Natural Capitalism
Natural Capitalism is a theory of Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins. It proposes that Seventh Millenium companies need to do four things to profit by taking advantage of major trends in ecology & economy:
- adopt energy conserving technologies, anticipating huge rises in energy prices; adopt material conserving approaches including recycling at all levels and product stewardship
- account for use of natural capital and for its destruction as conversion of a capital asset; permit energy and material savings to be invested in by third parties separately, as a different type of "savings bond", letting them share in the benefits of all savings of natural capital due to reduced energy, reduced resource inputs, and reduced waste outputs (for instance emission trading credits) - account for nature's services use.
- build industrial ecology so that waste outputs of one process are resource inputs of another; consider waste as resource at every level
- redefine all commodity and product offerings as service offerings, to expose hidden costs and ensure that state services and nature's services are not considered to be "free" but rather paid by tax and renewal.
Companies which adopt these strategies, e.g. Interface Corporation in the US, report great gains and have developed long term strategies for biomimicry.
natcap.org - Natural Capitalism - the book
Related strategies include Natural Step and ISO 14000.