Small Wonders Press Kit

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A Report of the Center for Small Business and the Environment

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ABOUT CSBE

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75 28 go he origins of the Center for Small Business and the Environment (CSBE) actually

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back to 1973 when British economist E. F. Schumacher published Small is Beautiful, a

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prophetic book that critiqued the “big is better” assumptions of conventional economics

Green Jobs and celebrated, instead, the role of small-scale enterprise as a principal protectorDecentralization and

restorer of the environment.

Small is Beautiful attracted the attention of Byron Kennard, a community organizer whose work for the Conservation Foundation in the 1960s had helped lay groundwork for the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Schumacher became Kennard’s friend and mentor and the two worked together to realize the book’s vision until the former’s death in 1977.

Decades later, Kennard observed that the revolution in communications technology vastly strengthened and expanded the capacity of small-scale enterprises to achieve efficiencies and to

produce environmentally benign innovations. In the Information Age, he realized, small is more beautiful than ever. To exploit this new and huge potential for environmental good, Kennard founded CSBE in 1998.

Today, CSBE operates as a grassroots voluntary network of small business people who share the belief that entrepreneurial creativity and drive can protect the environment while creating jobs and economic growth.

Specifically, CSBE has identified and promoted profitable and successful small business models for environmental action. Our projects and reports have shown how countless small businesses are: * Dramatically reducing their energy consumption through conservation and efficiency; * Creating innovations that solve or reduce environmental problems while creating new jobs; and * Mobilizing to support greening initiatives because they benefit economically.

To find out more about CSBE please visit www.aboutcsbe.org.

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ABOUT SMALL WONDERS

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mall Wonders is a report authored by the Center for Small Business and the Environment (CSBE). It is the first assessment that’s ever been made of the widespread and proliferating phenomenon of small green businesses.

The report describes a thriving new world of enterprise and innovation that’s been largely hidden from view because small green businesses are so decentralized, diverse, and dynamic. But when viewed as a whole these firms are revealed as agents of profound change, revolutionizing technology, transforming culture, and realigning the political debate.

The recession has slowed but certainly not stopped the momentum of green entrepreneurship. The current evidence is that small companies

engaged

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technology, energy efficiency, green building, and organic agriculture seem to be puttering along pretty well. In this recession, these green sectors are likely to be emboldened by

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entrepreneurs driven by a thirst for innovation and the daring of the hungry. It is these entrepreneurs that will drive job growth and economic development helping forge a new (green) economy.

The full report can be downloaded at www.smallwondersreport.org on June 10, 2009.

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MEET THE AUTHORS: BYRON KENNARD 13

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BYRON KENNARD Founder and Executive Director The Center for Small Business and the Environment

Byron Kennard is a long time advocate for both the environment and small-scale enterprise whom Amory Lovins, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute, describes as “the environmental movement’s greatest organizer.”

Inspired by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Kennard minted his environmental credentials working for Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification program and helping organize the 1965 White House Conference on Natural Beauty.

Working as a community organizer for The Conservation Foundation in the late 60s, Kennard helped organize the first Earth Day, laying the groundwork for the worldwide explosion of civic and political activism that followed in its wake. The United Nations Environment Program awarded him the Leadership Medal for “distinguished contribution to the cause of the environment” as a result of this work.

“Always ahead of others, Byron was making things happen for the environment before most people knew what the word meant,” recalls Lee Botts, founder of the Lake Michigan Federation (now the Alliance for the Great Lakes) and herself one of the pioneer environmentalists. “Back in those days, he established a national network of activists and today he is still doing that, now on behalf of small business. I am still trying to keep up with him.”

In the 1970s, Kennard collaborated closely with the late E. F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful.

Schumacher, Kennard’s mentor, taught him the overriding importance of scale, why the size of things matters socially, economically, technologically, even politically. Kennard determined to propagate this idea and this task has been his passion ever since.

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Two decades later, Kennard noticed how Decentralization Green Jobs Information Age technologies were vastly expanding the capacities of small-scale enterprises. In 1998, he founded the Center for Small Business and the Environment (CSBE) to promote green small businesses and entrepreneurs. As Bill Drayton, Chair of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, put it, “Byron’s creativity and organizing genius spotted this critical leverage point and is helping these innovating small firms work together to exploit it.”

During the past decade, Byron built and orchestrated a vibrant network of small business leaders and green entrepreneurs around the country. This network serves a mission of growing consequence. Recently, Kennard has been lauded by Todd McCracken, President of the National Small Business Association for “getting small business a seat at the table where critical energy-policy decisions are being made,” and by Senator John Kerry for “bringing small business into the global warming debate.”

“Byron Kennard is amazing,” declares Scott Hauge, founder of Small Business California. “Imagine a fellow who, decades ago, was a principal organizer of the environmental movement, being today the principal organizer of a new movement which, though just getting off the ground, promises to become as consequential as the one he helped launched in 1970. What’s more, he’s done this armed only with a telephone and a computer.”

