
Eco-Entrepreneurship for Sustainability
Join the movement towards sustainable development led by eco-entrepreneurs committed to collective action. At Reppatch, we tackle pressing environmental challenges together, believing that unity and ambition are key to inspiring change and creating lasting solutions for our planet.
Last week, a person I contacted from Greentech Alliance, a global community which I am a member of, told me that he had visited my website and hadn’t seen anything about me being an eco-entrepreneur. After sharing the website of my startup Reppatch with him, I realized that I had so much to talk about on this topic, but I hadn’t even talked about it on my own website. And here we are…
First, let’s define the relatively new term: Eco-entrepreneur. Eco-entrepreneurship is a term coined to represent the process of applying entrepreneurial principles to create businesses that solve environmental problems or operate sustainably. My own definition is the entrepreneurial struggle between being a climate activist and not being one…
My Eco-Entrepreneurship Journey
Reppatch is a community platform that brings together upcycling brands and artists and works to provide them with everything they need to upcycle more waste. In my personal life, I have always tried to use what I have for a long time by thinking minimally. I have always transformed, evaluated and kept evaluating my unusable or no longer liked belongings, clothes, in short, everything, and my dream was to turn this creative thinking ability into a business model. Since I believe in collective consciousness and togetherness, I found people who shared the same vision and mission as me, brought them together and started working together. Now, our community with more than 50 members worldwide continues its work to create an impact.
From Waste to Art: The Secret of Creative Thinking
For about 2 years, I have met with many individuals who can think creatively, who are trying to think and who cannot think, in order to develop my start-up and transform waste into art. For example, there are sustainability managers working in corporate companies, “Ms. Nil, our company has such waste and I believe that this waste can be transformed into something.” The moment I hear this sentence, the excitement of a new project begins inside me. My creative thinking session starts with who would work with this waste and then ends with a highly motivated and excited meeting with the relevant member of our community.
This is just one example of our work, there are many things we do and try to do. It has been about 2 years since I came up with the idea of Reppatch and started working on it. My own personal journey that has developed during this process consists of completely different experiences. At the same time, I worked to strengthen my consulting career and infrastructure. I have experienced and continue to experience more sensitive moments at Reppatch than I have ever experienced in any of my previous jobs. I think everyone who wants to be an eco-entrepreneur needs to be ready for the harsh realities they will learn. There are some figures that we know and read, yes, for example, 92 million tons of textile waste is produced every year. This is an example of a figure we read and hear, but you need to be prepared to hear them firsthand. Last year, I had a meeting with a very large textile brand that has expanded from Turkey to the world. The person I met was a board member of the company and I asked what they did with the plastic waste that came out, such as damaged buttons. The person called the employee in charge of production and asked, the employee said that this type of waste is regularly burned in municipalities… But was I ready to hear this? No… After that meeting, I was very upset, I did some research, and the more I researched, the more I felt upset and helpless. Some people were continue to cause huge damage to our world without thinking twice, which we were trying to do something about...
Facing the Painful Truths and Standing Up Bravely
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I embarked on this journey bravely and the power and magic inside my courage has always kept me on my feet and continues to do so. That’s why I love this quote from Goethe. Because the moments of break down, in the example I gave are much more than you can imagine. The reasons for this are endless; the company may not be aware of the negative impacts its activities have on nature, they may continue despite being aware of them, they may need advice or they may be quite ruthless… The biggest priority of my journey is to try to affect whatever and however you can. That’s why I am not an activist, I am an eco-entrepreneur because I stand up stronger with every painful truth I hear and do my best not to hear this painful truth again. If I can do a project, education or workshop with this kind of companies, I use all my sales skills to make this sale. Because thats what i can do for our world as a sales professional. My belief is that individuals should always use their expertise and knowledge for the betterment of our world.
Finally I would like to mention that partnerships for the goals, 17th Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations are my biggest catalyst in my eco-entrepreneurship journey. As someone obsessed with leadership, this is my most sensitive point. I have never had a competitor approach because, unlike entrepreneurship, eco-entrepreneurs are trying to solve a common problem for all of humanity and nature. We should work with a vision of unity and ambition, not competition and jealousy.
As I always say at Reppatch: “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” Robert Swan