Along comes Be The Change, an environmental leadership program from Silicon Valley based Acterra. They sum it up best when they say:

The program emphasizes building skills that enable people to act within the organizations where they work, live, worship and play to bring about significant changes in how they relate to the natural world.

Awesome.

Basically, they give you the framework, tools, knowledge, and help give direction to and cohesiveness around your desire to make a difference, so that you can powerfully help affect change, wherever you are. And this is where action needs to happen. Yes, we have leaders in government duking it out to sound as climate positive as possible, but in the end, it’s multiple, deeply ingrained actions among multiple types of community and workplace that will lead to a sustained impact.

What does it look like? In a nutshell, it meets once a month for a year, with solo and group activities in between. Just the title of the curriculum components tells a lot: Visionary Leadership, Environmental Information, Skill Building, Networking, Personal Mastery, and Practice.

This practical, ongoing, dedicated approach to creating effective change agents is a model that I think should be studied and replicated in other parts of the world. How about where you live?

Classes start in September.

Readers: What’s happening in your part of the world to help channel peoples enthusiasm into green action?

Additional Reading:

Naturally Successful: Inspiring Videos From Green Entrepreneurs: Ecopreneurist

Stabilizing Earth’s Atmosphere a Priority for Ecopreneurs: Share 350.org Animation Video with all Stakeholders : Ecopreneurist

Fuel For Your Entrepreneurial Brain : Ecopreneurist

What do you do? Build more hotels? That’s one solution, but what about the rest of the year, when there is a lower, more typical demand, and you’re left with capacity far exceeding needs, and resources were used to build these hotels that could have been used elsewhere?

Abilmo, a French company, has a possible solution: They make foldable hotel rooms. Come again? Yes, they have been able to fabricate accommodations that can be set up, without a crane, as many as 25 erected in a day. And they’re not shabby, either. Wood floors, furniture, sound and weather insulated, personal climate control, with all the bathroom needs of a conventional hotel room included. In the space of just under 40 square feet. And quickly removable once they’re not needed.

Exceeding what a typical hotel could offer, these temporary rooms can be customized with graphics. Can we say sponsored accommodations, zeroing out event holder’s cost? For those in need of less elaborate shelter, during a festival, there are other options available, such as the MyHab recyclable structures that are many steps above a muddy tent, stylishly done and well priced.

Shelter need not be overpriced, unavailable, or wasting resources needed elsewhere. “Just in time” shelter is an idea whose time has come.

Readers: What are other examples of how to sustainably manage temporary events that you know of?

Related Posts:

Fuel For Your Entrepreneurial Brain : Ecopreneurist

Eco-Effective Option: Stay in an Airbed & Breakfast : Green Options

Summer Travel Turns up the (Global) Heat : CleanTechnica

You are the entrepreneurial genius. Yes, everyone thinks you’re a nut, but I’m talking about a different nut.

In entrepreneur-speak, your “nut” is what it costs to pay all your life expenses each month, including the cost of launching your start-up business.

Ask yourself, do you have a regular inflow that matches your monthly outflow without needing to raise investment capital?

Some charismatic people can raise capital to cover their nut. I’ve done that. There’s a lot of risk in that, I discovered. If your sales projections don’t pan out, you’ll run out of monthly cashflow for your basic life expenses. This is stressful, and can block you from realizing your big-picture goals.

A wise entrepreneur once advised me that a good business should generate positive cash flow from the very first day. If you heed this advice in designing your business strategy, you’ll cover your “nut”, and go on to build your genius business with the minimum amount of friction.

Email Mark Winstein

Seminars that go by blockbuster titles - as least for green entrepreneurs - such as “How to manage carbon risk” have authentic learning value.

In our over-wired world, live events are a luxury, an hour or three to feel how much we really love context and contact, not just stoic information glaring out at us from a screen when we’re learning complex stuff - like international carbon trading markets.

More to the point, events are becoming an even more attractive “pull” medium than ever. And, the savvy, green entrepreneur should know how to harness the reputation and client lead potentials of a well-orchestrated event - an eco-friendly supplied event, that is.

