Green Options

Hillary Bromberg offers, at Sustainable Life Media, an article titled: Ten Insights for Sustainable Brands in an Uncertain Economy. Since her advice is pretty good, I was tempted to just pass it along.

But, then I thought I might add a few insights of my own.

Take a look at this new video that I found on the Dell Social Media Facebook page. Green businesses, always current with the latest trends, are getting into social media in a big way. How about you?

First there was the dotcom bust of the late 1990s, then came the real-estate bubble that’s deflating before our eyes. Next up: the green bubble. Alternative energy ventures have received a lot of great press, heavy investment and lip service from politicians in the last couple of years, but many of the nascent green industry’s balance sheets are beginning to bleed red.

This is a guest post from Glenn Croston, author of “75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make a Difference”,

At the Opportunity Green conference held at UCLA November 8-9, many themes related to the growth and changing direction of the green business movement were discussed by the great variety of green leaders present.

One particularly interesting theme was about the mixed feelings some green entrepreneurs have about going big with their business.

Everybody is eager for success, but green entrepreneurs often fear that scaling up products to reach the masses requires compromises that would negate the benefit of what they are doing and hurt the brand in the long run.

Most green products today are still niche products, perhaps as a result of this fear. At the conference Josh Dorfman, author of “The Lazy Environmentalist”, said that contrary to what many are saying, “Green has not gone mainstream.” Some products are starting to change this, like the Prius and Green Works cleaning products from Clorox, but even these successes represent a small percentage of the overall market. Organic food is big, but it’s still only about 3% of the food we eat.

Do products have to be small to be green? Do they sacrifice something in going big?

Bad economy got you down? If you’re looking for some inspiration, this trailer for a new documentary might just do the trick. Often down economy’s are the best time to start a new business -especially a green one.

Greenbiz.com gives a few:

According to McKinsey: “most companies in most sectors have profitable opportunities to save money by cutting energy consumption and gas emissions. Our studies indicate that a lot of companies can reduce them by 20 to 50 percent.”

An op-ed piece in the New York Times, The Climate For Change, by über environmentalist, Al Gore, outlines for President-Elect Obama changes we need to make to both improve the economy and decrease climate change.

Much of what he recommends is good news for ecopreneurs.

1…. incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants, wind and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots .

2… planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places to cities

3…. help America’s automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids

I spent this morning at a meeting of The Eco Investment Club meeting in San Diego. Founder, Yeves Perez thought I might be interested in attending and I was. While there, I had the opportunity to speak with Glenn Croston, a Ph.D. biologoist and founder of Starting Up Green.com.

Like many of us, Glenn told me, he and his family starting behaving more green in their home and, with his unique perspective on our planet as a biologist, that [...]

Diwali, India’s Festival Of Light, is the most important holiday for the global Indian community. As much as it is a time to participate in family traditions, it is also a huge commercial opportunity for businesses, retailers and vendors that cater to the needs of the growing Indian community.

The following is guest post submitted to me by the ecopreneurs over at Grow and Make - The Sustainable Living Store.

When MC Milker at Ecopreneurist asked me to consider sharing some of the writing we had been doing at Grow and Make with her readership, I reflected on what it means to be an entrepreneur in this emerging era of sustainability and the  dilemma that we face as both responsible stewards of the earth and successful business people. Grow and Make was founded on the premise that we should create a business which encourages and enables consumers to return to the consumption habits of the 19th century when, through necessity, individuals and families would ‘grow’ and ‘make’ more of their everyday essentials.

Individuals and businesses wishing to adopt more sustainable practices must recognize that minimizing consumption is key to living in a more sustainable manner. Moreover, it is critical for consumers to understand the life-cycle of the goods they consume recognizing that all products leave a significant environmental trail from the cost of conception and production, through the supply chain and into the hands of the consumer, until it’s ultimately discarded and placed in landfill and/or the atmosphere.

While each of these links in the chain can be offset by responsible manufacturers and consumers to some degree, there is no substitute for the benefits of a decision to not consume a product at all.

As an entrepreneur, business owner and consumer, this does presents a dilemma. How to continue to encourage and enable production of goods for consumption while simultaneously discouraging and raising awareness about the perils of consumption?

I believe that the best way to overcome this dilemma is to create best practices for both manufacturers and consumers to consider when creating and consuming goods.

Not necessarily. Though consumer confidence is down, recessions are historically the time when emerging trends gain momentum – green is a fast growing trend.

But, if your business depends on retail distribution, now is the time to familiarize yourself with how the grocery channel operates in down markets…which you may not have been a part of until this time.

The effect at retail has more nuance than an upturn in staples sales, as people eat out less and turn to food stores more for their next meal components. Rattled consumers expressed their lowest confidence levels since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, and the lowest expectation levels since the oil embargo and Watergate of 1973, according to the Conference Board.

This means a focus on the consumer benefit for organic foods…not the term “organic” but the health benefit provided. Consumers may be more willing to spend the extra dollars to buy organic if they have the health benefit spelled out in front them at point of purchase.

Or perhaps, no certainly, this is the time to teach consumers how to stretch their menus. During tight times, providing recipes with which consumers may not be familiar is a great strategy. Coupons and selling a value message is paramount.