Inventing Eco-Cycle

A Social Enterprise Approach to Sustainability Education

in Anthropology in Action
Author:
Sandy Smith-Nonini University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill scsmith@email.unc.edu

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Abstract

This article discusses lessons learned from a social enterprise project supporting sustainability education in central North Carolina (U.S.A.). Since 2011, Eco-Cycle,1 a retail shop featuring creative-reuse has provided support for a community meeting space that offers weekly environmental education workshops. Many approaches to social justice-oriented green initiatives in the United States emulate urban agriculture models and tend to be grant-dependent in early years, only achieving economic sustainability with difficulty. In contrast, our non-profit co-op of upcycler crafters and vintage vendors grew out of production and marketing of upcycled rain barrels, based on a social enterprise approach rather than a traditional model. I discuss the stepping-stones to this venture, which originated through a neighbourhood energy conservation initiative, followed by alliance-building with non-profits to promote green job creation. I relate the complications and surprising forms of synergism emerging from the social enterprise approach to social theory on cooperatives and community-based development models.

1Eco-Cycle is a pseudonym.

Contributor Notes

Sandy Smith-Nonini is an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Healing the Body Politic: El Salvador’s Popular Struggle for Health Rights – From Civil War to Neoliberal Peace (Rutgers University Press, 2010), and is currently doing research on the political economy of petroleum.

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Anthropology in Action

Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice

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