The old adage just might be true — less is more.
That’s certainly the case at Elmira’s Enviro-Stewards, a consulting firm that helps businesses find ways to cut consumption and costs — and help the environment at the same time.
Bruce Taylor, president of Enviro-Stewards, has found a niche that suits him to a tee — he gets to use his engineering skills to help companies, knowing that his work is also helping the environment.
Enviro-Stewards recently earned the relatively new B Corporation designation, and is one of only 20 companies in Canada that has this status. The B Corp designation essentially means that Enviro-Stewards is about much more than making money — it has to be socially and environmentally responsible.
It’s recognition for something the company is already doing, something it has, in fact, been doing for the past ten years of its existence. Taylor’s entire concept for his company flies in the face of what most CEOs envision when they start a new company — it’s more about people than money, a foreign concept to many.
The fact that Enviro-Stewards exists, however, points to something that is very wrong in today’s society. That is, we have far too much waste.
For Taylor, his bread and butter comes from corporations who, while willing to reduce their consumption, really have no idea of how much they are wasting, until he comes along.
Companies that Taylor has helped have been able to reduce their consumption of energy and raw materials by tremendous amounts, in operations that were not obviously inefficient. The fact that we can waste this much without realizing it is symptomatic of where we are, as a society.
In this week’s paper, we also featured the fundraising efforts of Calvary United Church, a church that will be collecting electronic waste this weekend, raising money towards its mission trip.
What they are doing is laudable, but it reminds us, once again, of how much our society is willing to waste.
Whether it is the quickly obsolete laptop or cell phone, or an analog television set, we all have something taking up extra space in our homes, in part because we are convinced that we need to have the latest gadget, right now.
This year’s Playbook will be next year’s e-waste. What a sad state of affairs.
We repeat this in all areas of our life — whether it is in our recycling bins, filled with the excess packaging of our toys, or the green bins, overflowing with food we didn’t eat.
While we are thankful for the programs and businesses that are out there to handle our excess, whether it is Enviro-Stewards and its visionary approach, or the Region of Waterloo with its green bin program, it still reminds us of one thing — we can do more to reduce our impact on this earth.
After all, judging by what we are seeing, we certainly couldn’t do less.