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?

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