The Environmental Benefits of Quality Work (Video)

For entrepreneur Dave Munson, creating a quality product is a spiritual imperative. Saddleback Leather Company’s durability bags reflect the founder’s understanding of God and God’s intentions for the natural environment.

Transcript:

The way I see it is that everything God does is quality. There are no exceptions. So it’s really important for us to do quality as best as we know how.

Instead of having a shiny fabric with a world map on it to make you feel adventurous, we just have this tough bag. No breakable parts, so it’s just not going to fall apart. Everything falls apart, so we just try to make it as long-lasting and as durable as possible.

There are little side benefits to that to the world. If everyone bought quality, you would not have as many landfills. I did some calculations in Dave math one time. I forget what it came out it - maybe like 400,000 bags a day are being thrown away around the world. Between 7 billion people, maybe 400,000 or 500,000 bags a day are being tossed and then bought again.

How much petroleum is that for the nylon? How much thread? How much metal? How much earth was excavated for the metal for the zippers on a half-million bags? I mean, that’s a lot! Maybe it’s a half million a day or a week - something like that - but it’s a lot! If people just bought one bag for life? It just seems like it’s good for the environment.

If they bought shoes, good quality shoes? If they bought a good quality fan? You know how your fan when you buy it for $29 or $22 or $19.95 it doesn’t stay adjusted. Pretty soon it’s just kind of stripped. And now the head either goes way up or way down. There are no replacement parts for those – you’ve just got to toss it in the trash – all that plastic, all that metal, all the wiring, all the energy that went into it. Buying quality is just good for everybody.

Watch the full Not Dead Yet from the Faith & Co. film series from Seattle Pacific University.

This video serves as an illustration to the TOW Bible Commentary Work, Worship and the Environment (Haggai 1:1-2:19; Zechariah 7:8-14).