From Me to We

By Jay Burney

June 13, 2013

Janine Benyus, author of “Biomimicry, Innovations Inspired by Nature” and President of the Biomimicry Institute has an important message for the Business Alliance For a Local Living Economy Conference (BALLE 2013) being held in Buffalo. “Just take care of your place and it will take care of you.”

The message resonated in the crowd of localist economy activists, entrepreneurs, and innovators, gathered for the 11th Annual Conference which is being held for the first time in Buffalo.

Biomimicry is the science of trying to understand how nature works, how humans are a part of nature, and how humans can better stand a chance to survive and thrive if they adopt important natural principles.  

“Organisms and the ecosystems and services that they provide for take care of the place so that 10.000 generations from now, there will still be a place” she told the enthusiastic audience. 10,000 generations? How often do we think about our social, economic, and environmental impacts on the next generation? In business, it’s the next quarter isn’t it? The future? -What a concept!

Many of the BALLE participants are deep into the politics of economics. The contrasting philosophies and on the ground struggles between the concepts of dog eat dog competition v. the cooperative nature of working for the greater good of building communities and economies from the ground up are consistent themes of the BALLE movement. Thinking about how to move the effort away from the “me”, to the “we” is a fundamental concept of both nature and sustainability. Thinking about how our economy will effect future generations is a substantial characterization of localism.  Localists will tell you that if you are a part of a localist movement, you care about the people, the places, and the environment.  You come to think about making sure that as the tide rises, all people have floatable boats. If you have a purely global focus, you work to extract of wealth and ignore the damage to the environment and society, justice issues that become nothing more than “externalities” to the profit taking.

Although it is still considered heretical in many scientific circles, Benyus said, “science is more and more discovering that cooperation, or mutualism, has a strong place in the way that systems, ecosystems survive”.  In other words it is not just about survival of the fittest. Parts of systems work together to create the healthy whole. Biodiversity requires mutualism and cooperation. Biodiversity creates opportunity and sustains life.

As an example she describes Mycorrhizal Fungi. “Living soils have dense networks of this fungi that connects organisms and serves as both a communication system and a support system in terms of helping to share water and nutrients amongst organisms.” “We call it the Common Mycorrhizal Network (CMN) and it connects, defends, and supports the world. It is part of the symbiotic and deeply shared cooperation that characterizes how an organisimistic society knits together.”  This is a profound description of how a cooperative system allows biodiversity to flourish and life to thrive.  It is more than a metaphor about how our economic system is modeled. “This mutualism demonstrates that ecosystems are generous rather than strictly competitive,” Benyus tells us.

She continues. “Humans are mostly oblivious to this. Our factory agricultural system is intent on killing soils and introducing synthetic toxins that destroy biodiversity and destroy life opportunities.”  Development of any sort pays little attention to how nature survives and thrives, which effects how humans survive and thrive. This knowledge is consequential.

Nature is very efficient and natural systems produce no waste. Ubiquitous natural polymers such as cellulose, starch, RNA, keratin, silk, collagen, help to characterize such things as strength, elasticity, and water solubility and help produce the structures of life forms including bones, wood, shells, claws, and spider webs.  Natural polymers are biodegradable and are not waste products. Humans have introduced more than 350 non- biodegradable and toxic polymers including polystyrene and plastics. This toxic waste stream is one of the great tragedies of humanity and are direct results and consequences of the political economic decisions of a consumer society.  Biomimicry can help us move toward the use of natural or natural influenced polymers, help us reduce waste, and help us to detoxify the planet.

A very exciting development is the Biomimicry Institute’s (Biomimicry 3.8-reflecting 3.8 billion years of evolution) new emphasis on urban structures and infrastructure.  Later this month the 7th annual Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference will be held in Boston. Benyus told us that there will be an emphasis on promoting resilient cities, which will include developing and refining metrics on ecological performance standards for development. When we replace an ecosystem with a city, we remove its ecological services. Do we have to do that? We are just learning what that means. As we understand ecological services better including water and air filtration, carbon sequestration, heating and cooling influences of urban trees, and how that effects climate change. Benyus told us that she was in a new building in Manhattan and was told that the air filtration system in the building returns air to the outside that is 3 times more clean than the air that enters the building. “That’s a good starting point to think about this”, she said. “Our cities can find ways to be generous if we learn from ecosystems and how they create opportunities for 10,000 generations. Buffalo could take a great leap forward if you work with us on developing and implementing ecological performance standards.”

Perhaps the fundamental message of the BALLE Conference is about cooperation as opposed to competition. Can human systems including political economic systems find cooperative ways to thrive and help lift all boats. According to Janine Benyus, Lets move from me, to we. Just ask nature. Most people at BALLE2013  would agree.

