Bioneers 2007 was an enlightening and genuinely entertaining lifestyle and sustainability conference—“bringing to town” speakers with insight about how we can move society toward a sustainable path.
David Cooperrider, the Fairmount Minerals Chair in Social Entrepreneurship and founder of the Business as an Agent of World Benefit center at Case, kicked off local events by sharing his experience at a UN summit and with Fortune 500 corporations like Chardon-based Fairmount Minerals.
“At the summit, Kofi Anan reached his hand out to the world’s business leaders and said ‘let’s unite the power of the markets with the best of human ideals,’” Cooperrider said. “I’m embarrassed to say our management schools are not keeping up with the way senior management at major corporations are thinking about this.
“Where the highest human strengths are nurtured is where human evolution happens. Most people look at a deficit rather than the history of what was done right. We need to move into thinking the world is a gift to be discovered rather than a machine that is broken.”
Cooperrider described how the mining sands company embraced sustainability as “a driver of innovation,” and was awarded Most Ethical Business by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He shared an example of Fairmount’s closed-loop sustainable business model: Fairmount takes the “spent” sands from engine part molds and ships it to corn farmers for fertilizer to produce biodiesel.
At an affordable green housing session, panelist Marge Misak, director of the Cuyahoga Community Land Trust said: "people think there's no shortage of affordable housing in Cleveland. Actually, we have a lot of low-cost housing in bad shape with poor indoor air quality."
The Cleveland EcoVillage Green Cottages and Cogswell Hall, both in the Detroit-Shoreway area, and Emeritus House and ValleyView Hope VI were discussed as examples of affordable green housing projects in Cleveland.