Mike McCabe, former Deputy Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, who’s known and worked with Kennard for 30 years, says that “The really interesting thing about Byron is that he plays his best game with a weak hand.”

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MEET THE AUTHORS: ELAINE POFELDT 13

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ELAINE POFELDT Former Senior Editor Fortune Small Business

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Elaine Pofeldt is a former Senior Editor of FORTUNE Small Business magazine. She’s written stories for Decentralization Green Jobs Crain’s New York Business, E Magazine, Inc., Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Working Mother, and other publications.

Currently, Elaine also does editorial web consulting for clients including Time Inc. Content Solutions. Elaine has been nominated for the National Magazine Award for feature writing.

Elaine is a graduate of Yale University, with a B.A in English.

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MEET THE GREEN ENTREPRENEURS

Small Wonders describe scores of small green businesses. Here are some of them: AFS Trinity Power Corporation (afstrinity.com), located in Bellevue, Washington, has produced two full-size, plug-in hybrid electric SUV prototypes that get 150 miles per gallon.

AFS Trinity is proposing to lease or acquire a moth-balled or soon-to-be-mothballed Big Three auto plant to manufacture its products.

Aquapoint in New Bedford, Massachusetts, designs and manufactures small-scale wastewater treatment technologies for decentralized sewer systems. These technologies generate greater cost-benefit advantages than those associated with conventional technologies.

Edenspace, a small business in Kansas, seeks to reduce dependence on fossil fuels through innovative applications of plants for renewable fuels.

The company is developing plants that contain enzymes in the stems and leaves that will help them turn into ethanol more easily.

Fairmount Minerals in Chardon, Ohio is one of the largest producers of industrial sand in the United States. The company restores the land of its mining pits to create bird habitats, efforts that won it the Environmental Business of the Year Award from the Audubon Society of Michigan in 2005. In 2007, The National Association of Manufacturers gave Fairmount the first annual NAM Sandy Trowbridge Award for Excellence in Community Service.

Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis, Minnesota sells “planet saving” pizza. To back up this claim, Galactic delivers its pizza via all-electric vehicles and costumes its delivery staff as comic book, planet-saving heroes like Superman. Galactic powers its restaurant by wind energy. Its menu features produce purchased from nearby farms. The restaurant’s packaging is made mostly of recyclable or biodegradable material. Food waste from the restaurant is recycled at a pig farm.

GridPoint of Arlington, Virginia, is one of many small businesses launching a revolution through “smart grid” technologies that provide homeowners, businesses, and utilities with vast amounts of information about precisely how, where, and when energy is actually being used. This enables both consumers and producers of energy to achieve high levels of energy conservation and efficiency.

Oakhurst Dairy in Portland Maine is the largest family run business of its kind in northern New England. Oakhurst buys milk from about 85 independent farms in Maine. The dairy has installed 80 panels on the roofs of its Portland plant, to heat the water used to pasteurize milk and clean its milk cases. The company’s goal is to reduce the carbon emissions from its production and distribution activities by 20% by 2010, from a high point of 1,700 metric tons a year in 1998. Oakhurst has made an approximately 15% reduction so far in its footprint.

The Raritan Inn, a bed and breakfast, in Califon, New Jersey, is entirely self-sustaining, needing no outside electricity or heating. The Inn relies on solar energy and geothermal heating to make its buildings super-efficient.

Solaren, a Southern California startup, plans to launch the world’s first space-based solar power plant. The company’s prospects are sufficiently good that Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation (PG&E) is negotiating with it. The aim is to get power from a source that’s available around the clock and year-round.

Solargenix Energy, a North Carolina company, built the first manufacturing plant to be constructed in south Chicago in 35 years. The company makes solar water heating collectors.

The city of Chicago, as part of the deal, purchases these water heaters for use in fire houses, police stations and other municipal buildings.

Southwest Wind Power located in Flagstaff, Arizona is the world’s largest manufacturer of small wind turbines The company sells its products in 120 countries. Southwest Windpower received the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Exporter of the Year Award for 2009.

The Stella Group, a firm owned by renewable energy advocate Scott Sklar, has constructed an 880-square-foot two-story office building behind Sklar’s home in North Arlington, Virginia. Atop the structure is a small wind turbine which generates electricity for the building. The roof also has solar electric roofing shingles, with electricity stored in a battery bank. Inside, there are double-paned, argon-filed windows, thermal barrier paint, and thick insulation in the walls and ceiling to conserve energy. A ductless heat pump provides efficient heating and cooling, while a simple ceiling fan keeps the air flowing. The lighting comes from energy-saving coldcathode compact fluorescent bulbs and bundled LED light bulbs. These technologies generate almost all of the 1.5 kw of energy the building uses daily.

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www.smallwondersreport.org Press Contact: kgomez@loudmouthdc.com The Center for Small Business and the Environment PO Box 53127 Washington, DC 20009 02

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Tel: (202) 332.6875

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