And why? Because, if working in public relations has taught me one thing, it’s that people can’t help but make judgements in mere seconds.

“Nice. Plastic forks. I thought the guy ran an environmental company.”

“And we flew down from Toronto to hear a guy in plaid talk about climate change insurance for 50 minutes? It’s called a W-E-B-I-N-A-R.”

“Where is the water cooler, Judy? I only see bottled water…Oh, I see, there isn’t one. Oh, OK.”

The point is, the medium is the message. The elephant in the room is “how real is she/he about this green thing, anyways?”. And the reality is, I see too many well-intentioned green entrepreneurs and consultants who still host events that feature coffee in styrofoam cups.

Purchasing for and orchestrating a green event can be a fun and easy to face challenge, especially when you have online, pre-screened green suppliers at the tips of your fingers. Or, a rocking, green event planning company like Greenprint Events.

This week, Green Meeting Guide publishers and The Innovolve Group identified nearly 1,000 qualified suppliers in 10 distinct categories located in 7 major markets in Canada (I suspect it won’t be long until a similar directory emerges in the U.S.), making the Green Event Guide the most comprehensive reference document on “green” practioners in the hospitality sector.

From A/V to local food to decor, this guide makes it easier to source an eco-friendly and crowd pleasing seminar all while lessening your event’s environmental footprint on the planet.

Citing a 2006 economic impact study commissioned by the Meeting Professionals International Foundation Canada, Innovolve CEO Dr. Anthony Watanabe notes that, “there were 670,000 meetings held in Canada involving more than 70 million attendees with total participant spending exceeding $23 billion. With such an economic footprint, there are obvious environmental benefits and clear opportunities to drive sustainable behaviour and to green the supply chain.”

One to two hours of browsing these pre-approved and credible suppliers and you have a recipe for meeting and seminar success - all without people asking themselves why you are serving steak on a paper plate.

What if you could guarantee exactly how much you’d get, based on how long you’ve owned it, at the time of purchase? This is now a reality, via the company Tech Forward. You can buy a product at any store you like, then purchase their Guaranteed Buyback service, which covers a wide range of electronics, from MP3 players to desktop computers.

Who would benefit from this service? Anybody, really, but here are some examples:

• You are going to be in a 2 year certificate program, and know you’ll need a laptop primarily for that, you can now do it, knowing what you’ll have coming back to you when you sell it.
• Or perhaps you are someone who is a fiend for the latest gear or worried about what you’re about to buy becoming outdated (iPod Touch, before the recently announced half price iPhone) Tech Forward’s plan allows you to buy without worry.
• The end buyer, who has a chance to get a quality piece of electronics that they can be assured is of good quality.
• The planet, with a reduced load of toxics from disposed of electronics.

And the kicker? The quoted values are only for products in what they consider “good” condition! As in if it’s what they consider excellent condition, you can get 15% more then you signed up for. What an incentive to take great care of your electronics.

So, given the fickle nature of this industry, what happens to these electronics? TechForward first work to get it sold, which I should think is fairly easy, given that not everybody needs/wants the absolute latest thing, and would be glad to get a well taken care of older device. What if they can’t sell it? Tech Forward will, “recycle, in an environmentally-friendly way, any item that cannot be resold.” I’d prefer if they said how, with who, and where, but that’s something you can ask them about if it matters to you.

But there’s one problem with TechForward. No phones allowed. What to do?

For you, FlipSwap is a great new option that goes beyond what Second Rotation offers. They have partnered with a number of electronics retailers, so that you can go into a shop, have them analyze the phone, and get instant credit, to be used in buying a new one. And FlipSwap isn’t just for single phone returns. They work with cell phone businesses that could perhaps have 1000s of phones in storage. And with both, they don’t charge shipping. From their site, it appears they are quite conscientious with recycling, should it need to happen.

If it’s found that the phone isn’t functional or sellable, FlipSwap, in addition to recycling, will plant a tree. And internally as a company, they “closely monitor our consumption of resources and continually strive to reduce waste.”

Readers: What are other ways you’ve found to responsibly and easily reuse or recycle products? Have you used either of the above services? What’s been your experience?

