Al Gore of Austerlitz

Economics and sustainability need not be mutually exclusive, as proven by resourceful entrepreneur from the Netherlands. Investing in green initiatives, ECKART WINTZEN is on an important mission. Persuading clients into the pursuit of sustainability.

Eckart Wintzen does not look like a typical businessman. He wears jeans and hiking shoes, and his office resides not in one of the mirrored bank towers of Amsterdam but in Austerlitz, a small town in the middle of the woods. The 68-year-old, who on his own admission has not worn a tie since 1996 except at funerals, has a reputation in the Netherlands as a management pioneer and CEO of the venture capital enterprise Ex'tent, which only invests in sustainable projects. Wintzen sees it as his mission to ensure that all those involved get a fair deal - above all, in a way that benefits the environment. 

The idea of sustainability has preoccupied him for a long time. As head of the IT service company BSO (which later became Origin), Wintzen drew up ecoaccounts showing all the damage the company had caused to the planet through emissions, paper consumption and so on. "I wanted to make people aware of the fact that in a some years we had done more damage than we had achieved profit," Wintzen says, explaining his unusual step.

When Wintzen sold his shares in Origin in 1996, the company had 10,000 employees and was now fused with the software division of Philips. With the proceeds of the sale he founded  Ex'tent. "I was then 56 years old," he recalls, "and I did  not intend to retire to the Canaries and play golf. I wanted to do something that would benefit the world." 

Wintzen, who uses green energy himself both at home and in his business, draws a sharp distinction between those who deserve his green capital and those who do not. "If a company really wants to be green and sustainable, it must examine every step of the production chain minutely. It also should seduce its customers to act more sustainably." Those firms, on the other hand, that join the sustainability bandwagon just for the sake of their image, he refers to as "green flag wavers". "They publish tear jerking reports about their social initiatives. But only a few of them are really genuine ." At the same time, he does not want to condemn such companies. "At least it is a step in the right direction. Every little bit helps, even if I wouldn't be inclined to describe the company as green right away."

In many of its initiatives Ex'tent concentrates on technological sustainability. One of Wintzen's favorite projects is the 'Eye Catcher', a system for video telephony. The entrepreneur is convinced that videoconferencing technology has been slow to catch on so far because it is not possible for business partners to see each other really in the eyes: either you look at the screen, or you look at the camera. The Eye Catcher, on the other hand, is based on a system of beamsplitting whereby the camera takes a frontal shot of the participants when they are looking directly at the screen. Wintzen himself has been able to cut his jet travel drastically as a result. "Instead of five times a year, now I only have to go to meetings at my school in San Francisco twice a year. But we easily talk  for hundreds of  hours with eachother using Eye Catchers."

The Infocaster initiative, which specializes in content-related RSS feeds, points the way to the paperless office. In plain terms, this means that only news will be exchanged with colleagues, business partners and friends - without any commercial breaks. Other projects - like Game Entertainment Europe, and the development of intelligent information systems and websites - likewise underline Wintzen's conviction that the virtual economy is feasible and works.

As one of his models, Wintzen refers to former US presidential candidate Al Gore. "It was partly due to his influence that the most recent cabinet formed in the Netherlands now includes a Minister for the Environment. I am trying to do the same thing as Al Gore - just making suggestions." For example, he advocates the introduction of an ecotax (he calls it Value Extracted Tax) in his own country, which would be charged on the purchase of resources , while at the same time reducing the tax on labor (VAT)

The Dutchman thinks it is a fundamental problem that affluence is always equated with material possessions. "People are seen as well off when they can afford to buy a lot of things, use them for a while and then throw them away. The more affluent we become, the more garbage we generate." Wintzen would like to halt this consumption spiral.

There is his company Greenwheels for instance, which tries to tempt its customers into dispensing with a car of their own. The car-sharing service company maintains some 1000 vehicles with dedicated parking places in various cities of Germany and the Netherlands. Registered users can book a car close to their home by phone or online, open it with a chip card and then rent it by the hour. In this way an average of twelve users can share a vehicle between them. Some while back Greenwheels took over Berlin's car-sharing service company Stattauto, which was having serious economic problems in 2000. Since the takeover by Greenwheels, the car-sharing idea in Berlin is not just working, it is also turning a tidy profit - with a growing body of customers.

Wintzen does not need to go searching for companies to invest in. In the Netherlands they line up at his doors. Before Ex'tent invests in a company, it must go through two scrutinies - one based on economic, the other on ecological or social considerations. "It doesn't matter a bit," says Wintzen, "whether a businessman thinks in a green way or not. If by my standards the idea is sustainable, he can think in purely economic terms."