GREENING UP!

Ancient Circles is “Going Green.” This is becoming an interesting and not altogether simple process. In this early stage - it still comes down to price points and sourcing. My tried and true suppliers are not able to easily source Organic or other sustainable materials at a price my current customers want to pay. What to do? Do I educate my customers & help my suppliers to source? Cut my margins? Find entire new markets? At what cost? As we all know - 25 years of sound business policy cannot be turned on its head overnight just because we are in a planetary crisis…but wait! What did I just say?

INCREMENTAL STEPS

Ancient Circles/Open Circle is making incremental steps and organically changing our product mix. We began several years ago by fabricating market and bottle bags locally, and also found conventional cotton bag suppliers overseas and printers in the USA. Reclaiming scrap and remnants from the production waste stream is also fun and the creative use of such things have offered Open Circle some of our best selling items in the last few years. I am now sourcing Organic Certified Fair Trade tote bags and bedding that fits with current market pricing profiles, and educating my more innovative customers about selling such things. The next logical step is to produce my entire best sellers in Organic cotton or hemp, but will people pay the price increases necessary? I am at a loss to begin that, to be honest, but happy with what has happened so far.

YOUR UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

There are other things we can do. Each business has a unique opportunity:

Open Circle has helped finance the installation of a simple dye waste treatment plant for my batik artist in Bali. Once I figure out how to post pictures, I will show you the building process in another article, meanwhile - write to me if you want to know how to design thsi low tech waste treatment for your own dye studio.

FABRICOLOGY
I have been researching rayon to see if it better for the planet than conventional cotton, and so far - I think it is. Balinese rayon products made by a small supplier, with good working conditions and family continuity can have a Green edge even though the Balinese cannot easily source Organics. I call these items “Fairly Traded”, as they adhere to the principles of fair trade agreements.

It sometimes comes down to the Shade of Green.

SIMPLE FIRST STEPS

I also have been offering flex-time for employees, reduced days a week ( saves commute energy) have been recycling and reusing most paper products, packing boxes and materials, using light wells and low energy lights, turning off office machines at night, flushing less often, and many other simple energy reductions. Solar would be great - but since I am renting that is a problem. Many businesses are in the same boat. We cannot install solar, radiant heat, or other large ticket energy savers without our landlord’s interest and frankly - financial backing. Why am I so interested in Greening my business?

ANCIENT CIRCLES HISTORY

Let’s begin with some history.

Ancient Circles began over 25 years ago with my discovery of meaningful ritual and a concurrent desire to create jewelry and designs that enhanced and empowered people’s lives. At that time, I was fabricating crystal pendants - hand making each one as the energy of the stone spoke to me. The crystals were very clearly part of our new Planetary harmonic, and it felt very right to be sharing them at that time. This successful launch evolved into a study and sharing of the symbolic images of world religions and ancient cultures- especially Goddess images and Celtic designs, which I felt strongly were bringing us all “back home” to our tribal roots and Planetary consciousness. Now, years later, the mass market has taken these images into our daily lives. Dragons, Fairies, Goddesses and the Green man are all about us now, and I feel that the arrival of the Divine Feminine as rightful counterpart to the Male God energy is also arriving for us all as we begin to reconsider the Green meaning of our lives.

GREENING OF THE SPIRIT

The spiritual background and discovery of our Ancient Roots is a great starting point for deep ecology - that deep “knowing” that does not require scientific proof of a melting arctic ice shelf to know that we are out of balance.

The Greening of our inner spirit with positive Male (The Green Man) and Female (Triple Goddess, Isis and others) Archetypes is offering us a way to connect with forgotten or untapped layers of our being. The outer world reflection of this rebalancing is seen in the current collective interest in Ecological matters, the Greening our lives, our material possessions and businesses. Many of us are in this place right now, right today. I feel strongly that soon we will evolve our deepest and truest values further – to a future of simplicity, fewer material goods, a sense of place, of community, of extended family and shared commons. This is - of course, not new at all, but rather a return to the ancient ways of our ancestors. We lost touch as we “partied” in the last millennia of cheap energy - especially the gross burning of an entire planetary supply of ancient sunlight - coal and oil resources.

GREEN VALUES

This re-newed emphasis on deep values is a necessary spiral curve as humans evolve to survive in the crisis ahead. Re-valuing love of family, re-considering nature, the beauty of sustainable goods, all of these outer signs are created and matched by a less obvious personal inner transformation. These are the elements of my own transition at this time, and I feel it being shared by most folks I meet. A study of the ancients, the stories of our grandmothers, and memories of the early years of the 1960’s and 1970’s culture are now the guiding light of an entire worldwide localization movement intent on reducing our energy consumption.

