From a Movement to a Market: Is Green Business Tipping the Scale?
One needn’t look far to see that green initiatives large and small dominate the headlines in mainstream media, business and industry publications and millions of websites and blogs throughout cyberspace. If sheer volume is a tool used to decipher business trends, most would argue that green business is beyond fad, more than a passing trend and here to stay.
Certainly the adoption of green business practices has reached a tipping point, and it is easy to feel like yesterday’s news if you’re not on the green business bandwagon, but what is more difficult to ascertain is whether or not green business initiatives are truly moving the needle in a positive direction.
Big Money; No Whammies
Sure big corporations spent millions this year on carbon audits, clean energy credits, green business consulting, and teams of corporate social responsibility officers to help them stay on task. But what has it amounted to really? And more specifically, what good has the flurry of excitement and attention regarding green business done for the planet?
According to State of Green Business 2008, by Joel Makower, Executive Editor of GreenBiz.com, even though overall results were mixed, there were large and small strides in the right direction.
Commitment to Change
Companies all over the globe made climate commitments this year, promising to clean up operations, run more efficiently and give back to help the environment. And they weren’t just aiming to outdo each other, but raise the bar and beat their own goals.
“Xerox announced that it had already met its four-year-old goal of reducing its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent by 2012, with 18 percent fewer emissions in 2006 alone, as compared to 2002 levels. It set a new goal to cut emissions 25 percent by 2012 — a 150 percent increase from its previous goal.”
A Moving Target
While commitments and goals are good, measurables are better, but it is not easy to measure environmental impact when, “nearly a third of companies currently have no way of monitoring their own direct carbon emissions, let alone the indirect emissions of their supply chains, and have no plan to begin doing so, according to a new survey of global executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
When businesses need to think outside of the office, the production line, and beyond geographic borders, “only one in 10 companies said it comprehensively monitors its carbon impact across its entire business, with North American companies trailing their Asian and European counterparts.”
A few years ago, proponents of green business would have jumped up and down to see the eager adoption of green business initiatives. Today, media praises those who are taking steps toward an improved business model. Tomorrow’s agenda: a blueprint for sustainable business success.
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By: marvinn () on 13-06-2012 04:52