Additional Resources:

What to Do with Your Old Electronic Devices: Get Paid, Help Those in Need! : Ecopreneurist

How to Green Your Mail : Ecopreneurist

10 Business Practices that Reduce Your Footprint : Ecopreneurist

You might want to try Ecoflame. Their Warming Gel serves the same purpose, but is made from sugar cane derived ethanol, rather then coal or petroleum based as many conventional options are, and the packaging itself is recyclable, the label made from sugar cane. The first question that comes to my mind is, where does this sugarcane come from? Is it harvested sustainably? Yes it’s a renewable resource, but does it consume more then its fair share of resources to be made?

That said, it’s non toxic, and has no toxic emissions. The same cannot be said for the others, that require ventilation in order to not be damaging to you. For those of you that prefer your travel indoors and want a late night hot snack, they have 1 hour “room service” size available. It can safely and quickly be put out with just water.

If you’re doing that summer ritual known as BBQ, their Lighting Gel makes a capable stand in for the usual lighter fluid, and again is sugar cane based, however this time they qualify it with, “from organic matter such as cane sugar.” Hmm. However, it burns smokeless, with no carbon monoxide emissions, and is non toxic. In a benefit that this still city slicker doesn’t understand, it can also burn on ice and snow. Can anybody tell me why you’d want to do that?

If you find yourself somewhere without something to burn, but need heat quick, they have Quick Lighting Gel. Ah, the burning on ice thing, it’s making sense now…From there they have of cooking setups, from the minimal to the full BBQ ready set up.

What if you want to skip man made fuels all together?

Another option to consider is the Woodgas Camping Stove. This intriguing device allows you to use any burnable organic matter in the area, ie pine cones, etc. and has a battery powered fan that helps amplify the flames to maximize the heat created from what you’ve put in. Now, putting in old socks and Silly Putty defeats the purpose, but if you’re out camping, and want to forgo carrying cans of fuel, and the need to dispose or recycle them, this could be an option. And as shown here, it can be solar powered. Having an enclosed heat source will also likely reduce the possibility of setting unwanted fires, that your typical camp fire may pose.

Readers: What are some green options for eco friendly camping or green BBQ that you’re using this summer?

Additional Resources:

Seven Tips For Greening Your Barbecue This Summer - Eat Drink Better

Rothbury: A Music Festival With A Purpose - Sustainablog

My Sustainable Road Trip : Green Options

Camping With Your Kids - Eco Child’s Play

Image Credits : http://www.ecogel.com and  http://www.woodgas-stove.com/

While sales of organic food, eco automobiles and natural beauty products are skyrocketing, for most folks, banking is business as usual. Yes, over 1/3^rd of banking customers use online banking, it’s seems it’s hard to let go of those paper statements, checks and receipts.

As you work to make your business more eco, banking may be one place to start. Save time, money and the planet with these easy steps.

1. Turn off paper statements. This is the easiest and most widely available way to make an immediate, substantial impact on your carbon footprint and lower your risk of identity fraud.

2. Switch to direct deposit. Cut off the paper trail that goes along with depositing paychecks. Bonus: In most cases, your money is deposited into your account earlier through direct deposit.

3. Start using online banking. Checking your accounts online is not only convenient, but you can also significantly reduce waste by managing and paying bills online. Bonus: Save money on postage and reduce the possibility of identity fraud.

4. Skip the receipt and deposit envelope. Don’t take a receipt and instead, check your accounts online later or make a note of it immediately in your checkbook. Recently, many banks have installed ATMs that don’t require envelopes for deposits.

5. Try mobile banking. By signing up for mobile banking, you’re likely to cut down on trips to the ATM or local branch, which reduces pollution and saves you money on gas.

Related Posts:

How to Finance a Green Business

Stocking the Green Office: Sustainable Supplies

How to Reach Green Consumers - Using Psychographics To Define Your Target Market

How To Green Your Law Firm

Photo Credit: wwarby at Flick’r Under Creative Commons License

Thanks again to GreenOptions.com for adding me to the Ecopreneurist blog team.

