Sustainability has become both a strategic and operational objective for manufacturers globally. Sustainable business practices are not only good for the environment, they can increase company viability in the long term through growth, global competitiveness and customer satisfaction. We’ll take a look back at the original sustainability advocates who, over the years, have become champions in their own right.
An Early Advocate of Sustainability
Henry David Thoreau is best known for his book, Walden, although he published more than 20 volumes of work, including journals, poetry articles and essays. His most famous essay, Civil Disobedience, called for gradual improvements in governments, but it is Thoreau’s writings on natural history and environmentalism that are arguably his most important contributions. In these writings, Thoreau anticipated modern approaches to ecology; environmental history; and abandoning waste and illusion to uncover one’s true needs.
Born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, he changed his name to Henry David Thoreau after finishing college. He was one of four children born to John Thoreau, a pencil maker, and Cynthia Dunbar. Cynthia’s father, Asa Dunbar, led the Butter Rebellion, the first recorded student protest, in 1766.
Career Accomplishments
Thoreau taught at public schools in Canton, Massachusetts and later in Concord for a short time, but he quit working over a disagreement about his obligation to administer corporal punishment to students. He and his brother John then founded Concord Academy in 1838. Unlike at most educational institutions of the time, Concord Academy’s curriculum included nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school closed in 1842 after his brother’s death.
A fateful meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson set his career on a different path. Emerson introduced him to Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Nathanial Hawthorne, and other great thinkers of the time. In addition, he urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to The Dial, and he lobbied with the publisher to print Thoreau’s work. Emerson also convinced him to keep a journal, which became a lifelong habit.
A Message for Sustainability
On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved into a small house he had built on land Emerson owned. The house was in the midst of a second growth forest on the shores of Walden Pond, and he lived there for two years, trying to achieve the ideal state of simple living.
As he writes in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Although Thoreau lived in the house on Walden Pond for more than two years, he compressed the time into a single year in the book to symbolize the stages of human development.
Walden also includes what to many is Thoreau’s most important message for sustainability. Often abbreviated as just “Simplify, simplify,” the actual passage is a bit longer. It goes on: “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
The most important part of that admonishment is to resign yourself to the influence of the earth, and it was a goal Thoreau strove for his entire life. He also said, “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind,” implying that his message to simplify one’s life might not be as easy as it sounds.
Thoreau’s Writings
Much of Henry David Thoreau’s writings focus on his observations of nature, especially during his travels. Examples include: Walking; Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree; Excursions; Night and Moonlight; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; The Maine Woods; and Cape Cod, among many others.
Perhaps the second most important work in Thoreau’s canon is the essay, Civil Disobedience. Often incorrectly categorized as a call to anarchy, Thoreau’s central message was one of moderation. In it, Thoreau writes, “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” And later, “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” Thoreau’s essay is said to have influenced Mohandas Gandhi, President John F. Kennedy, Activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
Contributions to Manufacturing Sustainability
In Walden, Thoreau writes in detail about what he perceives as a capitalistic, urban, fashion- and consumption-driven society in 19th century New England. But even for someone as driven as Thoreau, leaving this society wasn’t easy.
Off and on throughout his life, he worked at the family’s pencil factory, where he was responsible for identifying a method for refining graphite, which enabled his manufacturing company to use lower quality graphite in its pencils while still achieving a quality product by adding clay to the mix. This discovery helped to reduce the waste from graphite mining because the lower quality graphite which inevitably accompanied mining operations now had a useful purpose and did not become waste. As a result, he was able to reduce the impact of the company’s need for raw materials while still providing the quality and price point his customers wanted.
Thoreau later converted the entire factory to the manufacture of this graphite/clay product known as plumbago as electrotyping became more common, creating an increased demand and enacting change in the industry.
A True Champion of Sustainability
Thoreau lived in Concord and worked in his family’s pencil factory for much of his life and eventually died of tuberculosis in 1862. His funeral eulogy was written by his friend Emerson, and other friends such as Amos Bronson Alcott and William Ellery Channing participated in the service celebrating the life of one of the earliest champions of sustainability.
