Be Part of the Solution: All Businesses are an Environmental Business

All businesses are an environmental business; and we need BAM to lead the way in recognising this!

We can stimulate a new wave of creation care-oriented business owners and entrepreneurs to being part of the solution with a ‘Kingdom of God’ approach to sustainability issues. It is no accident that encouragement, generosity, leadership and mercy go hand in hand in Romans 12:8. If BAM businesses can show these virtues to their clients, suppliers and employees, they will surprise and delight all with whom they come in contact, building collaboration to address these health, humanitarian and environmental challenges and help build sustainable supply chains.

Some people view businesses as negatively impacting the environment. However, it does not have to be this way. For example, businesses can be solutions in the needed areas of clean energy, wastewater treatment plants, plastic waste recycling plants or modern agricultural practices. A good profitable business model and good environmental stewardship can go hand in hand as BAM companies meet the market need for environmental technologies and solutions. Affordable and accessible clean water, clean energy and clean air technologies should be a priority. BAM practitioners can thus be stewards of a sustainable livelihood and the planet for God’s people around the world.

Those in the BAM community should not regard creation care as separate to financial sustainability or spiritual and social impact, but as a cross-cutting theme interwoven with the other three of these ‘bottom lines’ of business as mission. This intentionality of integrating creation care into the core of the business model and goals of the company can be vital in countries that are closed to traditional mission work, but where business is welcome. This is especially true if they are businesses that offer solutions to pressing environmental problems.

It is important to know what areas of environmental work are required by the particular regions or local communities being influenced by a business—whether that is supply chain, business location, distribution channels, or market. This focus on local issues allows the business to thrive as it meets a market need and the BAM company is able to truly be salt and light where God has placed them.

The text above is from ‘One Big Thing: The One Thing a God-honouring Business Must Do to Be a Good Creation Care Steward’ the first of a brand new series of BAM Global Reports that will be published on BAM and Creation Care.

To read it now, download from the BAM Global website: