After a year of work behind the scenes, the early adopters of The Natural Step framework for sustainability are ready to roll the program ? Whistler. It?s Our Nature ? out to the community.
On Saturday, Dec. 1, the early adopters ? the Resort Municipality of Whistler, Whistler-Blackcomb, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, Tourism Whistler, AWARE and Whistler FotoSource ? are hosting an open house at the Whistler Conference Centre, featuring displays, toolkits for residents and businesses, an introductory video, and a presentation by Ray Anderson, a Fortune 1000 executive and visionary who has influenced other prominent industrial leaders to work towards sustainability.
"Things are coming together for us," says Whistler sustainability co-ordinator Dave Waldron. "Ray Anderson is a dynamic speaker, and we?re ready for the official community launch. Everything is ready, and we are very excited about it."
The early adopters officially adopted The Natural Step framework last December, after a visit by Natural Step founder Dr. Karl-Heinrik Robert. Instead of looking at every environmental issue as a separate case ? and subsequently having each issue debated by scientists using incomplete research, to the point where the issue itself becomes clouded ? Robert worked backwards to build a consensus in the scientific community: what facts can we all agree on?
Because nothing concrete could be decided on any environmental issues, nothing was being done to help the situation. He compare the debate to a family of monkeys living in a tree, arguing over the branches while the trunk died underneath them.
As a result, the human race is consuming the planet?s resources at a faster rate than nature can replace them, while polluting the planet and resources at a faster rate than the planet can break down and reabsorb them. The walls of the funnel, represented on the top side by the diminishing supply and on the bottom side by the growing demand, are closing. Sustainability would stabilize supply and demand before the converging walls meet.
The answers Robert received from scientists allowed him to create four basic and incontrovertible system conditions for a sustainable planet.
In a sustainable world, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
1. Concentrations of substances from the Earth?s crust (such as the burning of fossil fuels and buildup in nature of scarce metals like Mercury).
2. Concentrations of substances produced by society (such as persistent organic pollutants, chemicals, compounds, and other materials that do not break down in an acceptable period of time).
3. Degradation of the physical means to sustain ourselves (such as the loss of farmland to urban sprawl, nutrient loss through industrial scale farming, forestry and fishing, and the pollution and overuse of our water supply).
The fourth system condition is that the earth?s wealth is fairly distributed around the globe, meeting human needs in a sustainable way.
Whistler is the first North American town to adopt The Natural Step framework, and with the full co-operation of its largest businesses. The goal is to become economically, environmentally and socially sustainable, thereby maintaining the integrity and beauty of the natural surroundings that are a large part of Whistler?s success.
The early adopters are also looking at sustainability as a competitive advantage in the marketplace, believing people will choose to vacation where the resort and their visit have no net impact on the surroundings.
The video, also called Whistler. It?s Our Nature, will introduce the Natural Step framework in the simplest terms, which can be adapted to any home or business.
"It?s a storytelling video," says Waldron. "Where we are, and where we?re hopefully going."
The early adopters will also be displaying their own sustainability initiatives, showcasing the different projects they are working on and the technologies they are using since they adopted The Natural Step a year ago.
The toolkits that are being made available to residents and businesses will also be on display, and people attending the open house can sign up to have kits delivered to them.
Admission is free to the open house, which will start at 3:30 p.m. Anderson will speak at 4:30, and following his presentation ? Doing Well By Doing Good ? the early adopters will premiere the video. Organizers expect the event to wrap up by 6:30 p.m.
"This is a major event for Whistler, and it?s going to lead to some amazing changes," says Waldron. "We invite everyone in the community to come out and see what we?re doing, learn about sustainability, and take part. Everyone can make a difference."
Open house to feature Ray Anderson
In a sense Ray Anderson?s message on Saturday (Dec. 1) ? Doing Well By Doing Good ? is the whole key to Whistler?s Sustainability Initiative.
While people usually see environmentally-friendly initiatives as an added business expense, visionaries like Anderson, a prominent Fortune 1000 CEO, are proving just the opposite is true. A business, whether it?s an industrial company or a mountain resort, can make money without making a mess.
The founder, CEO and chair of Interface Inc., the world?s largest commercial carpet and flooring manufacturer, Anderson has been taking his business on the path to environmental sustainability since 1994. It hasn?t been easy; commercial carpet manufacturing is about as bad for the environment as an industry can get.
With 26 factories turning petroleum products into textiles, Anderson used to produce a million pounds of synthetic, non-biodegradable carpet every day, along with about seven tons of air pollutants each year.
Although the company was profitable, the means to the end didn?t sit well with Anderson, who vowed to make Interface "the first fully sustainable industrial enterprise, anywhere."
His goal was to become sustainable ? to take nothing that couldn?t be replaced, and leave nothing that couldn?t be reused, recycled or returned to nature. "If Interface can get it right, it will never need to take another drop of oil from the earth," he says.
Interface no longer uses virgin nylon yarn to stitch fabrics, its factories use power from renewable resources, the company is on its way to producing zero waste, and it recycles its used products into new ones. Technically you don?t even buy Interface carpeting anymore, you rent it.
While restructuring his own business to be sustainable, Anderson and Interface have had a tremendous spin-off effect on suppliers and customers, and many have in turn embraced the sustainable ideal.
Although it wasn?t easy to make changes and Interface is not quite 100 per cent sustainable, the progress they have made in the past seven years has prompted companies like Nike, Ikea, Scandic Hotels and Collins Pine to follow the same route towards sustainability.
Why? Because Anderson?s success has been more than ethical. Since they have started down the road to sustainability, sales have increased dramatically, while costs have dropped by more than 20 per cent. In the past seven years, sustainability has become a quantifiable, competitive advantage for Interface.
Revenues in 2000 were in excess of $1.2 billion, compared to $800 million in 1995 ? and that includes the added cost of retrofitting factories, and in some cases inventing sustainable technologies where none previously existed.
At the Sustainability Open House on Saturday, Anderson will share his own experiences with Whistler, which is in the process of launching its own sustainability initiative.