My favorite activity these days is coaching and advising ecopreneurs, investors, and green leaders on how to shorten the path to their objectives.

Having founded several green businesses and non-profits over the past 25 years, I’ve accumulated a ton of experience on starting, growing, and capitalizing green enterprises, and producing results via a broad assortment of strategies and leadership paradigms.

For GreenOptions readers, I’m offering my coaching and advice “Dear Abbey” style, for free, via this blog. To get the ball rolling, I invite you to submit your questions or topics to me via email:

Email Mark Winstein

This best practices handbook from the Meritas Leadership Institute was designed was a roadmap to help attorneys become more environmentally conscious. The guide is divided into three tiers of initiatives: Sustainability Advocate, Partner and Leader. Each tier contains initiatives that fall into the Triple Bottom Line categories of people, profit and planet.

As more and more companies large and small takes steps to make their businesses greener, they look more toward working with green partners. Lawyers, an integral part of any business team, are following in their footsteps. Some say it is vital to do so.

“We have a number of clients involved in green business,” said Adam Umanoff, a partner with the law firm of Chadbourne and Parke, which recently announced a corporate green initiative to curb paper consumption and tap into renewable energy. “Ignoring their concerns isn’t good business practice.”

The Green Guide For Lawyers offers tips and provides levels as a way to measure just how green a law firm is. Though the list of practices is extensive here are some excerpts from this comprehensive document.

Law firms in tier one are considered Sustainability Advocates and follow many of the practices of eco friendly businesses anywhere.

The firm adopts a sustainability mission statement.

Carpool/Public Transportation. Firm encourages and/or subsidizes workers to carpool and/or take public transportation to work.

Use reusable mugs and/or glasses. Firm does not use paper or polystyrene cups and instead offers reusable mugs and/or glasses.

Just filter it. Firm filters water instead of providing bottled water (at least not the small, “individual-sized” bottles).

Use environmentally friendly cleaning products. Firm encourages the use of environmentally friendly detergents, soaps, and other cleaning products.

Those that are in Tier Three – Sustainability Leaders go much farther.

The firm allocates X hours of pro bono services to environmental or sustainability organization(s) of its choosing.

The firm provides sustainability education for its clients and the public through including information in its newsletter, sponsoring educational events and other, directed discussions on an appropriate basis.

Firm maintains an office that is located in a LEED-certified building or successfully certifies its own office space as a LEED for Commercial Interiors space.

The firm includes a section about sustainability on its website that is accessible to the public, clients and employees.

Now perhaps, as law firms go green we’ll see fewer back problems as lawyers are no longer forced to cart around those gigantic briefcases full of paper!

Photo credit: umjanedoan at Flick’r Under Creative Commons License

Related Posts:

How To Advertise Your Green Business

How To Make Your International Shipping Greener

How To Package A Green Product

How to Make Bike Commuting More Popular

Following are a few more strategies we’ve employed, like many other ecopreneurs.

Strategy # 5: Enough Is Enough

A key facet for many small business ecopreneurs is the recognition of living within our ecological and financial means. By exiting the rat race and crafting our own business at a level we can manage, we can commit ourselves to our Earth Mission. A key step, however, is to let go of the idea that we must own a new car or new stereo, go on lavish vacations or in myriad ways keep up with the fictional Joneses. Many Europeans have known this for years.

Strategy # 6: Be Creative and Innovative

“Of three precious resources in life — time, money and creativity — the only unlimited one is your creativity,” writes Ernie Zelinski in The Joy of Not Working. “Make creativity your number one resource, and time and money won’t be as scarce.” Ecopreneurs sometimes thrive in a service economy where there are not products or in a durable economy where there is no waste. After all, who really wants to “own” carpet. I, for one, will be the first in line for an affordable service contract for a computer (famous for their obsolescence in less than three years).

Strategy # 7: Know your Credit Worthiness

Know your personal FICO credit score, typically between 300 and 850. This credit score determined by Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) largely determines how much money your credit card company will extend as credit, the interest rate at which you can lock in your mortgage, what rate you receive for home and vehicle insurance and other variables that can increase or decrease your expenses.

