Ecosystems and Cascading Returns

By Tim West
 
What can businesses learn by observing and replicating processes found in nature? Ecosystems provide the ideal example of a sustainable business model achieving cascading returns. 
 
Gunter Pauli, the founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives) describes the example set by nature as “the observation that all matter and energy cascades from one species to another. Such cascading of nutrients involves partaking of locally available resources, employing all contributors, and using the waste for one as the resource for another.”
 
Examples of this kind of business model can be found in action all over the world. Professor Jorge Alberto Vieira Costa’s work in Porto Alegre, Brazil, demonstrates how an excessive or unbalanced by-product can be converted from pollutant to a resource. It redirects CO2 emitted from the local coal-fired power station to nourish spirulina algae, producing protein-rich food supplements and sustainably harvested biofuels. The additional investment costs are low since the infrastructure required is already available in the station’s warm water retention basin.
 
In other models, waste biomass becomes the growing medium for desirable mushrooms; this spent substrate becomes protein-rich feed for livestock. In turn, the animals’ manure, inoculated with bacteria, generates biogas in a digester. The slurry released from the digester becomes the nutrient source for algae farming; and the residual water promotes prolific growth of benthos, phyto- and zooplankton that become fish food.
 
Applying these concepts to the industry that you are involved in may at first seem abstract and definitely requires some lateral thinking. However, it could be as simple as leveraging your sphere of influence to convert affiliate product sales, or bringing a commoditized service in-house to complete the cycle or close the loop.
 
Minimise waste, use one product to create demand for another, and focus on what you already have in your ecosystem to produce cascading returns.
 
Tim West is the managing director of Firm Unitied Holdings, an investment vehicle established in 2007.