Visualize a city with clear, clean running rivers and a pristine lake… Imagine yourself walk-ing along a street bordering a city green space. A bus roars past. You brace yourself for the usual offensive smell of petro-chemical exhaust. But instead, this exhaust smells like french fries! The tantalizing aroma reminds you of how hungry you are, so you stop in at your favorite restaurant and brew pub for a meal made from locally grown, organic food. While dining, you chat with others about how the community is working to keep these positive changes flowing.

Does this sound like Cleveland? It could!

As our world awakens to a healthier lifestyle, more businesses are beginning to focus their attention on healthy values. Holly Harlan is founder of the organization Entrepreneurs for Sustainability, and her vision is to create a better quality of life for people in Cleveland.

Holly is making this vision a reality through a forum of peers she calls Entrepreneurs for Sustainability. Members of this group offer support and experience to facilitate the creation of new businesses and jobs within a socially conscious environment. Members come together to investigate sustainable practices, searching for ways to meet Cleveland's current needs without compromising the city's ability to meet future needs. Entrepreneurs for Sustainability comes together to exercise the common goal of creating a clean, effective and economically strong Cleveland.

Holly formed the group in December 2000 in an effort to find other like-minded individuals. Twenty-five people responded to her initial invitation and since then attendance at meetings has grown to over one hundred fifty. Impassioned par-ticipants come from a variety of business backgrounds including the food, energy, building, transportation and water industries. Holly emphasizes, “The diversity within the group offers a wide scope of perspectives in the community and addresses what can be accomplished through individual actions and business endeavors to create positive change in Cleveland.”

Holly shows that caring about maintaining a healthy environment need not be in conflict with a zest for business. She identifies manufacturing as one of her passions, and she has twenty years experience, optimizing operations for hundreds of manufacturing businesses. She weaves the principles of sustainability into her daily activities and business undertakings to create thriving new entrepreneurial enterprises. She also creates opportunities to improve the sustainability of existing businesses from all industries. Her dedication to Cleveland, her expertise and her passion for sustainability inspire members of Entrepreneurs for Sustainability to actively work for a better Cleveland.

To secure health, economic and environmental stability in our community, Holly recognizes that the city's concerns must shift to practices and innovations inspired by nature. She says that as individuals we need to critically analyze our actions and consider the broad picture of our personal impact on the entire world. She stresses that business can be good for the environment and positively impact future generations, if companies employ new technologies and practices that create more effective facilities, processes and products and restore natural resources. Holly recommends reading, “Inspiring, powerful and educational books on sustainability including William McDonougal's Cradle to Cradle, Amory Lovin's Natural Capitalism and Janine Benyus' Biomimicry. These books provide models for how business leaders, who embrace their relationship with natural capital, can create new possibilities that will save companies money and create new product opportunities.”

Women like Holly Harlan are inspiring positive changes for our industrious city. Entrepreneurs for Sustainability has a vision for a new type of industrialism that understands waste is a business opportunity, recognizes clean energy is essential to our health, and honors collaboration and diversity. Taking action in our community is the most important thing that we, as individuals, can do to ensure a prosperous, healthy environment rich with diversity and effective designs. We owe it to ourselves to create a difference in the Cleveland community of tomorrow and today.

For more information about Entrepreneurs for Sustainability and affiliated businesses and meetings, visit their website at www.e4sustainability.org or call (216) 371-1177.