12 permaculture principles to apply to sustainable businesses

In my last post, I explored the three core ethics of permaculture as outlined by David Holmgren – the founding father of permaculture. He also shares 12 principles. These principles are universal but can be used in many different contexts, such as the personal, economic, social and political. For sustainable businesses these principles can be very effective, helping you to o be more reflective, innovative, and adaptive. You don't have to 'catch them all' but they can be a guiding framework for you as a sustainable business to be more reflective and connected to the challenges you are trying to solve. I will talk you through the 12 principles by putting them both in a gardening and business context.??

1. Observe and interact

This principle asks you to observe the forces present, the problem you would like to solve, and the positive effect you seek to create.

On the land: When you start to work on a land it’s tempting to immediately grab a shovel and start. But first, pause and observe. What’s already happening around you? How do animals interact with the land? It helps to for instance identify where boars or other animals pass your land to prevent placing your veggie beds in their tracks (they won’t budge and trample everything in their way). At one land project I worked on, we noticed a salamander living at the edge of a veggie bed. Salamanders play a unique role in improving soil quality by feeding on invertebrates, so we made sure to keep its winter home intact.?

In business: Who are you designing solutions for? Just as you observe the land before acting, take time to understand your stakeholders. Think about ways to incorporate human-centred or nature-centred design in your work. Avoid assumptions- spend ample time to understand the person you need for your sustainability project, whether consumers, employees, or board members.??

2. Catch and store energy

Energy is not just electricity, water, plants, buildings, and people. They all store and can be depleted of ‘energy’.?

On the land: “Catch and store energy” is about ways you can capture and grow surpluses, not by intensifying production and fast expansion, but by storing the energy already at hand. For example, stored water can offer energy to later irrigate crops, soil captures energy and stores it in your grown crops, and biomass can serve as a living storage of building materials full of nutrients and used as fertiliser. Think clearly about potential energy storages you can impact, such as the cutting of a tree, that too functions as a storage of energy (a terrestrial carbon sink).?

For a business: it can be highly effective to think about ways in which you can catch and store energy in your operations or products. There are many examples of ‘factories as forests’, fabrics that capture CO2, etc. Another often overlooked ‘resource’ are people. How do you make sure the people in your company and supply chains make best-balanced use of their energy. Considering this prevents bore-outs and burnouts, which can in turn have a negative effect on your business.?

3. Obtain a yield

To create change it helps to see what is being created, to see results. This does not have to be your own production; it can come from unexpected sources.

On the land: On a land I worked at there were old carob trees. They were ignored for decades, and many people in the area cut them down. More recently these have become more well known as a healthy sweetener for cakes and cookies. The land project I worked at was able to yield and sell the carob.??

In business: When you are working on sustainability it can feel like a never-ending journey, and it is. Sustainability is constant change, but it helps to celebrate the small steps too. Organising a celebratory moment for the intermediate steps helps to obtain energy as a team for the journey ahead.?

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

Limit or adjust our own impact on your environment, no one else is going to do that.

For the land: Think about your ‘power’ as a person in relation to your farm. With everything you want to adopt and cut think about the reason it’s there in the first place. Don’t do everything at once, take it step by step and see how the land responds.?

For businesses: Make sure you are aware of the ‘forces’ that might steer you in a certain direction, such as profit making. A nice example of this is the legal anchoring of benefiting stakeholders, not just shareholders, done by B Corps. Collect feedback of stakeholders around your business, also ones that normally don’t have a voice like ‘mother nature’.

5. Use and value renewable resources and services

Think about a type of activity that repeats and renews, so you don’t deplete but keep regenerating.

On the land: this can be capturing energy with solar panels, or wind turbines, but also plants that you know can renew each year, so you have solid growth. One of my favourite veggie garden plants is New Zealand spinach. Spinach is a product that normally has a short shelf life, New Zealand spinach can be easily cut over time, and the plant drops seeds that grow new plants the next year.??

In business: what type of renewable activity can you base your business model on? Is there a way you can make use of wasted or regenerative resources? Think outside of the box, almost every place that fosters movement like sidewalks can generate energy.?

6. Produce no waste

Nature produces no waste. One organism’s waste is another’s food, and this is how energy cycles through the web of life in a closed system. Humans on the other hand have started to produce huge amounts of waste which end up on landfills or need to be incinerated. In Permaculture you try to design systems that produce no waste.?

