The millions of water fowl that now land there and dispose of the rice stubble are also a valuable crop. They're selling hunting leases. Rice, if anything, is a profitable by-product of this whole network of industry that they now have. There are folks like John Todd, showing how to build sewage treatment facilities that are profitable and that are greenhouses. These are the really exciting parts of the future of industry.
Nature has a nearly four billion year history of testing the materials and products and processes.
Now, implementing the elements of natural capitalism tends to create an extraordinary outpouring of energy, initiative and enthusiasm at all levels of a company because it removes the actual and perceived contradiction between what people do on the job and what they want for their kids when they go home. This makes natural capitalist firms the most exciting places in the world to work and the hardest to keep up with. Firms that conscientiously pursue these four principles we've sketched for you, will gain a commanding competitive advantage because they'll be behaving as if nature and people were properly valued, but they'll also be making a profit today even when those values are still set essentially at zero.