Category: Ethics

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A Values-based Business

1. Sustainable – both in terms of itself as a business and of the products it will sell.

2. Values – for the company, society and the environment.

3. Ethical – in all aspects of the business.

4. Alleviates Poverty – to help those smaller producers to get to a market.

I am still formulating these ideas and what they mean.

Let me give you an example, a Woodturner in the UK, will often sell their crafted products at summer shows. Using the winter to make and the summer to sell often travelling around the country to a series of major agricultural or regional events. Competing with all the other sellers in the craft tent.

It is often a part-time job, requiring another source of income. 

Do we want to help them? Do they want to be helped? I would like to think so.

The costs and the sustainability will require their products to be small runs, not huge manufacturing runs. Consumers will have to understand that something available today may not be available tomorrow. 

Similarly with a village in Africa, if a set of suitable products can be shipped or air freighted and the margins benefit the poor in that society. Are we prepared to incur the pollution aspects of that shipping – I would say so, but would prefer that ships are used even if they then take a long time to arrive. Both for the business and in terms of returns for the village. 

We are,  therefore, in need of a clear set of Do’s and Don’t’s which will guide the business as its concepts develop. Both now and in the future. Business must change and adapt otherwise they die.

The Journey Begins

It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child – African Proverb

Sierra Espuna, Murcia, Spain

This blog is about my journey to create a sustainable business. As someone who has been involved with wildlife and ecosystems since childhood I understand the value of natural systems both for humans and wildlife. In medieval England each village would have had its own wood. A place for the village to obtain the resources it needed to build house and furniture, to gather herbs, fruits and nuts, to hunt deer and wood pigeons.

Today we obtain out needs via the Internet from global resources. Often without knowing or understanding the impact we ask of the resources from the location where our item has arrived.

I am on a journey to create a value-based enterprise, which will source sustainable products and encourage people to change from plastic to renewable and sustainably manufactured products and in the process help communities around the world to grow and prosper.

This is not a journey I want to do on my own. Perhaps you also have a similar ethos and value system? Perhaps you just think what I am trying to do is sensible and are interested to follow my journey. Let me know what you think. I am loath to have a Facebook or other social media, but welcome comments and ideas and indeed suggestions on things I might have overlooked.