Working to Restore: Harnessing the Power of Regenerative Business to Heal the World

by Esha Chhabra

Overview

A 2023 Porchlight Business Book Award and Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award winner

Dispatches from the regenerative landscape, where pioneering entrepreneurs use their businesses as catalysts of change to go beyond sustainability and solve social and environmental problems

Political upheaval and social turmoil have peeled back the glitzy layers of capitalism to reveal an uncomfortable truth: historically, businesses have sourced materials from remote corners of the globe and moved millions of people and tons of cargo around the clock—all in the name of profit. Yet many of today’s startups are rewriting the rules of business: how it’s done, by whom, and, most importantly, for what purpose. Journalist Esha Chhabra draws on her decades of reporting to explore not only the “feel good, do good” factors of these restorative enterprises but also the nuanced realities and promise of regenerative business operations.

Working to Restore examines revolutionary approaches in nine areas: agriculture, waste, supply chain, inclusivity for the collective good, women in the workforce, travel, health, energy, and finance. The companies profiled are solving global issues: promoting responsible production and consumption, creating equitable opportunities for all, encouraging climate action, and more. Chhabra highlights how their work moves beyond the greenwashed idea of “sustainability” into a new era of regeneration and restoration.

We meet and learn from people like:

• Marius Smit, founder of Plastic Whale, the first company to build boats entirely out of plastic waste removed from our oceans and waterways
• Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion, cofounders of Veja, a shoe brand whose mission it is to make the most ecologically sensitive shoes possible
• Konrad Brits at Falcon Coffees, a trading company leading the way with a “collaborative supply chain” by investing in the local farmers who grow and harvest coffee beans
• “Chief Toaster” Rob Wilson and Tristram Stuart at Toast Ale, who partner with Wold Top Yorkshire Brewery to repurpose surplus bread and produce an award-winning IPA
• Scott Fry and Martha Butler of Loving Earth, a supply chain company that sources cacao from indigenous communities and brings their people and practices to the forefront

Working to Restore highlights our most innovative entrepreneurs yet, those who understand that we cannot expect to create radical change if we try to “sustain” a system that has long been broken. Instead, their efforts of restoration and regeneration should be used as a model for other forward-thinking enterprises. Inspiring and engaging, this book shows it is possible for a business to thrive while living its mission and how the rules can be rewritten to put both the planet and its global citizens at the center.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807093351
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.61(w) x 8.65(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Esha Chhabra is a writer who covers sustainability, international development, and the rise of mission-driven brands. She has spent the last decade contributing to a number of international and national publications such as The Guardian, New York Times, Wired UK, Washington Post, Atlantic, Fast Company, Forbes, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and more. She has been awarded multiple fellowships from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: The Regenerative Era

This is a book about business, about how to do business more thoughtfully, consciously, and equitably. In this increasingly divisive political and economic landscape, it’s become easy to point at what’s wrong with the world. Yet, in my journalism over the past decade, I’ve tried to focus on solutions: here’s the problem, but here’s a potential solution. That’s what this book is, an exploration of what’s possible, a smattering of stories from around the world that are held by one common thread: a regenerative approach to business.

It’s not a new idea, rather one that’s evolved. When I began my career, I started writing about social enterprise, the concept that business can have a social (or environmental) cause. It was a term that was coming into our everyday lexicon. There was a flock of people, asking is this the sole purpose of business — to make money for a select few at the top? Though there had been talk about the shortcomings of our capitalistic system, these social entrepreneurs were operating rogue, building nimble institutions, and often so deeply entrenched in the problems they were trying to solve that they were not known to the public.

That changed in 2006 when Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh won the Nobel Peace Prize for Grameen Bank, a microfinance institution, which gave loans to individuals and small businesses that traditional finance had deemed unreliable and glossed over. He then went on to argue for social business— a term that challenged businesses’ profit maximization. Instead, he argued that business should have earnings and profits, but those need to funnel back into the business itself and serve a greater purpose. All of a sudden, media started covering this convergence of philanthropy, business, and finance more closely. Yunus joked that he had been talking about these concepts for decades since he’d been building Grameen in the 1970s. But these ideas had fallen on deaf ears— that is, until he won a Nobel Peace Prize.

As humans, it seems that we always need a wake-up alarm: if someone famous says it, we all listen. Or if we hit rock bottom, we realize we went astray. Yet, so much of the injustices and damage we see in the world today is not a recent development. Remember the Disney movie Wall-E which came out in 2008 and was conceived long before then? A lonely robot cleaning up mounds of junk, courtesy of our obsessive consumption as a species. That was over a decade ago. The alarm bells were ringing then, and are still ringing.

