Many Friends have become increasingly concerned that our current economic system is not sustainable. Clearly, a perpetual growth economy is not possible within the limits of Earth’s biosphere. As one who has long carried this concern, I was captured some years ago by the inspiring model of Gaviotas, a sustainable community in Colombia. When circumstances provided an extraordinary opportunity to visit the community in June 2005, the dynamic Gunter Pauli turned out to be our guide. Gunter’s work with Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI), provides a shining light—an example of an entirely different way to do business.

Turning Waste into Revenue for the Poor

Gunter Pauli founded ZERI on the idea that principles of the natural world can be applied to human manufacturing and waste removal practices, transforming those wastes from an expensive and sometimes toxic nuisance into a benign and revenue-producing resource. Since its founding in 1994, ZERI has put into practice more than 80 demonstration projects worldwide that turn waste into jobs for the impoverished.

Born in Belgium and fluent in seven languages, Gunter Pauli is a man of vision, passion, and literally bursting with remarkable energy. In his twenties, determined to get earth friendly detergents onto mainline supermarket shelves, he founded Ecover, which manufactures eco-detergents from tropical vegetable oils in a facility that was an early model of green design.

Yet, in the midst of this financial success, he says he “hit a brick wall” when he realized that although his “green” cleaning products were certainly much less environmentally damaging than traditional cleaning products, he was actually utilizing less than 5 percent of the total plant material from which they were derived. The rest—95 percent—was being discarded as waste. With that came the realization that he needed to take responsibility for the massive amounts of waste his production process was creating.

ZERI Founded in 1994 on Five Design Principles

By the age of 38, Gunter had figured out a way to become a part of the solution. At the United Nations University in Tokyo, in 1994, he founded ZERI to demonstrate that there is another way for humans to interact with the earth’s natural resources. Inspired by the work of Lynn Margulis and the harmonious and interdependent relationships among the five kingdoms of nature (plant, animal, fungus, algae, and bacteria), Pauli identified what he calls the “five design principles”:

1. Whatever is waste for one species is a nutrient or food for another species belonging to another kingdom;
2. What is a toxin for one organism, is a nutrient or neutral for another belonging to another kingdom;
3. Whenever highly complex ecosystems operate, viruses will become inactive and even disappear without causing harm once passing through at least two other kingdoms;
4. The more local and the more diverse a system, the more productive and the more resilient; and
5. Whenever species of five different kingdoms live and interact in an autopoietic system, they can integrate and separate all matter at ambient temperature and pressure.

In its first four years, ZERI established teams in Japan, South Pacific, Latin America, and Africa. Using the five design principles, the teams created pilot projects where waste was put to productive use and/or where the combination of kingdoms was creating a synergy that led to much greater production.

Manizales, Colombia: Coffee Waste Provides Jobs for Abused Women

The morning ritual of pouring boiling water through finely ground roasted coffee beans, results in a rich, dark liquid that starts the day for untold millions. Yet, how many realize that liquid we sip represents a mere 0.2 percent of the original coffee berries harvested on our behalf? The remaining 98 percent is currently discarded as waste.

In Manizales, Colombia, we visited a ZERI demonstration project that provides an income for formerly abused women who use a small portion of one coffee facility’s waste—shredded hulls of the coffee berries from which the beans are extracted and the residue of the instant coffee manufacturing process—to grow economically prized oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus).

The women mix the waste with water in a huge vat, heat the slurry, drain and cool it, then stuff the resulting substrate into plastic bags, which they inject with spores of the oyster mushroom through the sides of the bags. After several weeks in darkness, the mushrooms grow out through the holes in the plastic and are easily harvested. The bags are then returned to darkness for another two additional growing cycles, until the lignin and cellulose in the substrate is digested by enzymes produced by the mushrooms. The digested substrate is a nutritious feed for chickens and pigs. Thus, formerly discarded waste has been transformed into two revenue streams.

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