The Ecology of Commerce

"Business needs a new language, a new role, a new way of seeing itself within the larger environment."

"Because the richer northern countries do not see or experience the impact they have on their poorer southern nations, we do not realize what a powerful and destructive impact our demand on carrying capacity is having."

"We need a different kind of growth, one that reduces and changes the inputs of raw materials and energy, and simultaneously eliminates the outputs of waste."

"Under the "products of service" concept, manufacturers would view both the materials and the methods of production in an entirely new way, since they would always have to imagine how they would reuse and reclaim the product upon its return."

"Markets are superb at setting prices, but incapable of recognizing costs."

"The sheer size of the largest corporations tends to grant them the political and economic power to externalize costs that should properly be absorbed by the company and therefore be factored into the price it sets for its product."

"By nature, by law, and by tradition, corporations often place their interests above others, including those of the community, the state, and the environment."

"The growing power of corporations has not been accompanied by any comprehensive philosophy, any ethical construct, other than the accumulation of wealth as an end of itself."

"One of the purposes of the restorative economy is to ensure that innovative commercial options have a chance to survive in the monoculture of corporate capitalism."

"We must design a marketplace that obviates acts of environmental destruction by making them extremely expensive, and rewards restorative acts by bringing them within our means."