Companies can be profitable building environmentally sustainable business models.
Looking back at my ten years in start-up and venture creation. I came to realize how little time was spent on environmentally sustainable opportunities. There is a common misconception throughout mainstream industry, and that is profitability is hard to generate when the sole focus is environmentally sustainable investments. Years ago, that level of thinking made total sense. Capitalists invested heavily in nonenvironmentally friendly industries and painted a picture of all the impossibilities when it came to making a living through ESG focused enterprises.
As a true political moderate, it isn’t difficult to see the flaws in the extreme right and left way of thinking. The partisanship created in Washington over the last twenty years is disturbing; and clearly not going away anytime soon. It’s truly up to the folks in rural and urban, NOT (rural vs. urban) areas to build our own futures outside of the federal government. So why not focus on a sustainable future, where companies are awarded for their planet saving ideology. A good friend of mine understands my appreciation for sustainability and overall feelings regarding the plastics industry. He turned me onto a podcast titled (Waste Land) by Planet Money. The hard reality is that very little gets recycled efficiently. For over 30 years, oil companies convinced the public that all their plastic trash could be, and would be recycled, when they knew it wasn’t true. They added the arrow/triangle recycling sign on everything plastic, and launched a giant marketing campaign to show they are environmentally conscious. The cost to recycle vs. the ability to produce new was so lopsided that it wasn’t worth the effort to recycle, and big oil knew that but they convinced the general population otherwise. Now who is left holding the bag? The plastic bag?
The goal of this article is not to beat up on companies that have paved the way for American capitalism. Rather, it is a genuine push to practice what you preach. The only thing constant is change, if you don’t adapt, you won’t evolve. Our revolution and upheaval as a society shouldn’t be targeted on race and fighting each other. Our protesting should be targeted/forcing Washington to implement real environmental impact. If enough of us band together we force the legislatures to cater to the masses. Change will and can occur when people collaborate towards a common goal. Now is our time to make the long-term impact and actually execute on the plan. Investors are struggling to find opportunities in ESG. There is more capital to deploy into public companies with an ESG focus, than there are companies to invest it in. Ask Black Rock Financial the complexity in finding investments to make in ESG focused companies.
We plan to do our part by an investment made in Bio Rejuv, LLC. which is a soy-based formula that is sprayed on asphalt shingles. The solution lengthens the lifespan of the asphalt roof by 10-15 years. If 1 percent of single-family homes (about 15 percent of yearly replacements) applied a SMEE (Soy Methyl Ester Emulsion) formula instead of replacing the roof, we could avoid 5.6 billion pounds of landfill waste and 1.1 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents in emissions.
Reach out with any and all ideas. Let’s make Johnstown, PA the center for all things ESG.