The FICO score is based on statistical analysis of your credit history, kept by three very large corporations, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. Make sure this score is calculated on accurate information by requesting a free credit report, based on the federal Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, from these three companies through annualcreditreport.com. Call 877-322-8228 or mail a standardized form to Annual Credit Report Request Service, PO Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. Build good credit by never missing a mortgage or credit card payment and paying off your credit card balance every month.

Strategy # 8: Green Fitness through Efficiency, Eco-effectiveness and Frugality

“The greatest security is not in having the most, but in needing the least,” writes Charles Long in How to Survive Without a Salary. Efficiency, eco-effectiveness and frugality are like muscles needing constant training to be strong and fit. Creativity fosters green frugality. This muscle needs to be strong since it’s continually tested by outside forces, including mainstream media (Buy this!) and even members of your family who fail to recognize the significance of today’s pressing and interconnected issues.

Many Americans have succumbed to attention deficit disorder every time we complain about rising energy prices, broken families and poor health. There is, however, a growing sense of mindfulness or consciousness toward managing our businesses, matched by the growing awareness among “conserving customers” that no matter what they buy, they impact the world. Those businesses that pay attention to what’s happening around us are reaping financial and ecological benefits, while other businesses are forced to shutter their doors.

Many ecopreneurs, largely due to their human-scaled enterprises, are keen observers, innovative problem-solvers and holistic and systematic in their approach to operating their business.They’re also wise with their personal finances, giving them the freedom, flexibility and financial resources to make their dreams come true.

Of course, the best strategy of all is running your own green business and taking advantage of all the benefits of doing so, including possibly reducing your tax burden, regaining control over your life, and harnessing the power of free enterprise to transform the world into your positive vision of what it should be.

Financial aspects of business, while essential to master, are not the focus for most ecopreneurs, many of whom determine that lifestyle, ecological or social issues override the profit motive that dominates other businesses. Ironically, the marketplace is beginning to recognize green businesses that operate more efficiently, adapt more quickly to change, approach customers and vendors more cooperatively and fairly end up earning a greater return for both the environment and investment made.

What strategies have you adopted that have worked well to make your green business more effective, profitable or, perhaps, generated a greater ROE, Return on the Environment?

Strategy # 2: KISS Principle: Keep It Small Stupid

While the mantra today might be get big or get out, be a millionaire or — for the more socially responsible — “getting to scale” without losing the values the business was founded upon, we’ve discovered the more human-scaled our operations and practices, the more we can accomplish in terms of reaching our Earth Mission.

Size matters not. It’s what and how we operate. Do the best we can in whatever our priorities and live without regrets. It’s a qualitative measure of success, not a quantitative one. Not bigger, but better.

There’s a small mart revolution going on, proclaims Michael Shuman in The Small Mart Revolution. It echoes the “power of one” worldview; we are the world. We don’t underestimate what a nation of ecopreneurial proprietors might collectively accomplish. Perhaps that’s how we view scale: a nation of ecopreneurs. However, we also respect the decision of those ecopreneurs whose fire in their belly lead them to become household names or lead to the sustainable transformation of their communities.

Strategy # 3: Thrive on Natural Capital

Healthy soil provides our daily meals. Winds will blow, regardless of the raging political debate on the pros and cons of renewable energy. Ecopreneurs, by their very focus on enhancing, restoring or preserving natural and social capital through their business operations, will prosper in the emerging restoration economy. Implement The Natural Step framework, or use the Ecological Footprint analysis to guide how, what, and where your business (and life) ebbs and flows. Eliminate waste, for waste is simply lost profits.

As the availability of natural resources continues to decline while the demand for resources increases (thanks to an ever-growing human population and developments in China, India and other nations), just about everything will get more expensive. Many feel it at the pump and produce stand.

At Inn Serendipity, the more energy prices rise, the quicker our investments in renewable energy pay off. Swings in food prices have little impact on our enterprise, since we grow so much ourselves. That’s why we invest in the future, not save for it. Likewise, the more B&B guests who experience a shower with solar-heated water, the more people who realize that a break from fossil fuel is not only possible, it’s pleasurable.

