Green Enterprises
From Entrepedia: The Entrepreneurship Wiki
There is a growing emphasis on environmental sustainability which has been gaining momentum in the business world for quite some time now. This trend has created a whole range of opportunities for entrepreneurs: from creating a green-tech by using technology to foster environmental sustainability (e.g. energy and battery management or thermal imaging) through to simply making your existing business more environmentally friendly in order to take advantage of the benefits. This article explores the field of green business, looking at some of the issues and opportunities it presents.
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Why go green?
In the last decade or so, environmental sustainability has become one of the key aspirations of many large businesses. Partly spurred on by the effects of global warming, partly through of a reluctance to remain dependent on hugely volatile energy markets, even Barack Obama has given his backing to the green cause.
An a recent seminar given for the University of Edinburgh, Alison van Diggelen the Scottish journalist and commentator from Silicon Valley outlined several of the mail reasons for going green:
- Savings and Efficiency: by choosing to make your business more environmentally friendly, there are significant cost savings to be made, especially by using resources more efficiently;
- Customer Demand: customers and clients are now more environmentally conscious and as such often consider a business's green credentials, with many giving outright preference to businesses that have shown themselves to be environmentally conscious;
- Team Building: making your business greener can be a fun way to boost morale, build teams and have your employees take an active part in the business (e.g. in departmental energy saving leagues);
- Global Warming: by helping you business play its part in conserving the natural resources of the earth, you are helping to sustain opportunities for future generations.
Running A Green(er) Enterprise
There are many ways that you can lower the daily environmental impact of your venture even if it is not specifically a Green Enterprise. Many of these changes may seem obvious or trivial, but, as the Scots would say every mickle maks a muckle: all these small savings add up to bring considerable cumulative benefits to your business. Not only will they make your venture greener, but they will also help to lower your cost base, something especially important when operating in today's tough economic climate.
There is also a definite trend towards an increasing awareness about the sustainability of business operations. This means that by making a few efforts to 'green' your business, you can gain credibility and build trust with existing customers and also attract new ones as well. Beware of greenwashing though: falsely promoting your venture as environmentally sustainable can have a much worse impact overall than any benefits it might seem to prevent.
Vampire Energy
Nowadays practically all electrical appliances have some sort of stand-by mode. We often fail to take into account the energy used by these appliances as they sit idle. However, as an example, the average laptop will use 144.5 kw/h of energy per year, and when you consider the stand-by usage of all electrical items together, it becomes appearent that considerable savings can be made. To describe this phenomenon, GOOD Magazine coined the term Vampire Energy. They compiled a chart of the 12 most common items, showing just how much energy they waste when left on stand-by. You can see the chart here.
Information published on the Business Link website estimates that leaving just one PC running for 24 hours a day costs over £50 a year; by remembering to turn off both your monitor and your computer tower when not in use you can reduce that cost to only £15 a year. That's a saving of £35 a year per PC, which means that if you have a small office with about 10 PCs, you make an average annual saving of £300[1]. Why not take a look at their Top 10 tips for reducing waste and saving energy.
There are other ways to save energy too: by lowering the temperature of your office by 5 or 10 degrees, you can save a considerable amount money on your heating bill. The Carbon Trust estimates that for every degree over a base temperature of 19°C you add around 8% to your heating bill[2]. Without necessarily going to the extremes of sitting in the office in a Hawaiian shirt in the summer and a scarf and gloves in the winder, it is be much more efficient to dress to suit your climate than to dress your climate to suit you.
Green Suppliers
The use of green suppliers is another way in which you can make your business greener. By making use of reputable green suppliers, you can ensure the environmental sustainability of your business, not only in its day-to-day operations, but right through the supply chain. This becomes especially important if you decide to market yourself as a green business: your customers will want to be sure that you are not just greenwashing, that you are committed to sustainability at all levels of the supply chain.
For more information on finding ways to ensure that your venture is as green as possible in its day-to-day operations, see the Entrepedia article on Green Suppliers
Case Studies
To understand the ways in which you as an entrepreneur can capitalize on the available opportunities in the green enterprise market, have a look at some of these successful green ventures:
- Ecomonkey: a Scotland-based webcompany that makes shopping for green products easier and more enjoyable, and rewards greener shopping habits to boot. Philip Immirzi of Ecomonkey has also written down some Tips / Experiences for the Green Entrepreneur
- Used Tyre Distillation Research Ltd (UTD Research Ltd): Founded in 2003, UTD Research Ltd is company based in Wales that is working to reduce the number of waste tyres that are thrown in landfills by recycling them in an environmentally friendly way that allows the materials to be reused.
- BioRegional: A company founded in 1994 by Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone as a registered charity, BioRegional has since established companies that provide eco-friendly services and environmental solutions, such as BioRegional MiniMills Ltd
Green Awards
Environmental sustainability is not just something confined to the business world, it concerns a fundamental change attitudes to how we view and treat the planet. As such, green enterprise need not be solely market driven and there are a number of awards and incentives to encourage greater environmental sustainability. Not only will they provide resources and cash, but they will also bestow a certain prestige upon your business. Here are a selection of some of the awards available, please feel free to add any you know of to the list.
- The Scottish Green Energy Awards offer awards for innovations and businesses—both new and established—in the renewable industry in Scotland, including:
- Best New Business Award; and the
- Business Achievement Award.
- The Green Business Awards were launched in 2007 by the World Business magazine, in association with INSTEAD graduate business school in Paris, France. It is an international award aimed at recognizing and rewarding companies around the world who are committed to preserving the environment.
- The Green Organization hosts the Green Apple Awards, a series of international awards that recognize a variety of environmentally friendly practices in businesses, organizations, and institutions.
- Climate Challenge Competition run by the The Financial Times and Forum for the Future, offering awards for the new technology, system, service, organization, or business model that offers the most innovative solution to the effects climate change. The winner will receive a $75,000 prize sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, in the hope that their solution can become a reality.
The Green Jargon
As the idea of green business and technologies has become more established, a number of new terms have cropped up to allow us to make reference to them. Of course you can find them all in the Entrepedia Glossary, but for the sake of simplicity, we have summarized some of the key green jargon here.
- Green
- Causing minimal damage to the environment, ecologically sound.
- To Green
- To make your business environmentally friendly.
- To Greenwash
- To give a superficial impression of being environmentally conscious.
- To Outgreen
- To make your business more greener than your competitors.
- Spectrum of green
- A continuum used to measure varying levels of activities' environmental impact.
- Sustainability
- Conducting business in such a way as not to prejudice the resources available for future generations, especially in matters concerning the environment.
