The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability

This book is fantastic. Read it! Paul Hawken has created a masterpiece and will probably change your worldview. You won't be disappointed

Lucid, devastating, empowering, inspiring. A lot to claim of a small book but I will absolutely be recommending it to those around me and have already lent my copy to a colleague. I'm not sure I entirely agree with Hawken's proposals for green taxation as I tend to look for feedback in such systems and taxation on products that are not supposed to do us good (cigarettes, alcohol, aviation fuel...) don't seem to have had much impact on the population and in fact make the government the beneficiary of such activities reducing their desire to curb them long-term. But apart from that his call to business to look for cyclic, restorative models and stop externalising the costs of the environmental damage they do makes good business sense to me and that gives it some chance of actually permeating into culture. Hence, many years after its first publication, a growing number of companies are directly or indirectly responding to his call. Marvellous.

Ce livre est un formidable outil pour se lancer dans l'ère suivante qui espérons-le sera moins destructrice que les deux précédentes. Autrement, l'auteur fournit un style assez dynamique couronné de très belles statistiques ! Merci pour cette lecture.

One of the most impactful books I've ever read. Starts out with what seems like a little bit of "pie in the sky" wishful thinking, but then it quickly delves more deeply into a very well-detailed exploration of the issues and proposed solutions. HIGHLY recommended!

I don't even know how to begin describing how great this book is. It should be required reading for EVERYBODY on the planet. I learned about this book while watching the documentary, "The Corporation," and I'll have to admit, I wasn't expecting anything revolutionary in this book. I thought I'd be getting some interesting pictures and statistics relating to consumption, recycling, landfills, global warming...pretty much your standard environmental rhetoric (of which I'm a subscriber) to complement what I already know. What I got, however, was so much more. This book is not only about the environment, but about how the environment integrates with global business and economics. For some reason, the 'developed' world has created a disconnect between the environment and business. Hawken shows how the two are inextricably connected, and in order to guarantee a successful future for us, our children and all life on earth, business and the environment must work harmoniously and each stop being the bane of the other. His metaphor for business IS the environment: everything in nature is cyclical, which brings maximum efficiency. Nothing is more efficient than the natural world: one organism's waste is another organism's life source. If business would approach operations and resources from this perspective, waste would not be 'waste' and the benefits of increased efficiency would permeate throughout all life and systems. His metaphor is very simple but exceedingly beautiful, and only becomes more so as Hawken goes in-depth with concrete examples and further exploration of all issues from both sides. Throughout reading this book, I was continuously floored by his analysis, his insight and his prescription for the future. And a note about his prose: every sentence reflects structurally the economies and efficiencies it conveys ideologically. This man is concise and his style is powerful - every word packs a punch. He says so much with so little, maximizing the time spent in our reading investment. Clearly, I have nothing but the highest praise for Hawken and this book - it is truly visionary.