Various aspects of capitalism have come under scrutiny in recent months, but few could argue with one aspect that has become the cornerstone of the green movement: efficiency.
Economists refer to efficiency as being either economic or technical. The former is a cost-to-value relationship: For the given cost of making something, a given value is added when the item is introduced into the marketplace where it is hoped it will make a profit. For example, I purchase lumber and pay skilled carpenters to build gazebos, which I sell for a price above my costs, plus some degree of profit.
Technical efficiency measures energy of output compared to energy per unit applied during production; i.e., the less energy applied to produce something, the more techinically efficient it is. If you run machines on solar energy rather than gasoline, you are more technically efficient, because your product requires less energy to produce per unit.
This is what we strive for in being green, but it is countered by economic efficiency. Both are required to meet some happy medium. Let's look at my gazebo company again: Say I purchase a solar-powered robot that will make fewer mistakes and yield less waste to make the gazebos.
The robot would make production more technically efficient, but probably be expensive to purchase, making it economically inefficient because I would have to raise the price of the product, putting me at a disadvantage with my competitors.
PROJECTS BIG AND SMALL
The concepts of economic and technical efficiency apply to projects big and small and even how we live our lives. Everything we do involves energy and applied efficiencies. It could be something as simple as making one round trip to the grocery store, post office and pharmacy, rather than tree separate trips. Or using recycled materials to build a deck and designing it to maximize the waste it will generate.
Some may argue that going green wastes time, which is money. That can be true in some respects if we follow faulty premises. But one must weigh time to resources and money, not to money alone.
Every carpenter knows the adage, "Measure twice, cut once." Here, the expenditure of time outweighs the cost of wasting a piece of wood because of faulty measuring.
There are many ways to apply efficiencies to what we do. For the green movement to succeed, it must start at a most basic level of human action: our inherent desire for efficiency.