Self Sustaining Business Model

Creating a self-sustaining business – it seems too good to be true, right? Not quite. As a founder of a nonprofit sustainability initiative called the Business Leaders in Action for Sustainability Today! (BLAST!), I’ve found some pretty intriguing ways for entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals alike to create businesses that reduce, reuse, and recycle resources. This “green” business approach has helped our company save precious dollars on some of the top resources (e.g. electricity) we use today. It got me thinking about the impact we can have if more businesses assessed their current resource use and generated creative approaches to reusing them.

What Is Self Sustaining In Business

Before launching a sustainability campaign for your business, you need to understand where you want to go with “green” business practices, and how you want to get there. Think about solving one problem (in this case, reducing your environmental resources) with multiple solutions.

As an entrepreneur, try creating a culture of sustainability by operating a business that is in “perpetual motion,” one that’s based on action-oriented goals that will produce a continuous return on investment. For example, your company can reduce the amount of trash that ends up in a landfill by adding a recycling can and compost can in every room; reducing the number of trash cans so it’s more difficult for employees to throw things away; and replacing water bottles in the office with filtered water and glasses.

Here’s another way of thinking about running your business so it’s more “green”: As long as the output is greater than the cost over the lifetime of the investment, the result will “live” forever. Conceptually, this is the definition of sustainability. Putting up an initial investment that will yield results for a long time is exactly the kind of business operations model entrepreneurs should tackle full-force.

Let’s offer a real-world example: Recently our company purchased solar panels, located offsite in a solar garden, for every employee in the office. Unlike residential solar systems, solar gardens tend to be large in scale and professionally maintained. They are not connected to the facilities where they generate power. In our case, we’ve been able to offset 10 percent of our electricity usage. Better yet, this energy offset will continue at 10 percent for decades to come with no additional outlay. Since we are generating more than we are paying out, we plan on reinvesting and expanding the system year over year, ultimately doubling our offset. 

Investing in a solar garden obviously requires a larger investment. Another easy, low-cost approach I recommend may seem counterintuitive: Instead of striving for perfection when it comes to sustainability, strive to get those who are doing nothing to do something. Rather than set the hard-to-reach goal of diverting 100 percent of your trash from landfills, train your employees and other companies about recycling and composting at the office and at home. If you can get your company and others in your network to even 80 percent, this impact is far greater than doing nothing at all.