and discussion has all but vanished ― until April 22nd, 2017, at least. Environmental awareness should not be confined to a few-week period surrounding April 22nd, because it’s every day that we benefit from our environment. Instead environmental awareness should be fully ingrained into our lives. As social entrepreneurs, a better understanding of the whole Earth system, of how human societies and economies are intertwined with natural environments and processes, would lead us to create more sustainable and impactful social enterprises.
Environmental awareness is not something to be achieved; it’s a process of discovery and self-improvement. The Earth system we live in is unendingly complex and something we probably will never be able to fully comprehend. But it is also unendingly interesting, and the more one learns, the more one becomes enraptured by its beauty and motivated to learn more.
I became interested in social entrepreneurship as I was striving for my own environmental awareness. One of my favorite subjects is ecology, which is the study of the interactions between living and non-living components in our world. When it comes to living beings, ecology looks at how they adapt to their environment and compete with other living beings to acquire enough resources (food, water, shelter, etc.) to thrive and reproduce. As I learned more, it dawned on me that ecology and the human-centric field of economics (the study of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services) were very much interrelated. I began to see that the whole human socio-economic system is nothing but a cog in the greater global ecological system! This realization led me to see social entrepreneurship as a way to make a living and a positive impact on the Earth and allliving beings on it.
Society needs to strive towards environmental awareness and a broader more informed perspective. Entrepreneurs and business people need to be more aware of where their businesses fit into the ecosystems that support their very existence. On the other side, environmentalists need to be more aware of how markets create wealth and help people pull themselves out of poverty. Earth should be something that we consider in everything we do, like we consider our personal health and well-being. We need to reach a state of awareness in which the idea of Earth Day becomes irrelevant because society doesn’t need an annual reminder to think about the Earth.
Social entrepreneurs can play an important role in creating an environmentally aware society. The social entrepreneur already considers how her business interacts with and improves her community, and she should go a step further and consider how her business interacts with its broader environment. Her goals must be profitability, to accomplish her social goals, and to leave her environment better than she found it so that future generations are better off than she is. In order to do this, a social entrepreneur must be curious and seek to learn more about her environment.
What happens if an entrepreneur doesn’t consider environmental factors in the conception of a business model? A company distracted by high short-term profits may eventually see their resource base might run out, or have their environment become so degraded as to be unlivable. Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” is a classic tale illustrating such disregard for environmental sustainability.
Another possibility is that societal environmental awareness advances to the point where environmentally unfriendly businesses have to battle public opinion to stay in existence. Some of the largest and most established companies may spend huge amounts of money on disinformation to try and convince consumers that they are not in fact environmentally unfriendly. Cigarette companies spent a fortune on propaganda to convince people that second-hand smoke is not harmful. Currently oil companies fund studies that mislead people about the incriminating role of their product in global climate change. But these tactics only delay the inevitable. An environmentally unsustainable business model is an unsustainable business model.
One promising turn of events on the most recent Earth Day was the opening for signature of the Paris Agreement, a landmark deal that will hold countries to ambitious goals that if met should go far in curbing climate change. Those companies that continue to contribute to the problem are going to have to adapt their business models, or they will go out of business.
As young social entrepreneurs we should expand our intellectual and ethical spheres and create businesses that aim for long-term socio-economic and environmental positive impact. There are plenty of examples of businesses that are leading the way. Here in Benin, I’ve met many social entrepreneurs with a deep understanding and concern for ecological sustainability who have included significant environmental aspects into their business models. Among the Dare to Innovate fellows, we have Henri Totin of the Africa Green Economy Promotion Center reintegrating his community with agricultural production by turning municipal waste into compost, and John DARI of ApiServics Monde reforesting his landscape and improving farmers’ yields by incorporating beekeeping in agriculture and forestry.
Outside of Dare to Innovate, examples abound. I know dozens of people running profitable tree nurseries in an effort to battle the terrifyingly high deforestation rate of Benin. Many are educated in biology or environmental sciences and felt an imperative to do something about the problem that they saw as the biggest threat to the future productivity of their country. They turned their knowledge and passion into lucrative businesses that have a huge and lasting social and environmental impact.
Then there is the fast-growing solar energy sector, with actors like Solar People, who lead the way as Africa transitions toward cheap, clean, accessible solar energy. They come up with creative ways to use increasingly affordable solar technology, and train people to distribute, install, and maintain these systems across Benin, accelerating us on the road to a universally electrified population.
Pierrette Djemain created Super Moringa, which buys moringa leaves from low-income households and produces highly nutritious moringa powder that fortifies meals with vitamins, minerals and protein. Pierrette’s business model reforests her community, provides steady jobs for widowed women, extra income for families, and a final product that is a powerful weapon against malnutrition.
Green Keeper Africa utilizes the Water Hyacinth, a plant introduced from a far away land for its attractive flowers that has multiplied out of control and become a scourge on the waterways of Benin. Green Keeper Africa turns the plant into a product that industries use to clean up hydrocarbons and chemicals at industrial sites. A wonderful example of social enterprise and innovation, they identified two alarming trends (the increasing prevalence of invasive plants in African waterways, and the problem of industrial waste cleanup) and created a profitable solution to help solve both!
I hope these entrepreneurs inspire you to increase your environmental awareness, and use your more holistic perspective to create a business that pushes the limits of social impact. Let’s create a society where Earth Day is irrelevant!
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Clinton Lee is the Strategic Adviser for Dare to Innovate Benin. He served in Peace Corps Benin from 2012 to 2015. He worked primarily in agriculture and environmental education, and over time became interested in the idea of social entrepreneurship, seeing it as a powerful tool for development that provides young people with an outlet for their passion and creativity, and a way to take ownership of their future.
