Re-Use: The Toughest of the Three “Rs” of Green
One hundred and eighty-two tons of surplus items, “from potted plants and fish in a Birkenstock pond to shop tables and a tractor” had to be shed before the Marin-based company, Birkenstock, moved to its new corporate headquarters, according to a recent article in the Marin Independent Journal by Carla Bova.
A nonprofit, iReuse, founded by donor, Ken Kurtzig, was able to divert 87 percent of the waste through reuse and recycling instead of it “landing in the dump.”
The three “R’s” of green are reduce, reuse, recycle. According to Kurtzig, "Reuse is about 93 percent more efficient than recycling.” Reusing products and materials, and reducing our consumption in the first place have a much more positive impact on the environment.
Re-use is easy to understand but manually intensive to execute. Kurtzig’s innovation is a web based marketplace that increases the productivity of the match between those wishing to dispose of items and those in need. There are fees involved but it appears to be a very low margin business. Consequently, there may be a “social business enterprise” here that could engage more companies to meet a marketplace need that heretofore was too “micro” to reach.
Call it the “fourth sector” or double bottom line investing, Kurtzig has taken the first step to unlocking the market mechanism for “re-use.” There is a great opportunity for donors and foundations to leverage this innovation by investing (through grants) in the marketing and distribution reach of companies like iReuse.
We would like to see funders explicitly allocate grant and community investment support to this type of social business enterprise, to experiment as to whether this is a more efficient way of achieving their strategies for increasing environmental sustainability and supporting nonprofit infrastructure. Are we ready for that?
Posted at 6:43 AM, May 17, 2007 in Cross-Sectoral Strategies | Environment | Permalink | Comments (2)