By Nellie Lide

So now, after reading my earlier article, Green Business Opportunities, you’re committed. You are convinced that going green is something you want to build into your business. You are ready to do it.

The question becomes, how?

For existing small businesses, going green can be anything from a wellness program for your employees to reducing your energy consumption to making a green (or greener) product. Or perhaps it means committing to a sustainable business model — a cradle to grave effort.

If you’re looking into going “green” figure out what that means for you and what makes sense for your business. You need to find what the Harvard Business Review called the “shared value”. In other words, does your green effort create a “meaningful benefit for society that is also valuable to the business.”

For instance, if you sell office supplies, it probably doesn’t make sense for you to sponsor a program at a nursing home. Instead, maybe you could open a section or your store with sustainable supplies or solicit supply donations to a school in your area — or if you’re in a relatively affluent area — then to a sister school in a disadvantaged area.

Also, don’t overlook the value of being a small local business — realize it is an advantage in consumers’ eyes. Kemi Osukoya recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Many green consumers tend to see a small, local business as naturally more environmentally sound than a sprawling multinational. And small businesses can provide a personal touch that big ones can’t — which can be important when selling complicated eco-friendly wares.”

Actively engage in and promote the green life beyond what you sell. Be authentically green by consciously using less energy, trying to find local suppliers so your carbon footprint is smaller, and even live a green personal life. As a small business you owe nothing to shareholders or investors — which in the eyes of consumers, may make your business more trustworthy. The payback? Loyal customers, a decent business, and the satisfaction that you are doing good.

The other thing to keep in mind is the need to tell people about your green efforts — customers and suppliers and anyone else. Local papers and local television news always like a good story. Position your business as part of a larger story about how local businesses in the area are trying to improve the planet in lots of different ways.

And don’t underestimate the value of blogs. Write an article, offer an interview to a green blog — there are loads of them. Here’s a good list of “green blogs” to start with, and you can always look at their blogrolls for more:

Treehugger

World Changing

Clean Edge-The Clean Tech Marketing Authority

Ask Pablo — Sustainability Engineer

EcoGeek

Green Trust Sustainability and Renewable Energy

Joel Makower

Lazy Environmentalist

Lime — Healthy Living with a Twist

Marketing Green

Organic Researcher

Envirolink Network — environmental resources

The Watt

Finally, I would also recommend these two books for an overview of green issues:

The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience by Duncan Clark and Richie Unterberger.

Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, edited by Alex Steffen.

The post How to Turn Your Existing Business Green appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Dr. Karel J. Samsom, a specialist in environmental and sustainable entrepreneurship and author of Spirit of Entrepreneurship told Entrepreneur magazine that green business is “… a highly underrated opportunity for small business.”

What are the opportunities for small businesses that want to “go green”? Every industry, every hobby, every action can have a shade of green. Broadly, green means either improving the planet or improving its people or both. Any process, product or service that saves natural resources or re-uses these resources is considered green. Any effort to help people live healthier lives is green. The green umbrella also includes the growing field of social entrepreneurship — a business which sets out to solve a social problem while at the same time making money.

Are people really buying green? The answer is yes — although many green businesses find it helps to sell quality and price first, and green bona fides second.

 Some 63 million American consumers are classified as LOHAS (those with “lifestyles of health and sustainability.”) According to the Natural Marketing Institute, this means that they “have a profound sense of environmental and social responsibility … these consumers are also the most likely of the segments to buy environmentally and socially responsible products.”  These are the customers who, according to Fast Company magazine, “… have proven themselves willing to spend up to an astounding 20% premium on clean, green products ….”

Add to that another 38% of consumers who “are less resolute in their LOHAS attitudes, though still show moderate levels of related concern and select LOHAS behaviors (such as recycling, among others), and you have an incredible consumer base which at the very least open to green ideas and products.

So where are the best opportunities for entrepreneurs? Here are four: 

1. Organic Products — We’ve all read about the exploding organics industry – there are organic cosmetics, toiletries, vodka, pasta, tea, waffles, peanut butter – but there is still tons of room for growth here particularly since, as Andrew Zolli wrote in Fast Company, “With two huge generations dominating American society — the baby boomers, who created the first draft of contemporary environmentalism, and the millennials, the most globally connected cohort in history — principles of conscious consumption will come to dominate the brandscape.”

