A ‘Steve Jobs of Garbage’ Could Clean Up
Look around to the smog, the jagged Himalayas of solid waste and the hungry CFCs munching on the ozone layer and, all of a sudden, the phrase “a good environment for business” takes on a whole new meaning. The 1980s had entrepreneurs; the 1990s will have ecopreneurs.
The environmental and ecology movements have long had their articulate and charismatic visionaries--the Rachel Carsons, the Amory Lovinses, the Paul Ehrlichs, etc. What these movements have been missing, however, are visionaries with a feel for markets and technologies along with the ability to translate ecological ideals into economic realities. There’s not yet a Steven P. Jobs or a H. Ross Perot of the environment--an ecopreneur who can simultaneously excite both the media and the marketplace. But there will be.
“There seems to be an ecological imperative now,” says University of Pennsylvania Prof. Thomas P. Hughes, author of “American Genesis,” a history of American technology and industry. “We first create an intellectual revolution and a values revolution--and then we see a technological revolution. I think there are a great number of firms to be established and fortunes to be made here. There’s an advocacy for the environment today that’s similar to the ethic of mass production back in the 1920s.”
To be sure, an ever-evolving web of government regulation is spinning an infrastructure that encourages ecopreneurial investment and innovation. Environmental quality standards create market opportunities even as they address ecological concerns. Nevertheless, these standards don’t reflect a “no growth” mentality as much as they do an emerging consensus that we’d be smarter to help manage the environment than ignore it. Building those management tools and technologies represents a chance to build a new global industry.
That’s one reason why venture capital--normally the source of seed funding for high-tech ventures such as genetic engineering and silicon chip design--is beginning to spill into the environment.
“You go where the waste is,” says Oliver Nicklin, managing partner of the Chicago-based Environmental Venture Fund, a 2-year-old, $40-million venture capital fund that Nicklin claims is the first focusing purely on ecopreneurial opportunities. “It’s almost a bit of a perpetual growth industry.”
Where venture capitalists once thought ecopreneurialism a crazy idea, Nicklin reports that today he is invited to speak at industry functions, and some of the most prestigious names in venture capital now co-invest in his fund’s deals. “Estimates are that this industry is anywhere from $40 billion of $60 billion in size and growing,” he says. “You can make a lot of money if you have even a small piece of that.”
“There is enormous potential in many areas of the environment,” asserts Alan Lloyd, chief scientist of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. “People are now much more willing to invest and buy those products.”
Given the magnitude of Los Angeles’ environmental problems, Southern California is a sure bet to emerge as a hotbed and testbed of ecopreneurial activity. Lloyd sees market opportunities in technologies ranging from fuel cells for power generation to new types of chemical coatings that are less environmentally hostile.
Freeway smog, for example, is so corrosive that Lloyd anticipates an ecopreneurial niche in custom air filters to clean up the microatmospheres of California cars. “There should be a market for a filter to clean up air that’s coming into your car,” Lloyd says. “There are a lot of toxics in the air as people commute to work so if you spend a lot of time on the freeway, your exposure can be quite high.” The AQMD is now sponsoring workshops to encourage the diffusion of ecology-flavored technologies.
“We want to look at new technologies,” says William Ruckelshaus, the former Environmental Protection Agency director who’s now chairman and chief executive of Browning-Ferris Industries, the $2.5-billion-a-year giant of the solid waste management industry. “We get interesting ideas almost daily.”
Browning-Ferris recently launched a medical waste division that grew from “zero to a $100-million business in less than 24 months,” says Ruckelshaus, who stresses that there are numerous opportunities for both market segmentation and technology application in the waste management field. He sees an increasing role for genetically engineered waste-gobbling microorganisms in the “bio-remediation” of waste products.
Similarly, “If someone came up with a viable substitute for CFCs (the refrigerant chemical that has been linked to ozone depletion) that would be a huge market, and if acid rain legislation passes, that also creates enormous economic opportunities.”
In the same way that genetic engineering technology has created a fundamental discontinuity in the agricultural and medical industries, this new Greening of America creates a fundamental discontinuity in public attitudes that makes a fast-growth ecopreneurial industry a genuine probability.
Yes, there are established businesses such as Browning-Ferris and waste management, but with the shifts and swirls in attitudes, legislation and technologies--not to mention the influx of risk capital--today’s status quo doesn’t stand a chance. The Apple Computers, Genentechs and Federal Expresses of the environment are likely to be born in this decade; the children of 1960s Idealism and 1980s Greed. That’s not a bad pedigree at all, especially if it helps us breathe easier. Trend isn’t destiny--but this time, we better hope it is.
