Not terribly easy to read, but full of vision and inspiring tales of companies that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.

For a preview (or the whole book, if you're a cheap student) you can download pdf's chapter by chapter at [http://www.natcap.org/].

I just skimmed this book to find the essence of its argument and pick out excerpts for my Jensen tutorial. The main thesis is that natural capitalism can do things better for people and the planet in the long term. The premises of natural capitalism are of course intuitive and appealing. However, the book ends up being a bundle of great individual ideas masquerading as a plan for saving the whole economy/society. The ideas on offer could and would be picked up by individual entrepeneurs and make them a bundle of money while saving the planet and helping people. Hawken and the Lovins seem to believe that that's all they can or need to do (which is fine, if that's what they want to accomplish).

Yet their unbridled optimism pushes them to go further and assert that business owners who don't adopt natural capitalist principles will be left behind by the new wave; that the economy will simply shift on its own in the same way that it shifted from coal to oil or into industrial capitalism. I looked through the whole book and came to the conclusion that this is simply an article of faith: they never discuss its likelihood or any evidence about the question. Since natural capitalism is predicated on system-level design and shifts in high-level political policy, this is a startling omission. Individual business owners might make some money using resources more efficiently, but natural capitalism won't come about unless systemic change occurs, and this book offers nothing but faith and optimism about that. They don't even exhort readers to lobby for those system level changes – they seem to think that would be a waste of time, since it's inevitable anyway.

That said, the evidence they marshal is rich and great, and they really do have some great specific concepts and ideas in here. It's just framed in a really idiosyncratic way that makes it seem like more than it can really be.

It was also interesting to me that Hawken just treats the course of history as this series of brilliant innovations that solve engineering and distribution problems, coupled with all these bumbling errors and clumsinesses that cause all these mishaps and make the whole thing fail to achieve its real potential and true goal (which he asserts is to make everyone happier or whatever). What's interesting is that he doesn't ignore social inequality and racism and these issues - he clearly cares about them deeply. But he doesn't ever engage in a class analysis or something that would show that these problems are caused by some to benefit themselves at expense of others. This precludes him from addressing the fact that those who benefit might try to influence the growth of natural capitalism away from the social and environmental values he sees it creating towards a more or less sustainable version of today's social order.

Very optimistic overview of what could happen if businesses committed themselves to a triple bottom line philosophy (economic, social, and environmental). Good general coverage of several industries and issues (automobile industry, moving to zero waste). Will probably frustrate anyone with specific technical knowledge of any of the industries they cover. Great introduction to Green Business ideas.

Terrific book that delves into environmental conservation and its relationship to capitalism. Protecting nature and reaping profit do not have to be mutually exclusive endeavors. We need to rethink our system.

this was wild. ahaha like what

I am officially giving up on this book. I've had it checked out from the library for 6 weeks, and cannot bring myself to trudge through it anymore. Not that it's bad! But it does have a few strikes against it: a) It's heavy, which makes for a lousy commute; b) the print is tiny, which makes it seem insurmountable; c) I know next to nothing about economics or business, which means that much of that tiny print goes right over my head; and d) it was written 10 years ago, which means I have no idea how up-to-date any of the ideas/claims are. For example, the authors seem wild about the idea of hydrogen cell cars, but hasn't that largely been discredited by now? Their logic supporting it seems sound though, so I don't know what to think.

It did have some intriguing ideas, but about halfway through I felt I had gotten the gist and didn't need to read any more. If you want to read about stuff like this, read Cradle to Cradle--it cites many of the same stories and people, is written with the common layperson in mind, and is much shorter (and printed on recyclable plastic).

Given to me by an ex-boyfriend, I was determined to read it the whole dang thing and I did and I had to skim parts of it, but found I was able to refer to it in the past ten years. It's still on my shelf!

I learned so much from this book that it is impossible to record in one review. To some extent I already knew or knew of many theories and approaches outlined in Natural Capitalism, however, finding it all in one coherent and interesting presentation was refreshing.

It has clearly refreshed and renewed my desire to study further system engineering approaches to civic problems.

More review details at: http://jritch.net/2008/12/29/finally-...

I hope that our current political decision makers have read this. The modern experiments with climatic modelling and economic response have the potential for massive and if incorrect, costly consequences. Whether we are planning to do enough or not will only be decided by future outcomes, but in the present time I think there are many principles presented in Natural Capitalism that are easy wins and beneficial regardless of the long term climate prognostics.

I read through this with a book club at work. It spurred on really fruitful, interesting conversation, but man, is it dense!
I will more consider it a reference book on my shelf because the authors touch on so many points related to our overall economy and environment.

Although I often found myself at odds with the analysis of certain economic theory, there were a lot of really great ideas and discussions in this book. A little out of date but still quite relevant.

Merged review:

Although I often found myself at odds with the analysis of certain economic theory, there were a lot of really great ideas and discussions in this book. A little out of date but still quite relevant.

“I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”— John Davison Rockefeller. John D. Rockefeller was an American business tycoon and industrialist. I quoted him to illustrate that how capitalism really works, and this book serves as a cornerstone to refute the claim that exploiting capital will sustainably maximize wealth without posing any threat in the long term.