Strategy # 4: Leverage the Local

A theme runs throughout our ECOpreneuring book: there’s a lot to be said for a local economy that’s largely about goods and services being exchanged among neighbors. A strong local economy can reduce shipping costs, exert fewer ecological impacts, offer greater social and community cohesion, result in more money circulated within the community rather than being siphoned off to some distant place, provide a more stable economy with jobs less dependent on distant decision makers and therefore more secure, and provide a genuine ability to build mutual trust among community business owners.

And so, as I mentioned in this post, Recession Proof Your Green Business, before you even consider embarking on an advertising campaign, you need:

….to ensure that you have a strong unique positioning and are promoting that differentiation at every opportunity.

This first step, which many small businesses skip, is critical to launching an effective advertising campaign,and is important for long term success as well. A few other tips for that are particularly important for ecopreneurs were noted in an recent article in Newsday, Small business: Avoiding advertising mistakes

1. Selling features, rather than benefits: You need to tell your target audience how your product or service will make life easier. “No one cares that the lawn mower you are advertising is 6 horsepower,” Preiser says. “They do care that the more powerful engine cuts mowing time by 40 percent.”

2. Undercapitalizing your ad campaign: Set a realistic ad budget. If you’re expecting to pay for your advertising campaign with the returns from sales generated by that campaign, you are doomed to fail, Preiser notes.

3. Trying to say too much in one ad: This is especially a problem for small businesses, because they often use small-space advertising, explains Larry Oakner, senior brand director at CoreBrand, a brand consulting firm in Manhattan. Instead, try promoting different products or services in different ads.

Wherever you decide to advertise, make sure you promote your green benefit, not only as opposed to non-green brands, but also compared to the benefits offered by your direct competition in the eco sphere. Start thinking like a traditional, non-green business early and watch your company grow as eco-brands become mainstream

Image Credit: Frankieroberto at Flickr under Creative Commons License

Related Posts:

Want An Eco Trademark? Stand in Line

Wal-Mart Tracks Green Product Adoption

Recession Proof Your Green Business

Even in financially tough times, these Strategies of Abundance reflect interrelationships between personal finance and business, especially for small business owners. The key for ecopreneurs is how they use their business to make the world a better place. Profits from a green enterprise are the catalyst for ecopreneurs to achieve their Earth Mission, whether to restore ecological integrity or make photovoltaic systems affordable to all.

STRATEGY #1: Stop paying the banker.

The longer you hold a mortgage, the more you work for the bank and the more profitable you make them. For comparison, below is a chart from our book, ECOpreneuring, reflecting how interest can pile up on a $100,000 mortgage at 7 percent interest for terms of 15 and 30 years. While the monthly payment is less for the 30-year mortgage (the primary reason many of us choose it), we end up paying more than double for the use of the same pot of money.

By accelerating our mortgage payments on our 30-year fixed mortgage by paying down the principal when we could, we have the ability to earn less income to pay the bank than if we did otherwise over the long-term. Prepayment on principal is usually acceptable and completely legal. Every time you pay down the principal, the remaining interest and balance is recalculated, meaning that more of your regular monthly payments go to the principal and not interest payments.

For example, in our very first homeowner mortgage payment of $722, only $7 went to principal and the remaining $715 went to finance charges. After the interest rates plummeted in the early 2000s, we refinanced the 30-year mortgage when we were able to secure a significantly lower interest rate, reducing the monthly payment to $653. Ten years later, after we realized just how much we were working for the bank and were well into our accelerated paydown of the principal, $610 of our monthly mortgage payment went to principal and $45 to interest. We paid off our farmhouse mortgage about two decades early, saving the need to earn about $95,000 in future income and freeing us to focus on the issues we cared about most, not making already profitable bankers wealthier.

The bank owns your house for many years before you have much equity (paid-off principal). By the end of a $100,000 mortgage, your $100,000 actually ends up costing you $239,508. As Rob Roy, author of Mortgage Free: Radical Strategies for Home Ownership, says, “If there is any question as to who owns your house, stop making your mortgage payment.” He, and we, suggests owning the house without the bank owning it for you. After all, the word “mortgage” is from the Old French, mort gage, or “death pledge.” We agree with Roy that prepayment of your mortgage is among the best investments you can make, the quicker the better.

