Business Today

Description: The relationship between the environment and business.

 What needs to change in American business?

Hill: Well certainly from an environmental level, I mean the thing that we’ve been ignoring is we haven’t made the true costs of things part of their price.  So externalities are sort of left . . . left out.  And I think that’s a really, really important one.  We’ve expanded to the point where we’ve   . . . we’ve reached . . . we understand the limits of the resources that we have.  And you know 100 years ago this was different.  It just sort of went on and on.  But really we understand those, and now we realize we actually have to be careful.  And we realize what an incredible impact we can have in a positive or negative manner on the earth that we live in and the species that we share it with.  So I think that’s a big one. 

In the world of business, I think that business should have . . . be able to have less of an effect on government.  So I . . . I’d like to see . . .  I’d like to see campaign finance reform and less impact in that . . . in that respect.  I think transparency is really important.  And so I think the Internet has been very helpful, and I’d like to see more and more of that.  I think transparency is a great thing and . . . so yeah.  We’ve got some ways to go with business for sure.

How can established companies go green?

Hill: Well there’s tons.  I mean the beauty . . . the beauty of this stuff is that there are thousands and thousands of solutions.  So it’s really about companies getting . . . getting . . . educating themselves and just approaching it understanding that from a moral perspective we have to do it, but also from a business perspective.  This is what people are gonna demand more and more, and we have to look at things in a different way.  So really it would depend on the company.  But whichever business you’re in, there are more and more opportunities in terms of greening your own operations and your own products.

Hill: Let me give you a little context or sort of . . . I grew up as basically a hippie.  I had a very hippie, hippie childhood.  So I’m very much from this background of sort of conservation and nature, and that was sort of part of me.  Then I went on to study design both architecture and then product design.  And then I ended up doing a bunch of entrepreneurial things.  I did a fashion company.  I did a . . .  I built a Web development firm.  And then I did a product firm in the past three . . . three of four years.  So I’ve done a bunch of things that sort of at the end of the day end up . . .  I’m a design focused entrepreneur with leanings toward the environment.  So a few years ago – I guess four or so now – I just sort of . . .  I was looking for my next project.  I knew I wanted to do something in the “do gooder” realm.  And I just was passionate about green, and so it all sort of coalesced.