by Susan Gordon

Environmental activism may be the best example of an area in which social entrepreneurs can have a huge impact. Environmental problems are by definition cross border and cross national, and solving them requires the cooperation of diverse groups of people, a lot of imagination and ambition. But they are also local problems, and while social entrepreneurship is all about identifying and solving problems on a large scale, as these three profiles of successful environmental social entrepreneurs demonstrate, the best projects start with a local problem.

BioRegional Development Corp. was founded in 1992 by Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone, who were concerned that while the UK imported 98% of its barbecue charcoal, there was enough unused wood available from coppice woodland in south east England to supply the entire market if it was sustainably managed. In the process of solving that problem, Desai and Riddlestone founded BioRegional, a market driven company dedicated to the idea that consumers should be able to meet their everyday needs from local renewable and waste resources. Today BioRegional operates on a global scale, working with non-profit and for-profit partners world-wide to promote sustainable forest management, establish local sustainable paper and textile production, and build new types of communities and buildings to reduce the eco-footprint of the people who occupy them. http://www.bioregional.com/

Takao Furuno is a Japanese farmer who was inspired by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to develop a sustainable organic rice farming system that uses aigamo ducks, fish (loaches), and a nitrogen-fixing weed (azolla) instead of chemicals to fertilize rice seedlings and protect them from insects, pests and snails, and weeds. Furuno spent years perfecting his system, which produces higher yields, requires less work from farmers, and reduces environmental damage. Not content to keep his system to himself, Furuno has written several books, travels world-wide to lecture and advise governments, and has taught his methods to farmers in 12 Asian countries and Cuba. http://www.tagari.com/item.php?itemid=5

When writing a book on toxic hazards and the threats they pose to public health, Gary Cohen decided to found Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) to solve a pollution problem in the health care industry: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had identified the countries over 5,000 medical waste incinerators as the leading source of dioxin pollution, a carcinogen. Today there are fewer than 100 medical waste incinerators in the United States. HCWH has also virtually eliminated the use of mercury thermometers (and thus mercury waste) by US medical providers and has worked with hospitals to create buildings that are built, maintained, and run in ways that are better for the environment and for the people who work in and visit them.  Today HCWH has grown to a coalition of 438 groups in 52 countries working together for environmentally responsible health care. http://www.noharm.org/us

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 1:39 pm by Bret Waters and is filed under Individual Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.