I have taken a bit of a hiatus from book reading over the past year when it comes to the topic of sustainability. I had gotten to the point of burnout from the previous four or five years so I just stepped away from it.

But over the past week I decided to pick up Paul Hawken's classic book, The Ecology of Commerce, which delves into the relationship between economics and ecology. It's a fascinating read because Hawken is able to simplify the problems we are facing as a society and calls out how ridiculous the human race can be when it comes to justifying our actions in order to create growth. Hawken is also very good at describing how interelated we are with nature; that we're not separated from plants, animals, etc but instead we are part of this biological system.

I know some of you are saying 'well, duh!' but at the same time if you begin analyzing our thirst for economic growth and the lengths we will go to accomplish it you begin to see that we do separate ourselves from nature all the time. In fact, it happens more often than not.

However, I do not enjoy reading books that only complain about the situation, but don't make an effort to offer solutions. Hawken does this by analyzing the most sustainable business solutions on the planet and how they're changing the economic model slowly but surely. It's almost uplifting if we weren't so far in the hole.