You Are the Solution
EJ Wells may not have much of a social conscious, but his portrayer, James Scott, does. But how to put that social conscious to good use? You could give your spare change to that guy outside Whole Foods or you could sign a petition. Or, you could start your own company with a goal of helping the planet. That's what James did.
"The company is called Urth Solution," James told us. "It basically breaks down into 'you are the solution.' It's about connecting producing communities in the developing world to consuming communities in the developed world." Sounds like a job for a non-profit, but as anybody who has been involved with one knows, they move slo-owly. So James took the feel-good values of a non-profit and incorporated them with the infrastructure of a business. He's "designed something new, a socially-responsible, ethical business," with a "'doing well by doing good' type philosophy."
To accomplish this, Urth Solution locates communities in the developing world that have some sort of exploitable resource that can be marketed in the West. They will then use that resource to generate "revenue to support development within that community." You've probably seen those 'fair trade' insignia on coffee packets or chocolate bars in your supermarket; you may have even bought one of them. The communities that Urth Solution are looking to work don't even have the resources to become fair trade.
To become fair trade, products have to conform to other criteria difficult for many of these communities to meet. James met one young woman in Madagascar, 25 years old and with seven children; the oldest of whom is fourteen. Fourteen. "You're going to tell her when she had four children, sorry you can't work because you're not eighteen? It doesn't work like that." Instead, Urth Solution wants to focus on "practical solutions to difficult problems."
Since they are not a non-profit, however, Urth Solution also has to focus on communities with a natural resource; for now, they're focusing on gold. "The price of gold is $720 an ounce. That's a lot. And demand for gold is increasing a lot. We were looking for a product that was going to have a sustainable market value and was in a growing market sector and gold is." One of the communities they're working with is on the island of Madagascar; the other is in La Paz, Bolivia. Both of them focus on the small-scale, artisanal, back-breaking mining of gold.
"Urth Solution sources, certifies, sells and reinvests in the community. It's as simple a model as you can think of. You find a community in a depressed area, in an area of need, that has a natural resource that we can harness in the most environmentally progressive way we can and we set standards for development and for improvement. We put that community on a track toward sustainable development, which is really the key. Sustainable development is really kind of the cornerstone of what Urth Solution is all about."
They reinvest by finding out, from someone in the field who has experience and relationships in the community, what the people there most need. In Madagascar, it appears to be clean water. Despite the rainfall, years of deforestation mean there's no natural filtration system for the water. So you build wells. In Bolivia, they've "got clean, fresh, beautiful water; you could bottle it and sell it. What do they need up there? They need a school." So, after the miners are paid a fair wage, there is money left over from the premium Urth charges for their product. A third of that premium is reinvested in the community and they're put on a track toward sustainable development.
And what exactly is sustainable development? Another simple idea. You meet "the needs of today without compromising the needs of tomorrow." You don't burn down the rainforests for room to graze your cattle because you might need them for water filtration and oxygen in the future. And, "if you've got a community that's mining gold, you don't invest all the money back into gold. When the gold dies out, you've got no secondary source, your economy is dependent on one thing." Urth Solution seeks to develop secondary industries, to move "the focus of the community onto more than one thing from an economic perspective."
Now they have the gold. What is Urth Solution going to do with it? Right now, they're working with jeweler-to-the-stars Stephen Webster, who is designing their first collection. Look for that to come out shortly. In the meantime, remember that it's very simple. Do well by doing good. It's an idea we can all get behind.
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