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How To Green Up Your Small Business
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Article 1: Why Consider Going Green?
Each of us has an impact on the environment, and your company does, too.
When you print an invoice or make a delivery or fly to your presentation, you’re creating greenhouse gases, which are linked to global warming. Our workplace practices lead to other environmental threats, too, like air and water pollution.
Small businesses can help reverse the destructive course.
“Don’t think you’re too small to make a difference,” says Joel Makower, the Oakland, Calif.-based executive editor of GreenBiz.com. “Cumulatively, small business can make a big difference . . . Our environmental challenges are very big but they’re going to be addressed by millions of people and companies doing lots of little things. That’s how we got in this mess.”
If your inner tree hugger isn’t pushing you to make your company more sustainable – a term that refers to balancing our current needs without compromising those of future generations – consider the move’s benefits to your business.
“Business efficiencies that have a positive environmental result – that’s how it has to be sold,” says John Rooks, president of Dwell Creative, a green ad agency in Portland, Maine.
Rooks’s five-person shop has cut its paper bill in half by printing on both sides of the paper. The company reduces waste by using washable plates and cups. It recycles. And it recently began turning off computers at night to save energy.
“Those are business advantages,” Rooks says. “I don’t have to spend a lot of money on that type of stuff.”
The company also neutralizes its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing “offsets,” which support projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.
Dwell buys offsets because doing so is consistent with the agency’s philosophy, but it was rewarded for its eco-friendly effort, too. The idea interested an editor at the Portland Press Herald in August 2006, and the company received a full-page of press for the initiative.
Ultimately, going green is about leadership and having a vision, explains Anna Clark, president of EarthPeople, a Dallas-based sustainability consultancy.
“It’s an opportunity to represent something greater than yourself, and you’re going to gain clients and recognition in the media and you’ll build a better-run company,” she says.
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How To Green Up Your Small Business
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