As I write this book in summer, it couldn’t be more relevant: Los Angeles is hitting 110 degrees Fahrenheit today. The hum of ACs has become a daily backdrop. Some areas are surpassing that even, hitting 115 degrees in urban spaces, not the desert. Every day it seems that we’re breaking new records; news articles keep using the term “apocalyptic” to describe the changes around us.

Unfortunately, it’s not just my corner of the world. England is seeing a heatwave that’s turned the idyllic green pastures into dry, brown rolling hills similar to those here in Southern California. Norwegians are being advised not to barbeque in the 90-degree weather in their forests (out of fear that some “inexperienced” folks may leave their portable BBQs in the forest, causing fires). In Northern Africa, an area familiar with heat, the temperatures are surpassing 120 degrees Fahrenheit — too hot even for locals to continue with their work.

There is something to be said about this change. Whether you’re a believer of climate change or not, whether you argue that the Earth has natural swings in its weather patterns, it’s hard to negate the reality that we, as humans, are not helping the situation. We’re adding pollution and waste into the Earth’s system daily. Apparently, only 13 percent of the oceans are not affected by our trash, namely plastics. That plastic has entered our digestive system; yes, we’re excreting plastic. And all this waste for what? Stuff. Stuff that supposedly makes our lives better, easier, and faster.

But are we happier? Not necessarily. We have offset the balance. Just like our bodies rely on homeostasis, the Earth does too. And many would argue, the “stuff” is not making us a happier species. Rather we’re imbalanced and struggling to find a solution. Companies are looking to connect with a younger generation that’s after purpose. Surely, there must be a greater meaning in life than just acquiring things, accruing debt, and living in a hamster wheel — on an endless pursuit to pay the bills? Right?

This may all sound quite bleak. But there are solutions on the horizon. Using the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a rubric of 17 global goals which address all the fundamental social and environmental challenges we face, as a framework, this book looks at business models that take on each of these fundamental issues. Thus, the chapters are broken down conceptually, each one unraveling the stories of a few businesses that have structured their enterprise to tackle complex problems like soil health, renewable energy, waste systems, women’s rights, conservation of open spaces and wildlife.

Why the focus on business, instead of non-profits or social enterprises? Because it’s a powerhouse that can steer the economy, consumer behavior, and the impact all that has on Mother Earth in a different direction. It would be naive to say that business does not play a role in social and environmental problems: businesses employ people, source from remote corners of the globe, and move millions of people and cargo around daily. The business community can definitely put us on a different path. That is, if we look to support this type of business, which prizes restoration over growth.

We have seen the results of business that is fixated on ROI, global dominance, and feeding an elite group of shareholders. Many are fed up with this approach. Will it always be necessary to raise exorbitant amounts of funding? Will it always be necessary to be a global force to be profitable? Will it always be necessary to build supply chains that only favor the few at the top to make it a so-called successful venture? Certainly not.

As I have been reporting on the evolution of this business landscape, I’ve seen it mature from a simplistic idea of “buy one, give one” and corporate social responsibility to a more nuanced examination of business — the rise of B corps, the benefit corporation, the purpose-driven economy. This is all part of that new lexicon and a real challenge to the conventional thought that business is primarily a profit-seeking excursion.

But to build a company with a purpose is more than just about writing a mission statement, and slapping some inspirational quotes around the offices. Leaders of the political and corporate world say that we can build a more “sustainable” world. Yet they’ve been trying to since 1987 when the term sustainable development entered our lexicon: a 300-page report, titled the Brundtland Report, talked of building a more sustainable future. It listed the interlocked crises affecting humanity: water shortages, drought, famine, pesticide runoff, overdependence on chemicals. Sound familiar?

So can we really build a more sustainable world, given that we’ve been talking about the same issues for the past three decades? Everyone I met and spoke with for this book was pretty fed up of that word. Sustain what? This imbalance?

Instead, these entrepreneurs want to rewrite the rules of business to focus on transparency, simplicity, compassion, and equity. If these values were upheld, we could begin to restore the balance.

Let me be clear. There is no perfect solution. Humans create a footprint. It is in our nature to desire, lust, and run after what we do not have. Even many of companies highlighted in this book acknowledge that they’re producing a physical product; that will undoubtedly have a footprint.

But can we do it without the injustices of the modern supply chain, without exploiting populations, without over-extracting resources, without damaging what we need to live itself, the Earth?

Yes, very much so.

