Green Options

Perhaps appearing counterintuitive, one business stategy for green businesses during a recession that your business might consider is to invest in expansion.

Expansion can take many forms, of course. There is a great deal of interest in people starting green businesses these days. My personal blog has several pages, and by far and away the most popular is the “Green Business Opportunities” page where people can learn about green franchises, partnerships, consulting or outright purchases.

This may perhaps seem the most counterintuitive of all strategies, however, when taken to its basics, there are sound fundamentals that emerge. Why not make your business an opportunity for other aspiring eco-entrepreneurs? It’s part consulting,

You gotta spend money to save money. For energy efficiency upgrades, that saying couldn’t be more timely or accurate.

Energy efficiency programs and rebates are getting a real shot in the arm from, among other things, the stimulus package, plus many other federal, state, and local programs. As a result of the stimulus package, energy efficiency tax credits have been raised from 10% of cost to 30%. The maximum credit has been raised from $500 to $1500, and more expensive upgrades, such as solar panels, solar water heaters, and geothermal pumps are not limited to the $1,500 maximum. The $200 tax credit cap on efficient windows has been removed, however

Here at Ecopreneurist, we believe in the power of sharing and building upon our resources and knowledge, so that everybody has a chance to accelerate the expansion of the launching of green businesses, and the effective, useful greening of what’s already here.

So it was a pleasure to learn about startingupgreen.com.

I present some preliminary demographic data from survey research I conducted with successful ecopreneurs during the research leading to the publication of my book, Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill).

Well, at least everyone reading this blog. But where to begin? You have an idea. You have some skills. Maybe you have some experience in the field. Perhaps you have some startup capital. Are these things enough for you to become a successful ecopreneur? Maybe most importantly, do you know what you’re doing?!

I often have email exchanges with ecopreneurs, non-profits, NGOs and various business folks that don’t necessarily end up as a blog post. Sometimes I start in one direction and end up in another. That’s what happened here when I received an email from Rob Wallace at Keep America Beautiful.

Rob had one of those ironic moments. He sent out an email and press release to us asking:

How can recycling wireless phones support the new administration’s energy policy?  Our recycling partner, ReCellular, is a reuse-oriented recycler of cellular equipment, and we’re confident that their structure and operations support zero-waste wireless recycling.

Great email pitch. Bookmark this page for next time you send out a press release. However, this pitch landed on my screen the day after I wrote this post on 60 Minutes and Executive Recycling. I immediately asked Rob if he’d be interested in commenting on the whole issue of dumping of e-waste in China instead. And he was and here is what he had to say:

Photo credits: Wired.com.

Entrepreuneur.com recently wrote an excellent guide for small business owners on proactive moves they can take to survive - and better yet, thrive - in the nose-diving economy.

“You Can Weather the Economic Storm (Product price sensitivity and financial creativity can help you thrive in any economy)” is especially relevant for green entrepreneurs as many of the principles underlying Dennis Romero’s advice aligns with what sustainable business leaders already know: go for local resilience, understand the value of community-based goodwill and when in doubt, simply, simplify, simplify to the bare essentials (do the latest farm-fresh food recipes or eco-cleaning supplies mantras sound familiar, anyone?).

My first two posts about the triple bottom line for green businesses addressed the people who make up an enterprise as well as the people who supply it, use the goods or services created, or invest in the enterprise.

First coined by John Elkington and articulated in his book, Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of the 21st Century, the triple bottom line doesn’t drop the idea that businesses should earn a profit. It adds that businesses should do so in ways that take into account environmental and social performance in addition to financial performance. It requires a strong and efficient organization, perhaps even more so. Not only do you need to make a profit, you need funds and resources to reach beyond where mainstream business stops. A triple bottom line means expanding the spectrum of values and criteria for measuring business success to include: the planet, people and profits.

A Planet Bottom Line

Is what is being produced or services provided better for ALL life? A Planet bottom line continually examines inputs and outputs, addressing the materials we use and how we use them as well as minimizing – if not eliminating — waste. Ecopreneurs recognize and incorporate ecological limits into their business models. Many shun the use of toxic chemicals, hazardous materials or processes, or exploitative approaches to nature. A growing number of people are adopting an approach to product development or design that involves biomimicry.

Last week I shared the triple bottom line adapted from our ECOpreneuring book. The triple bottom line encompasses people, planet and (some) profits. Since people run a business, I started by examining how the DNA of a Green Business Starts with People, touching on customers and employees (apparently not highly valued at the now defunct Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns).