About 75% of shoppers buy organic products at least occasionally, up from 55% in 2000; 23% buy them at least once a week. (Supermarket News, 8/27/07, subscription required)
Organics are here to stay – Goldman Sacks snalyst Steven T. Kron said, “We believe that the recent surge that organic foods have experienced is not transient, but rather a sustainable shift in food consumption with ramifacations up and down the food chain.” (Associated Press, 7/13/07)

U.S. organic food and beverage sales totaled nearly $17 billion in 2006, representing 3 percent of all retail sales of food, up from 2.5 percent in 2005 and 1.9 percent in 2003. So though organic retail sales have grown between 20% and 24% each year since 1990, that’s still only 3% of the category.

One example of an organic company is Eco Lips, which makes organic lip balm. From Entrepreneur magazine:  Placed “anyplace that has a cash register,” the product, which is made using solar energy, is an easy sell to consumers who not only want to buy green, but also want a quality product. “It’s so inexpensive, and it’s a gateway organic product — people will try Eco Lips and maybe have such a good experience that they’ll want to try organic orange juice or organic cotton sheets,” says [Eco Lips co-founder Steve] Shriver.

For more information, the Organic Trade Association runs HowToGoOrganic.com, a site “for anyone exploring how to transition to organic.”

2. Trash — Thar’s gold in them there rubbish hills. According to the EPA, Americans generated some 245.7 million tons of garbage in 2005 (latest figures available.) That’s 4.54 pounds of trash per person per day. Here are some of the things we throw away:

• Americans currently dispose of 128 million cell phones a year, only 1% of which are diverted from landfills. This does not include the 2 million tons of used electronics we also discard annually.

• A typical baby goes through around 5000 disposables during its diaper days; across the U.S., this adds up to an astonishing 20 billion each year, enough to cover a football field with a three-mile high pile.

• Each year, 3.5 billion wire hangers end up in U.S. landfills. (Reader’s Digest, June, 2007) Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. (Illiinois Times, March 8, 2007)

You get the picture. If you can figure out new uses for a specific garbage item, you’ve got yourself a business. Terracycle makes plant food from worm poop and packages it in recycled soda bottles. One company, EVCO Research in
Atlanta, Georgia uses scrap plastic beverage and water bottles to make water repellent coatings for cardboard boxes used for shipping fruit and meats. Chicago Cargo Bike and Trailer Co. makes bike trailers out of reclaimed materials. ReCellular, Inc. collects, recycles and resells cell phones. They process around 300,000 phones a month – which still leaves over 120 million phones in the trash.

3. Government — including Federal, State, County, and City levels. How are governments an opportunity for small business? Three ways:

• Find out what your local government is doing re “green” – and craft a service to meet their needs. A good place to start is The SustainLane Government Knowledge Base where, according to Shirl Kennedy at Resource Shelf, “You can read full documents submitted by urban planners and sustainability managers from across the country. Find out what cities, counties, and states are doing to improve their carbon footprints, quality of life and resource efficiency. Find the latest programs in urban ecology.”

• Create a service or a product that helps other local businesses comply with environmental regulation/laws/ordinances that apply to them. For instance, San Francisco recently banned plastic bags. Can you supply a biodegradable or recycled or reusable alternative to retailers?

• Take advantage of government grants and loans encouraging green practices. From the Wall Street Journal: “The government is also giving small businesses a spur to go green. Just as large companies receive government breaks for environmental-friendliness, the Department of Agriculture offers a Small Business Innovation Research Program that offers awards of $80,000 to $250,000 for using certain environmentally friendly practices in selling or processing wares. The Environmental Protection Agency gives grants to small businesses involved in environmental industries and initiatives. On a state level, New York awards funds to small businesses that are involved in projects such as pollution prevention and recycling.”

RubberForm Recycled Products LLC, in New York, recycles old rubber, such as tires, and turns it into new products. The owners use federal, state and local funds (and private investments) to launch their business last year.

4. The Green Lifestyle — As I said earlier, just about anything we do in our regular lives can be transformed or altered into a green state. So if you examine your own life, you might come up with something you do everyday that could use a green element. Do you use a lot of paper — how about making recycled paper? It’s only left to your imagination. Here are some of the small businesses created around the green lifestyle that may spur your thinking:

• Green Singles — find your perfect match in the environmental, vegetarian, or animal rights community.

• Vivavi — eco-friendly furniture and home design.

• Stay at a green hotel.

• Save your money at a green bank — ShoreBank Pacific is the first commercial bank in the United States with a commitment to environmentally sustainable community development.

• Working Assets Funding Service issues a “socially responsible credit card.”

• Build and live in a green home

• Memorial Ecosystems – Bury your loved one in a green cemetery. From their website: “Our main focus is to develop multi-functional memorial nature preserves that we create with the cooperation and assistance of non-profit organizations. Through becoming members of the preserve during life, and choosing burial in the preserve after, our clients leave a permanent legacy for their families, their communities and the natural world. We are committed to being the leaders in environmentally and socially responsible death care.”

The post The Green Umbrella: Green Business Opportunities appeared first on Small Business Trends.

By Nellie Lide

Green. Sustainability. Philanthropic. Environmental. Clean. Natural. Healthy. Organic. Conscious Capitalism. Ethical Consumerism.

All these words define the movement of both consumers and companies to become socially responsible for their actions and their products or services. The very heart of a business is changing — making a profit and striving for a healthier planet with healthier people are now bundled together.

Inc. magazine reported: “… something seems different about our current green awakening. This time, the action is being driven as much by markets as morality. High oil prices, global warming, the sense that chemicals cause real harm and the earth’s resources are indeed finite — these are not so much charitable causes to embrace as they are problems that entrepreneurs can solve.”

So how can I say with certainty that we are on the brink of what Fast Company called Business 3.0? Here are five major indicators demonstrating the phenomenal growth in “green” business and why it appears to be a long term trend and not just a fad.

1. Customers are increasingly aware of environmental issues.

• The 2007 Cone Consumer Environmental Survey found “one-third of Americans (32%) report heightened interest in the environment compared to a year ago. In addition, they are overwhelmingly looking to companies to act: 93% of Americans believe companies have a responsibility to help preserve the environment.”

• The 2007 ImagePower Green Brands Survey indicated a “shift in the U.S.’s collective consciousness — green is no longer an issue marginalized to fanatical environmentalists; nearly all Americans display green attitudes and behaviors versus a year ago.”

• A national survey by GfK Custom Research North America showed that “… individual Americans view U.S. citizens and corporations as behind the rest of the world when it comes to taking action to protect the environment ….” Kathy Sheehan, Senior vice-President for Gfk Roper Consulting said, “This reflects the overall ‘consumer awakening’ trend we are seeing today, in which action is historically preceded by acknowledgement of an issue resulting in a need for change.”

• About half of employed adults (52%) think their company should do more to be environmentally friendly. (Adecco Survey, April 10, 2007)

2. Customers are increasingly drawn to businesses, products and services that are green, organic, natural, clean, sustainable — you get the idea.

• According to a recent Priceline.com survey, “… an overwhelming majority (72%) of travelers want rental car companies to offer economical, environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles powered by both gasoline and electricity.”

• The Organic Trade Association says that organic retail sales in the United States have grown between 20% and 24% each year since 1990. According to survey results, sales of organic foods grew by 22.1 percent in 2006 to reach $16.9 billion.

• Green building is forecast to grow from a $7.4 billion market last year to $38 billion in 2010, according to the National Association of Home Builders. (Business Week Small Biz, Summer 2006)

• According to research from ACNielsen’s LabelTrends, “[In 2006] … products with antioxidants, fiber, no preservatives and organic claims all grew by 10% or more versus last year.”

• “Water [considered a healthy drink], together with other nonfizzy drinks, accounted for 90 percent of the growth of the entire beverage industry between 2002 and 2005. By the end of the decade, they are expected to outsell soda.” The New York Times, May 27, 2007.

• “General Electric Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said his ‘green’ ecomagination unit is on track to ‘blow away’ its 2010 sales target of $20 billion as demand for environmental products and services surges.” (Reuters, May 25, 2007)

3. Local Governments are forcing green issues all over the United States:

• Plastic Bags — For the first time, non-biodegradable plastic bags are banned in large grocery stores by a local ordinance in San Francisco. (San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 2007)

• Trans Fat — In 2007, New York became the first municipality to officially ban trans fats. Philadelphia and Montgomery County, Maryland have also banned trans fat. (Washington Post, May 16, 2007)

• The Incandescent Light Bulb — From Ban the Bulb blog : “South Carolina is attempting to follow the lead of Australia and the European Union by enforcing the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs … Other U.S. states are also considering similar legislation.”

• The Bottle in Bottled Water — This year, Americans will drink more than 30 billion single-serving bottles of water (see New York Times article referenced above). According to The Container Recycling Institute: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont all have existing bottle deposit laws. And many additional states (Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia) are considering similar laws.

4. Personal and Professional Investors are Going Green

One sure way to know that clean or sustainable or environmental or just plain green businesses are here to stay is to see where both professional and personal investors are putting their money.

Venture Capital

• One venture capitalist told Entrepreneur magazine: “We look at all kinds of energy and environmental technologies David Kirkpatrick, managing director at SJF Ventures in Durham, North Carolina. But it’s different than the ’70s and ’80s boom in environmental cleanup technologies: Today, these are proactive technologies, not reactive.”

• Venture capitalists invested $1.2 billion in green businesses in 2006. That’s twice as much as they invested in 2005 …. (Venture Capitalist John Doerr, Speech, Stanford Graduate School of Business, April 5, 2007)

• Venture capital firms invested $958 million in renewable energy companies in the first half of 2006 alone.

• Sharp growth in the number of VC firms specializing in seeding green businesses or adding a green component to their funds: Global Environment Fund, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, just to name a few.

Socially Responsible Investments

• Socially responsible investing options have exploded the last few years: Nearly $2.3 trillion was held in socially responsible accounts used by individuals and institutions at the end of 2005, up from $639 billion in 1995 and outpacing growth in total assets invested.

• Socially Responsible Investment Firms have multiplied too – Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management (with some 110 green mutual funds and more), Social Investment Forum, Social Funds, Calvert, Domini Social Investments, Pax World Funds, Citizens Funds, CalPERS, Ceres, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Sierra Club Mutual Funds

• Even some mainstream financial institutions have factored in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into their investment processes — UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Smith Barney, JP Morgan Chase (Value, February/March 2006)

5. The Green Business Infrastructure is Growing
Education, entrepreneurial communities and conferences have all been affected by our environmental awakening.

Consider the increasing interest in getting Green MBAs:

• Student interest in sustainability issues is skyrocketing: “Five years ago, [The Aspen Institute Business and Society Program] site received a few hundred visits a month from prospective MBA students researching social-emphasis courses at various schools. Now there are 15,000 to 20,000 visits a month.”

• New College of California — offers a Socially Responsible and Ecologically Sustainable MBA Program

• Dominican University of California — has a Green MBA program

• Presidio School of Management, Presidio World College, San Francisco — has an MBA program in Sustainable Management

• Green Mountain College, Vermont — “… charged into the world of online education with two innovative master’s programs, both catering to the needs of working professionals. One is an MBA in sustainable business. The other is a Master of Science in Environmental Studies ….” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Also consider the growth of entrepreneur communities that focus on Green Issues and Social Responsibility:

• Center for Sustainable Innovation

• Center for Small Business and the Environment

• E2: Environmental Entrepreneurs

• Entrepreneurs for Sustainability

• Business for Social Responsibility

• Small Business Majority

• Ashoka

• New Voice of Business

• Global Environment and Technology Foundation

And then there is the growth of green conferences:

• Co-op America’s Green Business Conference — from website: “Roll up your sleeves and get ready to bite into the green business revolution at this hands-on conference. Learn from your peers in this value-packed three-day event as you discuss the many ways to build your business and a prosperous sustainable economy ….”

• National Association of Home Builders, National Green Building Conference – Greening the American Dream

• Green Power Conferences - from website: “Green Power Conferences was established in 2003 by a team of professional, environmentally aware event experts. We have since welcomed over 4000 delegates from 76 countries, built a global database of 110,000+ contacts and gained an unparalleled reputation in the industry.”

• EPA’s one stop shop for planning a green conference — This is a bit different from a conference about green business. This site can help you plan any kind of meeting while minimizing negative impacts on the environment.

With these five trend indicators, it seems clear that the movement in the 21st century toward green business is a profound one that looks here to stay.

The post Green: Taking Care of Business, Ourselves and the Planet appeared first on Small Business Trends.