The biggest surprise of the last month’s EcoTuesday was the speaker herself. Megan Fluke is a very unassuming person in real. You would think of her as a girl next door. But when she began talking about the things she believed in, the audience of about 15 was spell bound. Indeed, she has so much experience and total conviction in what she believes in. Sierra Club cannot have a better person in grassroots organizer than Megan. She talked about the communities of the future, which are climate friendly.

I'm excited to tell you about an upcoming conference the Social Enterprise Summit, which will be happening here in San Francisco from April 28-30th. The theme of this year’s conference is “New Approach, New Economy: Realizing the Potential of Social Enterprise,” which is recognizing the power of social enterprise as a new sector that can address the social, economic and environmental issues of our current times. They say that there will be 600 other social entrepreneurs there, which is pretty cool. I love learning new ways that we can tap into the potential of this growing sector. To register, click here.

The program for the conference is packed with fantastic speakers and meaningful breakout sessions and workshops in the areas ranging from finance to strategy to policy. They will also be offering opportunities to pitch your ventures and receive valuable feedback from capital investors, as well as extra time to connect with the speakers. The conference host, the Social Enterprise Alliance, is an organization that serves as an industry advocate, a resource hub of information, and community builder for creating thriving social enterprises. In the conference’s 11th year, the SE Alliance is looking forward to making this year the best. I hope to be there for the entire three days. Please let me know if you’ll be there, too!

Anthony Tsai of Urban Solutions made a great point during last week’s talk – “Sustainability can actually save money”. His talk was refreshing for a small business. Small business by definition is barely able to make ends meet. In this tight economic entity, every penny saved is every penny earned. Urban Solutions as a non-profit organization, is helping such businesses save substantial dollars while promoting sustainability principles. Started as an organization to promote businesses in the low-income neighborhood of San Francisco’s sixth street, this organization has grown into helping businesses to become green and at the same time save money. For example, in one of the businesses, they went in and changed the old inefficient fluorescent lamps with efficient ones, saving 40% on their electricity bills. Anthony points out in this instance everybody benefits as PG&E can divert the savings to other areas where it is needed. 

Anthony was advocating for a complete sustainability framework, where one should not limit to just electricity and water to look for sustainable savings. The three main areas where savings are huge include: energy usage; water usage and garbage disposal. Energy and water are fairly well understood. Garbage is the least understood of the three. Anthony prescribed that every business should look into the amount of garbage generated more carefully. They should divert most of the garbage generated into recycling bins. The more they shrink the size of the regular garbage bins, better it is for the environment.

Overall, the talk was quite enlightening to most of the attendees. His experience in analyzing the rainforest in Borneo for carbon credits was unique. The greatest learning from the talk and the experience of Anthony was that it does not take much to be on the path of sustainability. Sustainability begins with everyone looking at their own lifestyle to realize the savings.