Ecolonomy

At Pocheco, an envelope-manufacturing plant in northern France, we have been pursuing ecolonomy principles for nearly twenty-five years. With the threat of climate change, the need to transform in-dustrial production is more urgent than ever, to shift toward practices that are more respectful of people and nature. The success of the documentary film Tomorrow and Emmanuel Druon's book Ecolo-nomy, has convinced many CEOs and employees to visit the site and to learn from its experience.

Pocheco has enjoyed profitable times along with more compli-cated ones, but the company has remained afloat thanks to the ecolonomy process. In the wake of these visits, the team wanted to respond to requests for information sharing, and therefore created Ouvert, a consulting firm that for the past five years has been developing ecolonomy methods with one hundred companies worldwide.

Emmanuel Druon and his teams work with industrial units, whose tens of thousands of employees have committed to changing their daily practices to participate in the growing transition movement. Communities are following suit. All are participating according to their financial positions and market constraints, but between small initiatives (green roofs, nonmotorized transportation, the creation of shared gardens) and large changes (redefining supply chains for raw materials, inventing new flow systems, redefining the products offered) , the movement has reached a global level.