GREEN TRANSITION

Green products have always been with us, we are merely rediscovering and “Branding” them. The practice of using baskets and cloth bundles has been going on as long as there has been trading and sharing of goods. I still have several “Save a Tree” canvas market bags from the 1970’s. I don’t know who made them - but they were early innovators who have passed on their good idea to the rest of us “Ecobag” makers. My own product mix has included personal water bottle bags, and suggestions for reducing plastic bottles for about 10 years. This is just now gaining interest. How far ahead of the curve can we afford to be when in commerce? I have spent much of my professional life educating people about products because they were seeing the idea for the first time. Years ago - when I branded the personal care line - “Desert Essence”, I needed a huge space on the shampoo label to educate the buyer on Jojoba and the desert herbs that I chose for the innovative formula. Nowadays, it is common practice, but back then - it was a huge innovation. The usual creed of Branding - “Don’t make them think”, just help them unconsciously select your item in the store.” is at its heart very inauthentic! Let us all use some energy to bring everyone into this Green Transition. GREEN BRANDING WILL REFLECT OUR SUSTAINABLE VALUES, NOT THE OLD ADAGES.

As we truly Green our lifestyles and businesses, we will become better at choosing the best thing for the right reasons. Right now, we are all a bit unsure about the Shades of Green in our choices. Should I choose conventional cotton over rayon? Is that tag “Made in Indonesia” a good or a bad thing? Who makes it? Were they paid a living wage? How did they feel at work? Is hemp made in China really helping our world?

ANNIE GREEN JEANS CONSULTING

We all need help with these questions. My consulting services include research to fit your specific needs, direction and business plan. What is it that you have always wanted to do, but felt was not practical? Can you start simply with some surefire energy savers, and declare your Green Transition? What is the difference between true green and green washing?

My consulting practice offers an opportunity for research into these Shades of Green and share solutions to any business who wants to “Green-up” and is not sure how to begin, how far to go, how much they can afford, and how to best position themselves in this emerging Eco-marketplace. I offer the know-how to do all of these things, in a manner that makes pocket cents, and gives you a truly sustainable triple bottom line. You will now begin to consider profits, people and the planet in your economy, and make even more cents!

GREENING YOUR BUSINESS

There are several key areas to Greening your business or service.

We can all agree -

* It is time to change our way of doing business

*We are running out of cheap energy resources

*What to do? ~ Change from extraction to a sustainable economy- simple, but difficult.

*How to do it? ~ Baby steps are a great beginning. Baby steps are incremental and measurable

Some basic steps:

TAKE AN INVENTORY : Where are you now in the use of resources? What steps have you already taken?

MAKE A VISION: In the biggest sense, where could you be in 5 years with your use of energy, product sources or services that add to sustainable community?

BEGIN THE PROCESS- Know What Works - Monitor and Measure Your Sustainability

Where does this Green Transition take place?
The way to your fully sustainable business begins here:

Infrastructure: your energy sources and uses, the lunch room, drinking water service, and waste stream management

Product Mix: choose your front end displays using considerations for local production, priorities for fairly traded, living wages and other Eco friendly supplier practices. BUY LOCAL if you can!

SHADES OF GREEN

Ultimately this will take us way beyond the common advice of changing light bulbs, recycling plastics, yet - everyone will begin where they are right now . The important thing is to start BEING, thinking, talking and acting Green

Commit to going the distance as the societal greening process emerges further with new energy resources & future levels of clear choices in both products and services. What did I just say?

BEGINNING the GREENING

A quick start for a retail store might look like this-

~ REDUCE : How about minimizing or eliminating packaging? Ask if they want a bag before offering one.

~ REUSE : Encourage the reuse of market bags with register discounts or rewards. Sell several versions of reusable bags, or give them away!

~ RECLAIM : Use your local “rebuild store” when remodeling. Think out of the box when building displays - is it a sustainable use?
~ REMAKE : Offer those closeouts to a local school for craft projects, don’t throw things away that can be used by others.
~ RETHINK : Schedule store hours for ease of commute times, what if we all shared rides or worked one less day week.
~ RECREATE: Can you compost lunch leftovers? Host a Barter night for your customers to exchange used art or craft
~ RECONSIDER : Add a small garden bed or container of lettuce or parsley to your back area or your front window, and eat it for lunch! In fact, invite munching and tasting, you may make some converts to slow food.

OUR GREEN FUTURE
On the horizon for us all is a whole new sustainable lifestyle and a new way of doing business. For my design business - that means downsizing products that I no longer feel are sustainable, cannot be “greened” due to supplier stubbornness or even due to the lack of usefulness in our simpler Green lifestyle. I am proud to have made a great contribution to many people’s lives with deep symbology and offered added meaning in their clothing and adornment. However I am now looking to Organics instead of conventional cotton, to creative ways that remind people to simplify, to choose wisely. I discuss this daily with my friends and community, and would love to talk to you and point you in the right direction. The baby steps we spoke of are now at hand. Do we choose to step into the sustainable choices that carefully conserve our finite ecological resources or will we continue with business as usual and hope that we can get away with yet one more year of good profits before we are forced to change? Join me in this Green Transition.

- copyright 2008, Ann Waters Weller