Those who argue for the mortgage interest deduction benefit of holding a mortgage, they must regularly itemize their federal income tax return. If, on the other hand, you do not itemize deductions and take the standard deduction on your federal income tax return, having a mortgage serves no taxation benefit. For most Americans, you will come out ahead paying off the mortgage rather than saving a few dollars on your federal income taxes.

Mortgage interest, however, may help reduce your taxable burden on investment property where you have rental income, a topic for a future blog. In this case, an income producing asset (say a recreational cabin you rent out, proceeds from which pay the mortgage and support sustainable forestry) could be considered “good debt” since it generates positive cash flow and provides a good ROE, “return on environment” at the same time. A CPA and tax advisor can offer professional guidance.

Dumping debt also applies to credit cards, college or car loans and other consumer loans. Just one credit card debt with a balance of $15,000 and a monthly minimum payment of $300 based on an interest rate of 13 percent would take nearly 20 years to pay off, amounting to nearly $9,000 in interest, according to the website Cardweb.com. What good are contributions to a 401(k) or IRA with a stock portfolio earning 10 percent a year when you’re paying credit card debt at 16 percent? The same holds true for vehicle financing, especially if the financing offered is stretched over six years. Recent college grads don’t set out to be poor savers. On average, they’re saddled with a median undergraduate student loan debt of over $19,000.

How have you broken free from the financial stranglehold of our present debt-focused financial system?

But there are millions of ecopreneurial enterprises prospering throughout the U.S. and around the world. Perhaps you’re one, too.

So, we have formed a partnership with EcoSector.com, an on-line portal serving as a unique conduit for growing the green economy, offering opportunities to share video clips, feature photographs of products or services, and display blogs. Besides EcoSector.com’s search function, find possible funding support, announce new products or services, or inspire other ecopreneurs. It’s a dynamic ecopreneuring portal that incorporates ideas from those business owners who use it. Perhaps best of all, is completely free to use.

Among the many features which might help you launch or grow your business include:

• Secure possible funding support for your enterprise
• Foster business-to-business networking with other sustainable business enterprises
• Share your knowledge and experience to help inspire other ecopreneurs in as they launch or develop their enterprise
• Garner new business leads or sales
• Locate new employees or interns eager to work in the green economy for a sustainable enterprise
• Submit timely new information (for example, a press releases about a product launch) or events

Share Your Ecopreneur Profile on EcoSector.com

Submit your own ecopreneur profile on EcoSector.com and connect with other enterprising ecopreneurs who are changing the world for the better through the businesses they create. There is no fee to join the EcoSector.com portal.

For some ecopreneurs, it might even bring the needed capital to get their enterprise off the ground or develop it further. We look forward to learning more about your green business or enterprise.

After all, we, like many ecopreneurs we’ve interviewed or met, don’t live to work. Instead, we find our livelihood and the businesses we navigate deeply satisfying as we make the world a better place through the green businesses — for profit and non-profit alike — that we own or direct.

The key to our approach to ecopreneurship is looking to nature for inspiration. Our green business is both diversified in enterprises as well as the products and services we offer, filling economic niches in much the same way as plants, animals and fungi fill ecological niches that create sustainable, interdependent and healthy ecological systems. For example, there are thousands of bed & breakfasts in the U.S., but only a few that specialize in serving vegetarian (or vegan) organic breakfasts with ingredients mostly harvested a hundred feet from their back door, like we do. That the Inn is completely powered by the wind and sun and welcomes children as guests, serves as additional niche experiences we offer our guests who we generally refer to in our ECOpreneuring book as “conserving customers,” not consumers — but more on this in a future blog.

In any given year, our green business receives mini-paychecks from about 50 businesses including publishers and non-profit organizations, plus thousands of dollars from individuals who stay at Inn Serendipity, order products from our website or buy books at our speaking events. What we work on changes or adapts to new opportunities, interests, passions and our evolving Earth Mission.