On the land: Nothing needs to be wasted. Plants that need to be cut can be used as ground cover, to capture energy, or us it in construction. Even toilets don’t have to create waste, they can be a source of compost.?

In business: Identify based on your procurement and waste handling what is going in and out. That helps to start tackling waste by the source.

7. Design from patterns to details

Look at structure, repetition, links. That is a pattern before the detail.

On the land: a collective land project worked on a continuous adaptation of placement of tools based on the behaviour of people. In the kitchen the pots and cutlery naturally found their course in a certain direction and one person was assigned to then formalise that as the shared spot.?

In business: a strategy, organisational chart, a planning. These are all patterns. They are the rhythm, the course in which you run. Identify what comes natural from within your organisation instead of copying what you see elsewhere or read in theory. What are the behavioural patterns of your team, in what rhythms do they like to work? ?

8. Integrate rather than segregate

The more relationships between parts of a system, the more resilient a system is. I hear many professionals say ‘we need to avoid working in silo’s’ ‘and nature for sure doesn’t work that way. In a natural system everything is connected, and it forges on symbiosis. A very relevant act for sustainable businesses.

On the land: In many city-landscapes there’s little soil and lots of shade. Yet, there’s great ways in which you can integrate soil or sun in beneficial ways. I for instance worked at an eco-village where the sun offered the heating of homes through space between double glazing. As the homes were made of soil the walls captured heat of the sun and offered warmth in the winter but also captured the temperature of the ground to offer coolness in the summer. ?

In business: Connected supply chains are most effective. With scope 3 emissions representing the biggest business impact, think about ways you can engage with different stakeholders. Can you work more directly with stakeholders such as farmers, employees, communities, NGOs, or activists instead of seeing theme merely as vague business partners??

9. Use small and slow solutions

Long termism is beneficial and small and slow solutions are often the durable ones. Nature manages according to a long-term plan and adapts over time.? We humans interfere with chemicals and machinery that are hard to maintain and have negative results in the long run.?

On the land: ‘Slow and steady wins the race’. Instead of moving around your land quickly, driving a tractor, take a stroll. You’ll see the little details that are crucial to your land. This also helps to better design your land on the energy you have in your body, instead of going into overdrive.??

In business: Build on consistency. Is your CEO focused on a 5-year plan, its own term, or beyond? It makes a big difference. When companies take a long-term view and embrace gradual, steady progress, their impact will be more positively impactful —creating positive change that can last for generations.?

?10. Use and value diversity

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” reminds us that diversity offers resilience. The natural world is, by essence, diverse; it is made up lots of different elements in diverse relationships with one another. Monoculture is very much a human-approach.

On the land: Not all plants need to have the same function. Grow some to keep away animals, some to provide natural herbicides, some to provide shade, some to provide produce. Think of the individual needs of every type.?

In business: The environment around you is diverse, so your business should too. Think about the different perspectives you can include and ways you can diversify. Avoid random combinations of employees or suppliers, do it mindfully. How does one strengthen the other???

11. Use edges and value the marginal

Often the edges where one system touches another system are the most interesting and fruitful. Whether you look at a piece of land and a business, it’s likely you have the tendency to look inwardly. To stay close to what you know. But this permaculture principle is a reminder to venture to your edges.

On the land: Think of where land touches a waterbed, where land touches the forest.

In business: This principle helps to venture outside of the ‘comfort zone’ of your static ‘core business’ and navigates to the edge where you’re inspired to innovate. Think about the way your company touches local communities and see your ‘communications’ not merely as a business function but as a human interaction.?

12. Creatively use and respond to change

In permaculture, we learn that change is inevitable, and if we learn to go with the flow does not fight against it, our permaculture designs will be much more fluid and resilient

On the land: Having an unusually rainy and sunless summer? Plant short season, cool weather vegetables. Not a lot of rain or snow last winter and spring? Plant more drought tolerant varieties.??

In business: Make a changing world the inspirator of your business model. What does the world need right now? In a polarised and climate change-threatened society, think of ways you can be a connector and the route to sustainability.?

These were the 12 practical principles of permaculture and examples of ways they can be used for sustainable businesses. There’s much more ways permaculture can be of inspiration, and I’m excited to keep learning more. Are there any ways you use permaculture principles outside of a veggie-garden context???

This blog is also placed on the The Terrace (B Corp) website https://theterrace.nl/news/12-permaculture-principles-to-apply-to-sustainable-businesses/