In today's world, it is no longer unimaginable to think that

In the marketplaces of our age, Olympia Snowe speaks with a clear bell: “In today’s world, it is no longer unimaginable to think that business can operate—and even thrive—in an environmentally-friendly manner.” Hear how the sentence turns a door on old hinges. Once, profit and planet were treated as rival gods; to serve one was to betray the other. Now the veil lifts: prosperity and stewardship are not enemies but partners yoked to a single plow. The claim is modest in tone yet radical in consequence: what was once “unimaginable” has entered the realm of daily practice.

To say that business can operate in an environmentally-friendly way is to confess that value has more than one ledger. Balance sheets whisper only part of the truth; the fuller accounting counts rivers run clear, soils held fast, lungs free of ash. When a firm aligns its craft with creation’s grammar—waste turned to input, energy drawn from wind and sun, products designed to be reborn—it no longer competes against nature; it collaborates with it. And collaboration with the living world yields a quieter, deeper margin: resilience.

Consider a lamp from recent history. A carpet maker once looked into the mirror of his own factories and saw a mountain of waste. Convicted by the arithmetic of loss, he set his house in order: closed loops for materials, efficiency as a martial art, renewable energy as an oath. Costs fell, innovation rose, and the brand gathered a strange new currency—trust. The journey was not sermon but system, proving that to thrive and to tread lightly can be one motion when design is honest and discipline is kept.

Or look to a clothier that vowed to mend what it sold, to trace its fibers back to fields and flocks, to spend on durability rather than churn. Customers did not flee the higher standard; they followed it. Supply chains became stories, and stories became loyalty. Here again, the old fear dissolved: that responsibility is a tax on growth. Instead, responsibility became a moat around the castle, keeping flimsy rivals at bay.

The origin of Snowe’s saying is twofold: it rises from a long political struggle to bridge enterprise and ecology, and from the quiet march of examples proving possibility. Solar panels atop warehouses, heat captured and reused, delivery routes that sip rather than guzzle, packaging that returns as soil—these are not fantasies but fixtures. When enough fixtures gather, imagination changes its shape. What was “no longer unimaginable” becomes, at last, expected.

What, then, is the teaching for those who would trade and build? First, count rightly: price the harm you once ignored; reward the thrift that once hid in the shadows. Second, design for circles, not lines: repairable goods, take-back schemes, materials that return to origin without shame. Third, bind your fate to place: water stewardship where you draw, habitat where you build, wages that let neighbors stand tall. Fourth, make energy a vow: efficiency as culture, renewables as backbone, storage as steady heart. Let procurement be a moral instrument; let reporting be plain as daylight.

Carry this lesson like a seal on your ledgers: in today’s world, the firm that honors limits gains freedom, and the house that tends the commons inherits the crowd’s goodwill. Begin with what you hold: audit a single line for waste; publish a short, brave goal; tie leadership reward to measurable footprints; invite your customers to help you meet the mark. Teach your apprentices that excellence includes endurance, and that endurance belongs to those who build with the grain of the earth, not against it.

At the end of the day, Snowe’s oracle is a summons to courage shaped like patience. The path is not glamorous; it is granular—found in valves that do not leak, routes that do not wander, contracts that do not exploit, and products that do not pretend. Walk it, and you will discover a strange arithmetic: as you give the planet back its breath, your enterprise finds its own. Thus may business operate and thrive in truly environmentally-friendly ways—no longer a dream at the horizon, but a craft at hand.