These are some stories of entrepreneurs who are trying to restore civility, integrity, and transparency to business. Many have been doing this long before it was trendy, long before these buzzwords existed even. They admit, their companies are not perfect. Nor do we put them up on a pedestal and celebrate them as heroes. But they are fusing elements of business that have long been practiced — a focus on quality, self-funding ventures, building slowly, developing community. Yet doing it in a manner that suits 2020 and the aspirations of future generations. And being transparent about the challenges along the way.

In a global world, it’s hard to operate in a silo. It’s unlikely that we’ll go back to cottage industries, and entirely local economies. Thus, it’s vital to look at companies that are working at scale, and across continents. These businesses are proving that we can source coffee from East Africa and have small farmers be a bigger part of the business model; have fashion-forward ethical shoes that are made entirely in one country, using natural materials, and shipped in empty spaces in containers; or take textile waste in factories, cut it up and turn it into new usable fabrics. The models exist if want to explore them, invest in them, and let them function without obsessing over growth.

This capitalistic world order we have created has deep roots around the world. Uprooting it and designing this new economy is not an overnight task. In fact, many of the companies discussed in this book have been at it for more than a decade—and progress is slow. The tentacles of “dirty” money have gone far and wide. The business practices that have led us to this point are entrenched. A quick cleanup will not work. It requires thought, reflection, tenacity, and a certain stubbornness by CEOs and founders to slowly build a new model.

There’s one critical difference to start with though: these companies are built around a challenge, a larger problem, an issue, not a lust for profits. Hence the goal is not growth, but to solve a riddle: how do you create a closed loop product? How do you make sure that every bit of your supply chain benefits from the business? How do you feed the planet, not pilfer it in the process?

These are individuals who are in the business of restoration, fixing a system that has long been lopsided, and fundamentally broken. Albeit their flaws, since no perfect solution exists, this could be the beginnings of a new era of regeneration.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
The Regenerative Era

CHAPTER ONE
Soil: The Most Fundamental Ingredient

CHAPTER TWO
Waste: Aiming for Circles, Not Straight Lines

CHAPTER THREE
Supply Chains: Valuing the Source

CHAPTER FOUR
Workforce: Building a People-First Company

CHAPTER FIVE
Women: Bringing Women to the Forefront

CHAPTER SIX
Travel: Thoughtful Tourism

CHAPTER SEVEN
Health: Health Care for People, Not Profit

CHAPTER EIGHT
Energy: Clean Energy for All

CHAPTER NINE
Finance: Investing in Humanity and Nature

EPILOGUE
Are We Getting Closer?

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Working to Restore is both beautiful and necessary. The idea that we can do things differently and enrich each other rather than only ourselves is powerfully animating and the examples in the book genuinely surprising. — Stephan Chambers, Director, Marshall Institute, LSE

As usual, entrepreneurs are leading the way to transformative approaches to what ails the world. Now, global leaders and corporate executives need to get onboard—and they can start by reading Working to Restore. — Tom Post, former Managing Editor, Forbes Media

Working to Restore provides inspiring, yet tangible examples from a wide range of sectors to demonstrate that there is enormous potential to reduce the environmental impact of commodities while also creating opportunities for business. Conservation and economic prosperity do not have to be mutually exclusive. I am hopeful that the compelling stories of business models and the people leading them captured in Esha’s book will continue to drive positive systemic change towards a sustainable future for people and nature. — Melissa Ho, VP of World Wildlife Fund

Editorial Reviews

With wit and energy, Chhabra introduces us to an exciting new business landscape.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The regenerative mindset enables you to sidestep getting mired in past or present challenges and catapults you and your work into the realm of the possible, the hopeful, the optimal. That’s what we love about Esha Chhabra’s Working to Restore.”
—Jay Coen Gilbert, cofounder of B Lab

“Uplifting, in every sense!”
—John Elkington, founder and chief pollinator, Volans, and author of Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism

“Provides inspiring yet tangible examples from a wide range of sectors of how to bring business back into balance and how to value what matters most: ‘simplify and spend time immersed in life, not stuff.’”
—Melissa Ho, vice president, World Wildlife Fund

“Working to Restore is essential reading as we work to solve the social, economic, and environmental problems of our times.”
—Ryan Gellert, CEO, Patagonia

“Considering the trouble our planet is in, effective engagement by the private sector is one of the few promising strategies left, and Chhabra gives us plenty of excellent examples for inspiration.”
—Gero Leson, vice president of special operations at Dr. Bronner’s and author of Honor Thy Label

“This book should be required reading for everyone, as we will all need to think like entrepreneurs in order to solve the complex problems we face in the world.”
—Shilpa Shah, cofounder of Cuyana

“Just the antidote to the doom and gloom we need for our time. The book can and should inspire a generation.”
—Maxine Bedat, author of Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment

