Page 30 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

NARRATING VALUES, SHAPING VALUES, CREATING VALUE 9

ning the natural foods store Erewhon Trading Company in Boston in the late 1960s,
noted that such new, small businesses were and are particularly adept at reexamining
how business and culture are intertwined and how a business can serve as an agent of
social change. 10
This different approach to business, which took into account the social and envi-
ronmental aspects of how a business created value, seemed to move in lockstep with
a growing international awareness of such issues as CFCs and their impact on the
ozone layer (Montreal Protocol, 1987), sustainable development of the urban envi-
ronment (“Agenda 21” as part of the Earth Summit in Rio, 1992 and the Aalborg
Charter of European Cities and Towns Toward Sustainability, 1994), and the overall
need to increase efficiencies geometrically to reduce humankind’s ecological footprint
(Carnoules Declaration, 1994). During this period, a different approach to capitalism
seemed to become more widespread and mainstream. In 1988, 3M voluntarily com-
mitted to reducing its hazardous emissions by 90 percent. In the early 1990s Monsanto
and DuPont followed suit with similar commitments. Before the end of the last
decade, the notion of a triple bottom line became more of a familiar concept in the cor-
porate world, numerous transnational companies began to draft statements of social
responsibility, and some even began to commission third-party audits evaluating their
social and environmental impacts. In just three short decades, the narrative of capital-
ism with a difference had come of age.
While the narrative of indifferent capitalism reads very much like a grand epic—
think Homer’s Iliad—the narrative of capitalism with a difference is more akin to a
loose collection of stories—like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for example—that col-
lectively convey a sense that business can and should be conducted with an eye toward
more than narrow economic efficiencies. Some of these stories evolve around compa-
nies driven by a form of spiritual calling. 11 Others focus on companies that have
evolved almost reluctantly into business endeavors. 12 Some of these stories focus on
small businesses that have deliberately limited their growth so as to remain true to crit-
ical core values. 13 Other stories have focused on large, global companies and their
change-management strategies for doing business differently. 14 Each company’s story
has a different rationale for the changes the company has made and is still going
through. Each has different objectives. But they all comprise an overarching narrative,
one that sets itself in direct contrast to the narrative of indifferent capitalism. What all
these stories are saying, in their disparate ways, is that business and ethics, profit and
social/environmental concerns, doing well and doing good, are not necessarily at odds
with one another.
The narrative of indifferent capitalism is a fully fleshed-out story that has unfolded
over centuries. It’s a mature narrative, with a beginning, a middle and, if not an end, at
least a well-evolved sense of an ending. The narrative of capitalism with a difference
is a relatively new kid on the block, with barely a beginning to its credit. The narrative
of indifferent capitalism is largely descriptive, characterizing the way our economic
system functions today. By contrast, the narrative of capitalism with a difference is
largely optative, expressing a hope or desire for our economic system to function dif-
ferently than it does today. Much of contemporary writing on the environment (and on