Links:

Janine Benyus Ted Talk:The Promise of Biomimicry
http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html

Biomimicry 3.8 Institute
http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry38/institute/

7th Annual Biomimicry Education Summit and Conference, Boston
http://biomimicry.net/educating/summits-workshops/education-summit/

BALLE 
Kick-off June 11, 2013- An evening with Judy Wicks


By Jay Burney

The BALLE (Business Alliance for a Local  Living Economy) Conference got off to a big start in Buffalo last night as Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center hosted an evening with Judy Wicks, co-founder of BALLE.  Wicks spent the evening discussing her new book Good Morning Beautiful Business, as a part of the "Get the Rust Out" Speaker Series.

BALLE is about developing local economies and Wicks story is both archetypical and inspiring for the aspiring entrepreneur and localism activist.  In 1970, after a stint as VISTA volunteers Wicks and her then husband Richard Hayne, both 23, took their combined $3,000 of VISTA pay-out and started a small store in a declining Philadelphia neighborhood. It was called the Free People’s Store. “What we thought at the time” Wicks told the 75 or so people at Hallwalls, “was that you buy something at a certain cost, and sell it for a little more.”  They sold products associated with the under 30 crowd including new and used clothing, candles houseplants, and “hip housewares.” That first year was full of challenges. It wasn’t as simple as buy low sell high.  She told the story about how at one point she wanted to buy 12 pairs of satin bell-bottomed jeans that were the most expensive products they had purchased.  She bought 6, sold a few pairs, and bought some more. “One day a group of high-school kids from the neighborhood came in, distracted me, and ran out of the store with one of them wearing a new pair of my satin bell-bottoms. I ran out the door, locked up the shop and chased her down, tackled her, and took the jeans off, leaving her in the middle of the street in her underwear.  I got the jeans back, that’s what mattered to me.”

The two lived in a small apartment behind the store “which helped keep the costs down” said Wicks. But within a year the couple divorced.  Hayne changed the name of the store to “Urban Outfitters” and today remains CEO and President of the well-known chain that today has a net worth of almost $2 billion. He is one of the richest people in the world.  A few years later, Wicks started a restaurant called the White Dog Café, which catered to a healthy foods, localist clientele. “We believed in humanely treated food resources such as free range animals, local farms,  and fair trade coffee, chocolate, and tea.” Wicks told the crowd.  The restaurant, located on Sansom Street in Philadelphia was in a building originally slated for demolition for a new mall.  Wicks rallied the neighbors and the restaurant became a hotbed for progressive activism and localism.  Speakers including Amy Goodman, Lester Brown, Helen Caldicott, and others helped focus the community on issues ranging from local engagement, health, environment, and the evils of corporate globalization.  “These view differed significantly from her former husband,” she told us. The restaurant became a huge success, and the neighborhood was saved from the mall developer. She was able to buy her building and invest in the neighborhood, expand, and move into other entrepreneurial businesses. She was asked to join the Social Venture Network by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.  SVN expanded into international support for localist and self-reliant businesses in Chiapas Mexico, Cuba, and Vietnam among other places.   One thing that bothered her was that even the socially responsible businesses relied on the old model of economics, which promoted growth as the predominant paradigm. Grow or Die, she told the audience, that was the model. “I was more interested in social value beyond the dollar bottom line.”  Soon Ben and Jerry’s, Odwalla Juices, Stoneyfield Farms, and Toms of Maine,  SVN leaders and icons of the social venture movement were bought out by multi-national corporations.

Eventually she helped to co-found BALLE and has inspired countless people to consider business as a vehicle for social change.  Buy her book, available today at local bookstores for more details.

The question and answer session provided several enlightening exchanges. One woman asked if her success in the Sanson Street neighborhood created an opportunity for “gentrification.”  It was hard to dodge that question, and Wicks did not. “If you invest in a neighborhood, make it more livable, property values will increase.” Wicks declared.

How did you avoid “Grow or die” asked another woman in the audience.  “I decided not to franchise, and instead invested in or started other business’s” she said.  Today I am retired and living mostly off rental income from the Philadelphia properties.

Another question: “Can you identify one secret to your success?”  Wicks responded quickly- “I lived upstairs from the store, and then restaurant, lived and worked in the same neighborhood, grew my kids there, and that saved a lot of time because I didn’t have to commute.” Indeed.

Links: 
BALLE Home Page
2013 BALLE Conference Buffalo NY
Buffalo First, local BALLE Sponsor