“Both beautiful and necessary.”
—Stephan Chambers, director, Marshall Institute, London School of Economics

“As usual, entrepreneurs are leading the way to transformative approaches to what ails the world. Now, global leaders and corporate executives need to get on board—and they can start by reading Working to Restore.”
—Tom Post, former managing editor, Forbes Media

“In a world so focused on short-term profit that our very survival often gets short shrift, it’s easy to despair: what choice do we have? My advice: choose to read this book, to start. Esha Chhabra has traveled the world to share the stories of businesspeople with heart and vision, and after reading Working to Restore, it’s clear that a regenerative, healing approach to business can preserve jobs, economies, and the world. Be excited about the future for once! Covering novel business solutions in health, energy, finance, the environment, and more—from brilliant, creative people, rich and poor, on six continents—Chhabra offers the one solution we need most and can apply anywhere: a better way of thinking. This book offers practical hope, backed by effective actions. Make reading Chhabra’s work one of yours.”
—Bob Harris, author of The International Bank of Bob: Connecting Our Worlds One $25 Kiva Loan at a Time

“If capitalism is to be transformed into the engine of inclusive, just, and sustainable prosperity we need, a new generation of purpose-driven companies must lead the way. Chhabra’s compelling book tells the stories of some of the best of these game-changing businesses and is guaranteed to inspire.”
—Matthew Bishop, author and former business editor of The Economist

“Saving our planet always comes down to the same thing: talk less, do more. Business leaders have a responsibility to regenerate Earth and her communities by revolutionizing our economy—and Working to Restore tells the stories of exactly that. Thoughtful, probing, solution-oriented, and hopeful, this beautiful book portrays everything we need in this time of planetary crisis to reverse our current downward spiral back up into a more virtuous circle.”
—Elizabeth Whitlow, executive director, Regenerative Organic Alliance

“We are entering the Regenerative Era. Chhabra provides portraits of innovation, resilience, and commitment to the planet and humankind that can help lead business into this new era.”
—Dr. Robert Strand, executive director, Center for Responsible Business, University of California–Berkeley

From the Publisher

01/30/2023

Business “is a powerhouse that can steer the economy and consumer behavior, and the impact all that has on Mother Earth, in a direction for the better,” contends journalist Chhabra in her optimistic debut. She showcases companies that have developed ethical business models by prioritizing their “two major stakeholders”: Earth and its people. She profiles Barb Stegemann, founder of the Canadian 7 Virtues perfume company, whose insistence on developing a supply chain that offered dignity to all parties led her to contract with a rose blossom farmer in Afghanistan who desperately needed the financing after his orchard was devastated by warlords. Other businesses include a coffee company that pays high dividends to its Nicaraguan women employees, whose labor harvesting and processing coffee beans otherwise often goes unpaid; hoteliers whose facilities and tours of Flåm, Norway, provide eco-friendly alternatives to the cruise ships that pass through the town; and Indian engineers who developed a low-cost anemia diagnosis device for the country’s underserved rural population. Though Chhabra is clear-eyed about the broad, systemic changes needed to bring about a more just world, the uplifting stories she highlights show how individuals might create more equitable possibilities within the current system. Readers will be inspired. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2023-01-12
An account of the new wave of innovative companies working to protect the environment, improve equity, and rewrite the rules of business.

A freelance writer with a special interest in “mission-driven brands” who has received multiple fellowships from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Chhabra chronicles her travels around the world conducting wide-ranging interviews with business leaders committed to sustainability. For example, she describes pioneering farming methods aimed at reversing soil degradation and companies that are dedicated to treating waste as a resource. She is particularly impressed by a company that collects discarded plastic from Amsterdam’s canals and turns it into shoes and furniture and another that uses waste bread to brew boutique beer. Other companies are looking deeper, examining their supply chains, especially those that extend into developing countries, to ensure that their environmental impacts are minimal and workers are treated fairly. Novel business structures are emerging for firms that seek to combine social purpose with profitability, and they are finding solid customer bases. Chhabra is aware of the danger of “greenwashing,” where companies claim to be environmentally responsible but actually do very little. It’s important to look at the lifestyles of the company principal, which will reveal whether they are walking the walk. The author does not object to corporate philanthropy, but genuine engagement is more important than simply writing a check. She repeatedly returns to the point that consumers play a vital role. Much can be achieved by simply living with less stuff, thinking carefully about who you are buying from, and doing your best to recycle. Also, be ready to pay more for environmentally sustainable products; the price tag is not the only cost to consider. Chhabra avoids preachy rhetoric, and the overall tone of the book is optimistic.

With wit and energy, Chhabra introduces us to an exciting new business landscape.

Kirkus Reviews