The other two People bottom lines are vendors/suppliers and investors (if your business has any), addressed below:

(3) Vendors and Suppliers

How a sustainable business chooses and interacts with vendors and suppliers, so-called business-to-business transactions, that provide the supplies and services the business needs to run is one way ecopreneurs are helping grow and magnify our impacts. We seek out like-minded vendors with whom to do business. Co-op America’s Green Pages (greenpages.com) is often our first stop to look for products our business might need, since it lists thousands of socially and environmentally responsible businesses.

A growing number of small businesses are perhaps inspired by the Amish and their collaborative sense of community and shared economic prosperity. Rather than working alone, many Amish provide goods or services to each other, working together on projects that on the surface may benefit only one farmer, but on the whole end up benefiting the entire community. As author Bill McKibben writes about in Deep Economy, there’s greater comfort and security from community membership than individual ownership. This idea is reflected in the business-to-business commerce mushrooming on the Internet and in small businesses, especially the nanocorps, or new forms of interlinked commercial websites, like Sohodojo.com.

People, planet and profits (at least some). That’s what the triple bottom line means for green businesses and a truly sustainable society.

The triple bottom line is not greenwash, a PR campaign or the “principles” part of a Sustainability Report. It’s the DNA of how a green business operates. It’s measured by such things as trees planted, living wages paid and problems solved (not created).

This is the first of a series of blogs that explore various facets of the triple bottom line commitment to operating sustainably and responsibly, starting with people.

People play a fundamental role in the ecopreneur’s business philosophy, realizing four different groups of people have their own sets of needs and priorities: customers, employees, vendors/suppliers, and investors. Many ecopreneurs we’ve interviewed for ECOpreneuring talk about stakeholders, not stockholders. They generate profits by caring for their stakeholders, not trying to crush competing businesses. They’re more concerned with nurturing their community, customers and employees and investors, if they have them. The following are the first two of the four groups of stakeholders (the other two addressed next week).

(1) Customers

Cultivating conserving customers drives ecopreneurial business success. Ecopreneurs view their customers much more as kindred spirits, sharing Earth-based values and priorities. Customer service, product quality and guaranteed services or products are crucial to their business success. Valuing customer communication translates to showcasing honesty, integrity and transparency. A respectful challenge banters between customers and sustainable businesses, much deeper and more personal than in typical customer interactions. Ecopreneurs expect to be scrutinized by their customers, and
likewise, our customers expect candid, honest replies. Customers challenge ecopreneurs with questions like: Do you carry envelopes made with post-consumer waste? Can I get this in hemp? How do you offset your greenhouse gas emissions? Where are your ingredients sourced from? These questions keep our business constantly moving forward toward higher goals and expectations. On the flip side, at our Bed & Breakfast, Inn Serendipity, we must be honest that our guest rooms don’t feature air conditioning or TVs.

For several years, my wife and I worked hard for the money at a job with a full service ad agency. Every year, however, we kept coming out on the short end of the stick: working longer hours, living with more stress, securing less net income to cover our mounting expenses. A recent New York Times article echoed the reality we felt more than a decade ago. According to their research drawing from data from the US Labor Department, employee wages are the lowest share of Gross Domestic Product since 1947, with the median hourly wage after factoring in inflation for American workers declining about 2 percent since 2003. Only the top percentile income earners have prospered while the rest of us whither under rising food and energy prices (and soon, rising prices for just about everything else). According to Census Bureau reports cited by the New York Times, the median pay among American workers is about the same, after accounting for inflation, as in 1973.

Besides helping sell products of questionable societal value (and with plenty of negative social and ecological impacts), we kissed off corporate America after just a few years on the treadmill to nowhere. Now we operate a diversified family-scaled, small business based on an organic farm powered by the wind and sun. We use our profits to make the world a better place and have built our business around our passions.

The main requirement of a for-profit business is to make profits, at least once every three years says the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). No requirement specifies how much profit must be made, just some. That’s the big difference between a hobby, where generating revenue is not the primary goal of the activity, and a business. There is no such thing as a “hobby business.” The non-profit business, formed as a special type of corporation depending on its purpose, uses revenues collected to fund its mission, whether it’s saving open space or planting trees around the world to help mitigate the effects of global warming, provide nature-enhancing livelihoods and prevent soil erosion like Trees for the Future does.

As my wife and I explore at length in ECOpreneuring and in my blogs, we approach our passions — writing, photography, hosting people at Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and desiring to restore the planet — not as hobbies, but as business enterprises. You can blog on the Internet about growing in your garden, or you can write articles about growing food organically in your garden for Hobby Farm Home magazine and blog for GreenOptions.com. One’s a hobby; one’s a business and provides income from writing about something you love.