Regenerative Practices
Through Nature’s Blueprints
What does it mean to be regenerative?
Is sustainability enough?
Extractive - Doing Harm
Sustainable - Minimizing Harm
Regenerative - Leaving It Better
“If your marriage counselor asked you how everything is going and you responded ‘It’s sustainable’ - how do you think your partner would feel?”
Regenerative agriculture means enhancing the resiliency of farms, boosting sustainability and biodiversity in the process. It takes a holistic approach to farming that considers the entire ecosystem, compared to industrial farming which is more about scheduling inputs and outputs to attain short-term goals.
Minimize soil disturbance | Maximize crop diversity | Keep the soil covered
Follow crop rotation | Integrate Livestock
Regenerative Business Practices are ones that leave capital intact or better off functionally speaking and which do not draw down resources.
Whereas a sustainable firm seeks merely to reduce its ecological footprint, a regenerative company boldly seeks to increase its socio-ecological handprint—as Harvard professor Greg Norris puts it—by restoring the health of individuals, communities and the planet. In doing so, regenerative businesses can achieve greater financial performance and impact than their sustainability-focused peers.
Although many enterprises and manufacturers have taken major steps to make their supply chains more sustainable in an effort to fight climate change, are we there yet?
GM recently appointed its first chief sustainability officer Dane Parker to drive the carmaker and the nation towards an all-electric, zero-emissions future (GM plans to produce 20 new all-electric vehicles by 2023).
By adopting the circular economy principles aimed at zero-waste, SC Johnson has already made 94% of its plastic packaging recyclable, reusable, or compostable.
Levi Strauss is shaking up the apparel sector, a top contributor to global warming, by committing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions within its own facilities by 90% by 2025.
These are notable steps which should be applauded, but regenerative doesn’t stop at sustainable efforts and should spread across the entirety of an enterprise, community or individual. Taking into consideration:
Business | Ecosystem | Stakeholders | Design | Technology | Data
Incorporating Nature’s Blueprints
Adapt
Evolve
Re-Create
Inspiration from Nature
Nature does not see a problem and then set out to find a solution. Rather, nature reacts to the present reality not with solutions but adaptations. It takes what is already there and builds what will fit. The resilience that is nature doesn’t look to question setbacks; it reacts, it pushes forward, it evolves.
The foundations of evolution offer a complex yet simplistic way of doing things that is not based on this endless cycle of damage control. Long before humankind sought to control our own destiny’s, quite frankly long before humankind existed, nature was creating all sorts of complex structures. And the end result exists all around us, endless blueprints that contain fascinating and elegant solutions to problems that we have never considered.
One of the most important lessons of these solutions, is that it is never so simple as good and bad, but how you can use what is already there most effectively and to create the best opportunities.
Yes, we constantly seek solutions but we also need a new way of looking at things moving forward.
Here at Walden Gathering, we will discuss what regenerative models and principles look like for our:
Selves | Businesses | Communities
A thriving ecosystem should be the norm, not the exception.
And so it only makes sense to come together to explore how to use Nature and our surroundings to find inspiration for regenerative practices.
Join the Discussion!
Why Gather?