Bruce Taylor: Enviro-Stewards and
Safe Water Social Venture
“What I wanted didn’t exist, so I had to create it.” Thus Enviro-Stewards was born.
“Anything you design is going to be gone in 30 years, but any person you work with is around forever.”
If anyone knows anything about design, it’s Bruce Taylor. Bruce is a Christian social entrepreneur who founded an engineering company called Enviro-Stewards Inc.. His firm specializes in helping manufacturing companies conserve energy, use less water, improve their product yields, and treat their waste materials. He designs for a living. But Bruce has tapped into something that many people refuse to acknowledge, developing people is what lasts. His designs will fade, but his investment in people will continue on.
It’s through this lens that Safe Water Social Ventures (SWSV) was founded through the profits of Enviro Stewards. SWSV is a social enterprise that holds a developmental model, taking those experiencing poverty and teaching them the skills to build, sell, and run a water filter business. In the words of Enviro Stewards, they are, “engineering change…and engineering is the easy part.”
Bruce with Matthew Loguya, one of the first people trained to construct Biosand water purifiers in South Sudan and currently the mentor for the East African Safe Water Social Venture projects
Getting Started
From a young age, Bruce has always been interested in social causes, whether conservation or humanitarianism.
“I was the kid writing letters to the mayor complaining about the trash and making suggestions,” he joked. It wasn’t until he became a Christian at 25 that his passions for change became motivated by a Kingdom mindset.
“I wondered, ok should I just quit now and go into ministry? But I thought no, keep doing what you’re doing with a new motivation.”
After seeing behind the curtain of some engineering consulting businesses (fixing the symptoms and not solving the problems) he decided to go out on his own. He had dreams of making real change in the world and in the lives of people. He wanted a company that would celebrate and encourage their employees to volunteer in the community, a place where the work they did actually solved real world issues and didn’t treat the symptoms.
In the words of a true entrepreneur: “What I wanted didn’t exist, so I had to create it.”
Thus Enviro Stewards was born. It began as a small company with one employee, run from a room in his house. He still remembers his first business deal after starting his company.
“The plant manager there took a chance,” he said, and that chance was a huge win for Bruce to know that someone believed in his work.
However, he quickly learned that the traditional business model he copied from his previous employers would not work with his overall goals. Bruce wanted more from his company than only making profit. He constantly had to tweak his business in the beginning so that he could achieve his triple bottom line: financial, social, and environmental progress.
SWSV Comes in the Picture
As Enviro-Stewards was getting off the ground, Bruce continued his passions in international development work. Being the boss of his own company meant he could take the time he needed to invest in people, so he began by building houses in El Salvador after the earthquakes in the early 2000s.
Soon after his visits there, another spot on the globe poked at his heart, South Sudan. Why? Bruce explains, “If I didn’t do the work in El Salvador, somebody else would. But there was no one working in South Sudan.”
While building an orphanage, he realized that the workers spent most of their time walking 6 miles to get water, and contaminated water at that. His engineering and Kingdom heart came together. He was able to bring a water filter and showed the people how to use it. They were quickly able to train people how to make, sell, and run a water filter business in South Sudan.
Delivering a locally constructed water purifier in Kajo Keji, South Sudan
He knew the business needed financing but at the time, Enviro-Stewards was just getting off the ground and wasn't profitable enough to invest in something big.
“We had to set it up as self-supporting, which is a great asset. If I had money I would have set up an unsustainable charity model.”
Again Bruce realized the importance of the business model as a key to making his ventures thrive. Instead of relying on the traditional charity model, he was able to create a system where funders supported Sudanese families to purchase their own filters (sold to them by their own people) to give them 25 years of clean water, saving them hundreds of American dollars in medical bills caused by contaminated water.
In a very beautiful way, Bruce was able to tie in his passion to make change for people at home and abroad with his engineering talents. Currently, 10% of the profits from Enviro- Stewards goes to SWSV.
The Importance of the Right Business Model
“Don’t use the business model that exists because you’ll lose. You need a new business model if you’re going to do a new thing, a new wineskin. Start with that,” he says. While they had their place, Bruce has continually found the traditional business models of the past are not making enough change for the future.
Time and time again Bruce has had to evaluate and re-evaluate his business model for both Enviro-Stewards and SWSV so that they are in forward motion, making change, creating sustainable revenue, and developing people.
Delivering talk entitled “Better than Charity” at TEDxUW 2017
Future Forwards
With all this positive momentum, passions, and dreams, Enviro-Stewards still has room to grow. Businesses like his rely on new contracts to keep them going. However, Bruce has a plan to keep his love for people and development model running for a long time.
Although not at the age for retirement, Bruce is already implementing measures to ensure that the heart and motivation for Enviro-Stewards and SWSV stays around long after he is gone.
“Success means that I won’t be there,” he says, but the love he poured into his projects will remain through the training and dedication of his employees.
“If I sell my company to a multinational when I retire, there will be nothing left.” Rather than see the Kingdom profit disappear overnight, Bruce is selling chunks of his company to his employees year by year, so that they can carry on his mission and vision.