Ethical business and right livelihood

Jeroen

Recently I have been paying some attention to ethical businesses. These also tend to be environmentally friendly, and so are very worthy causes to support. But they are not always equally easy to find. Here are a few examples I have come across recently...

• Triodos Bank... this is a Dutch bank committed to ethical and environmental causes
• Wasteless... this is a consultancy agency which works with supermarkets to help them waste less food
• Ecosia... an internet search engine which uses its profits to plant trees all over the world
• Wiggert Meerman... he is a public speaker and author and business consultant who seeks to aid indigenous populations

It really depends where you come across them. I was watching a programme called Iedereen Verlicht, meaning ‘everyone enlightened’, where a Hindu presenter goes across the country and interviews all kinds of people who have a form of spiritual enlightenment about them and I came across Wiggert Meerman. I found Triodos by word of mouth.

So it occurred to me that the Buddha, had he lived in this day and age, would probably have encouraged lay people to work for and support ethical businesses and environmental enterprises as part of right livelihood. It just seems like these are the things we need to do collectively to create a new and less-wasteful tomorrow, where there still is room for the wild.

Ethical business is the process of looking for the Win-Win-Win situation, where the customer wins through achieving their goals, the entrepeneur wins through creating a sustainable business, and the environment wins.

Jeroen

Today I found B Lab, which is a company that certifies ethical and environmental businesses, and maintains a directory so that they can find eachother. It’s quite widespread, I saw about 50 businesses just in the Netherlands, and B Lab is an American corporation.