The State of Sustainability.

It wasn’t until I officially started my own business that the realization set in. After some odd years of preaching the sustainable lifestyle - had I ultimately been living and working within systems that embody the opposite? Something early on told me that I was eventually going to be a business owner, and I knew I was destined to do it differently. At the forefront of my experience is locally grown vegetables, healthy “fast-food” alternatives, small business management, and ecological horticulture work. On the back end of things, however - you might find extremely exploited labor, rationalized chemicals, hoarded resources, self-righteous initiatives, quieted voices and the underlying status quo of clichè existence.

A symptoms list spoken so fast and low that you won’t notice it amidst the single benefit of the pill you’re being sold.

Why is the default expectation that I do things the way everyone around me is doing them? Albeit arguably unsuccessfully.

If you, as a business owner - can’t retain employees, can’t pay the ones you do a livable wage, value quantity over quality, skimp on the customer experience for the sake of your own, can’t do it all yourself, can’t manage your boundaries, can’t hold others accountable, can’t take responsibility… excuse after excuse..

Please explain, where exactly do I find the sustainability??

A dear friend and fellow business owner used to reach out during the early stages of growth. Although I always felt called to offer support from a friendly and collaborative perspective, he viewed paying for that support as a necessary part of operating a sustainable business - as they live and breathe. “If we can’t pay you for your work, we’re not doing this successfully,” he would say. Others, who have “successfully” been managing their business for nearing two decades, barely pay above minimum wage and for gruesome labor.

More years in practice often translates to more opportunity to skew the narrative, not necessarily more evidence that the practice is sound.

That notion has stuck with me. Fifteen years of trying to prove my worth went out the door with that simple epiphany. That’s not to say the work is all for financial gain, or that generosity and collaboration don’t have their place. But free or manipulated labor in service of a for-profit business generally doesn’t align with the kind of mutually beneficial success I want to participate in. If a business can only sustain itself through the unsustainable treatment of the people supporting it, are we really inclined to call that success in the slightest?

I know I don’t really have to explain that when you hire me you are not hiring a multi-million dollar entity but I may have to explain that my entity has much more integrity. I manage my schedule appropriately, I communicate thoroughly, I show up as requested, fulfill your needs, and promptly follow up with notes ready for you to fulfill the other side. No, you cannot have 30 days to ponder the payment of your pre-planned service. No, I cannot wave the service charge after I showed up to work in your gardens and you just had them sprayed with dangerous chemicals. No, you cannot provide your own terms, at my expense. After 15 years of experience in what I am now calling “unsustainable business” I am here to offer an intentionally refined and well thought through alternative type of service, in a mutually beneficial manner. I do my administrative work following the job site while it’s fresh in my mind, because that’s what is sustainable for me. I won’t expense thousands of dollars for your ultimate product at my own risk, to avoid it being your own. Lastly - I can see that you opened the invoice 7 times but yes I do understand you must just be much more busy.

There is no reason a tried and true steward of the land would be offering the same caliber of business practices as a modern landscaper, gardener or agricultural worker. This because modernity is the root of all things unsustainable. More specifically, modern culture has normalized externalizing costs while calling the result successful.