Our Diversified Income-producing Portfolio of Work can be summarized as follows:

(a) Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast (29%): We manage all facets of this two
bedroom bed and breakfast, sharing cleaning, breakfast preparations and hosting guests.

(b) Consulting (18%): Because of our varied backgrounds and educational experiences, we’ve consulted on projects including database management, public relations, advertising and marketing endeavors.

(c) Freelance writing and photography (14%): Among our passions is the need
to express in words or photographs how we interpret the world. John’s photography and writing clients are varied and international, with a focus on tourism, environmental issues and sustainable development.

(d) Special projects (12%): Sometimes one-time opportunities offer the ability to generate our electricity or work on specially funded projects. This is the most serendipitous aspect of our income.

(e) Inn Serendipity Woods cabin rental (9%): We manage cabin rental contracts, website marketing and guest relations, while also maintaining the cabin and property. Much of our work on this 30-acre property is devoted to sustainable forestry (silviculture) and reforestation and organic agriculture (we rent a few acres to an Amish neighbor to grow corn organically, tilling, of course, with a horse team). Because we have no quarterly sales goals we must meet (or profits-focused shareholders), we can invest in the future abundance of the land and practice stewardship.

(f) Workshop facilitation and speaking (8%): Conferences and fairs allow us
to share our perspectives while learning about the many inspiring ways others
have embarked on similar journeys. From the renewable energy and sustainable living fairs to the Green Festival, our presentations or workshops hopefully jumpstart others into action and reinvigorate our commitment.

(g) Cottage retail store and book sales (8%): We sell our books, photography prints and handmade mugs to B & B guests.

(h) Authoring books (3%): Much more involved than writing for magazines or newspapers, authoring books provides an avenue to address in a comprehensive and artistic way those issues closest to our hearts. Income varies greatly from nothing in one year to several thousand dollars in another.

(i) Farm-direct agricultural products (1%): We sell super-energy-efficient LED lights for greenhouses, surplus flowers, vegetables, fruits and herbs grown on the farm, and eventually, unique, niche agricultural crops grown in the strawbale greenhouse.

We search for synergistic business activities that cross over from one project to the next, or help lead to new opportunities. While hired to complete a business and marketing plan for one non-profit organization, for example, we prepared a sample three-page feature article for a major statewide magazine and submitted it on spec (non-assigned) as a part of the public relations plan. It was accepted, helping position the organization as a conservation leader in the state. We synergistically cultivated both our PR skills and writing abilities to produce a better result for the client and possibly lead to future freelance writing projects for a statewide magazine. As knowledge workers with varied skill sets, we seek a natural balance of interrelated projects that challenge us while also helping us achieve our overarching Earth Mission.

A green business needs some money to make money. For ecopreneurs, money is a tool to serve their Earth Mission. Many have discovered how little they need, balanced by how creative they are in their approach to financing start-up. In today’s world of outsourcing and subcontracting, you really don’t need to own the factory any more. Profits can be plowed back into the business to grow and enhance the enterprise or be reduced by expenses associated with off setting carbon emissions, restoring the land or compensating vendors or employees beyond the “free market price” established for their services or products.

How have you created a diversified portfolio of work for your green business? More importantly, how have you used the profits of your business to reinvest in making the world — or your community — a better place? Within the next week, please consider sharing your own ecopreneur profile on our ECOpreneuring book website for others to be inspired by — or perhaps help you secure needed funds for your enterprise.

It turns out (fortuitously … I didn’t know this up front) that Xerox was planning to release a series of tips on this topic this week in anticipation of Earth Day. That information was released today:

• Cut paper use. Make two-sided prints and copies using the “duplex” function, print multiple images per page, and print only the quantity you need at the time you need it. Saving paper also saves energy: Environmental Protection Agency estimates say it takes 10 times more energy to manufacture a piece of paper than to create another print or copy.
• Recycle the paper you use, and use recycled paper. Install bins in several office locations to make it easy to collect paper for recycling or for reuse as notepaper. And commit to purchasing recycled paper – it can meet the same performance specifications as non-recycled paper.