Even after 19 years of its publication, “Natural Capitalism: Creating the next Industrial Revolution” co-authored by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, is still so opportune and meaningful. The book is full of ideas of innovation and revolutionary examples which businesses or entrepreneurs can take inspiration from. Authors tried to distinguish Natural Capitalism from Capitalism, but, I believe, an integral part of the economic system called capitalism, is natural capital which has been ignored from the very beginning by not taking into account the environmental footprint or irreversible repercussions of the industrial actions into the cost of production. This is high time we got out of the short-term wealth maximization mentality for environment is where all the economic activities take place and we have been granted only one earth. “First, many of the services we receive from living systems have no known substitutes at any price; for example, oxygen production by green plants. This was demonstrated memorably in 1991-93 when scientists operating the $200 million Biosphere 2 experiment in Arizona discovered that it was unable to maintain life-supporting oxygen levels for the eight people living inside. Biosphere 1, a.k.a Planet Earth performs this task daily at no charge for 6 billion people.” We have been exploiting nature— clean air, water, fertile soil, rainfall, ecological systems etc. as if it were free: Has any grain producing company tried to determine the value of 1mm of rainfall and to incorporate it in the "Liabilities" section of Balance Sheet or in the cost of goods sold? Poorly-designed business processes, population growth and wasteful consumption (both by individuals and businesses) are the main causes of depletion of natural resources and obstacles towards sustainable economy.

Automobile transportation is one of the biggest industries of the world and in the chapter 2 of the book, the authors talk about how a transformation in the energy source and material can prevent the destruction of natural capital. Polymer composites instead of steel to make the body of car and hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity in the cleanest and most efficient way are the two most game-changing ideas, but sadly yet to be put into effect in a commercial way. Coupled with sensible design of cities that limits use of car, Hypercar could reverse the erosion of natural capital.
Chapter 3 is eye-opening exposing the amount of waste we produce (in 1999) because we fail to “close the loop” or recycle like biological systems do. “Two quarts of gasoline and a thousand quarts of water are required to produce a quart of Florida orange juice. One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources.” “Total annual wastes in the United States, excluding wastewater, now exceed 50 trillion pounds a year. (A trillion is a large number: To count to 50 trillion at the rate of 1 per second would require the entire lifetimes of 24,000 people.” We also waste human capital. Rikers Island (in the US) is the world’s largest penal colony which needs an annual budget of $860 (in 2015) million with an average daily population of 10,000 inmates. Isn’t there something profoundly wrong with the design of the society that incarcerates so many people at an overwhelming cost to the society itself?

The authors emphasized the fact that the society that wastes its resources wastes its people and vice versa by providing statistics of unemployment and disemployment rates which are rising faster than employment rate globally. Companies are downsizing to increase the profit one more percent; but greater gains can come not from eliminating people, but from eliminating those wasted energy used by ACs to keep the temperature exceedingly lower in summer days, those extra barrels of oil that were mishandled and those wasted papers to produce hundreds copies of reports which could easily be e-mailed.

The book is also filled with lots of examples of how businesses benefitted from small and smart changes in design and process making the system more efficient and cost-effective by wringing more service from a given artifact. Remanufacturing and recycling are essentially closing the loop and “saving energy equivalent to the output of five giant power stations”. For example, big companies like Xerox and IBM employ “Dedistributing” where products come back from customers for remanufacture.

Chapter 5 and 14 are my personal favorite where in chapter 5 authors underscores the importance of building self-sufficient green buildings as oppose to just laying out some concrete blocks. Because we spend ninety percent of our time in them (nowadays it should be more than ninety five percent) and “one-third of our total energy and two-thirds of out electricity” are consumed by them. Also billions of tons of raw materials are being used annually to construct them and a major part of it goes wasted instead of going into the building because of improper planning. ncorporation of natural air and light handling, solar design, strong sense of community etc. would contribute to astonishing energy savings as well as to an increment of quality and value of human lives. One solution could be paying compensation to designers and architects on the basis of what they save in terms of energy consumption by the building, instead of paying them a percentage of the cost of the building. There are also various examples of innovations in the book, for example, photovoltaic power generation, superwindows, which could make buildings more efficient optimizing passive solar heat gains and passive cooling.

The highlight of chapter 14 is how Curitiba, an archetypal Brazilian city with chaos, poverty, unemployment and pollution at its center of existence, became a standard in sustainable urban planning by being the greenest city or the most innovative city in the world in only three decades. Combining entrepreneurship, good governance and vital leadership, Jaime Lerner, an architect and also the mayor of the city by treating all its citizens not as burden but as its resource. If someone is intrigued by the book, but does not want to read the whole book, she or he may go through this one chapter.

Industrialization of farming may seem to be a triumph of technology, but actually it uncomfortably worsens the situation. Despite improving efficiencies, “….farming still uses ten times as much fossil-fueled energy in producing food as it returns in food energy. Our food, as ecologist Howard Odum remarked, is made wholly of oil with oil left over.” Industrial agriculture destroys soil’s organic richness and most civilizations collapsed because they destroyed their topsoil. It also uses about two-thirds of all water drawn from the world’s rivers, lakes and aquifers. One-third of world’s cereal are being fed to livestock which turns only 10-45% of grain inputs into meat. Organic farming, Biointensive minifarming could be the answer.

There is a chapter dedicated to fresh water usage and designs to minimize water waste. Charging households for their actual use rather than a flat rate combined with education and awareness program usually saves up to a third of water usage. Harvesting rainwater, using of graywater for flushing toilets, biological treatment plants in neighborhoods are proving to be pioneering.

The economic viability of the businesses who not only want workers, but also thinkers suggesting and designing innovative ways incorporating the value of natural and human capital should be considered by businesses.The simple proposition of this great work is that all capital be valued. If it is not practically possible to attach a value to a hundred years old tree, one may ask how much it would cost to make a new one. How much would it cost to make a new atmosphere after we are done destroying this, a new culture, a new Earth?