Climbing the Mountain of Food Waste

In the spring of 2014, my worldview changed a bit, at least with respect to how I consider and talk about environmental challenges. The catalyst for this change was my reading of a book authored by Paul Hawken. For those who know the Ray Anderson story well, this might be sounding familiar....

My experience wasn’t nearly as groundbreaking as Ray’s reading of The Ecology of Commerce, but it was still important to me. The book that I read was Blessed Unrest, a 2007 book with the tagline “How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.”

I learned an immense amount from Blessed Unrest. Paul writes about the diverse and expansive network of organizations, both large and small, that pop up around the globe to work on the social and environmental challenges of our time. More is happening to heal our planet than we realize, and the agents of change are people like you and me.

My crucial takeaway from the book was a bit different, however. After turning that last page, I had a newfound conviction that the strongest power of the environmental movement is found in the expression of an underutilized virtue: hopefulness.

Read more.