NEWS & UPDATES

May 23, 2008 In By Advent

Three P′s for Green Business Practices

The move­ment to be “green” is gain­ing momen­tum and as con­sumers step up to do their duty to pre­serve and pro­tect our envi­ron­ment through sus­tain­able prac­tices, many busi­nesses are meet­ing the chal­lenge to do their part as well.  Unless you’ve been liv­ing under a rock, I’m sure you have heard one of the mul­ti­ple rea­sons why it is nec­es­sary to recy­cle, con­serve energy, reuse, and so on, but how can sus­tain­able prac­tices ben­e­fit a busi­ness’ business?

PEOPLE

By nature, humans seek asso­ci­a­tion with what is good.  Green prac­tices within an orga­ni­za­tion can sig­nif­i­cantly impact a company’s cul­ture. Employ­ees are more pro­duc­tive and loyal to a com­pany they are proud to be part of, an orga­ni­za­tion that “gives back” to its employ­ees and the envi­ron­ment.  Sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices align with fun­da­men­tal human com­po­nents such as diver­sity, wage fair­ness, jus­tice, har­mony, etc. Many com­pa­nies are cre­at­ing “green teams” to eval­u­ate and improve their green prac­tices as related to com­pany cul­ture as well as phys­i­cal impact on the envi­ron­ment.  Online tools are avail­able from com­pa­nies such as Be True Green to assist com­pa­nies and their employ­ees in mak­ing greener choices.

PLANET

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – The Pub­lic pays atten­tion and will sup­port busi­nesses that “do the right thing” even in small ways.  Orga­ni­za­tions pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices often have “green” press kits that high light their sus­tain­able efforts.  Every busi­ness can imple­ment pro­grams such as recy­cling, “duplex­ing” or using both sides of paper, reusing printer ink and toner car­tridges, buy­ing recy­cled prod­ucts, turn­ing off the lights and more to cut waste and save money.  Com­pa­nies such as Aveda, have encom­passed sus­tain­abil­ity as a main com­po­nent of their mis­sion.  The com­pany has dras­ti­cally low­ered its car­bon foot­print by recently becom­ing the first beauty com­pany man­u­fac­tur­ing with 100% wind power.  Wind energy is pro­duced with­out air emis­sions like car­bon diox­ide and sul­fur diox­ide, uses no water and requires no water treat­ment dur­ing production.

PROSPERITY

DRIVE DIFFERENTIATION – Busi­nesses offer­ing eco-friendly prod­ucts and ser­vices are lead­ing this grow­ing trend and there­fore have a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.  Whether your tar­get is con­sumers or other busi­nesses, poten­tial clients who are com­mit­ted to sus­tain­able prac­tices will seek out and choose busi­nesses that also sup­port sustainability.

MEET MARKET DEMAND –As the pub­lic becomes more informed of why and how they can sup­port sus­tain­able prac­tices, demand for green prod­ucts and ser­vices will con­tinue to rapidly increase.  Equip your busi­ness to meet the grow­ing demand.

ADD VALUE AND SAVE MONEY

Sus­tain­able prac­tices can enhance human cap­i­tal.  Her­man Miller Office Fur­ni­ture moved their head­quar­ters into a build­ing with many energy effi­cient ele­ments, one of which is mas­sive nat­ural light­ing.  Since the move, the orga­ni­za­tion has expe­ri­enced increased pro­duc­tiv­ity, higher recruit­ment and reten­tion, and decreased tar­di­ness.  The build­ing also rep­re­sents to clients the organization’s envi­ron­men­tal phi­los­o­phy.  It has become an edu­ca­tional tool to raise aware­ness and con­tribute to the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment, both now and in the future.

Her­man Miller Office Fur­ni­ture Headquarters

Sus­tain­able prac­tices can save money.  Ford’s 10 acre “liv­ing roof” at its Dear­born, MI man­u­fac­tur­ing plant is the largest in the world and saved Ford $35 mil­lion in com­pli­ance costs.

Ford – Dear­born, MI

These are only a few rea­sons for green busi­ness prac­tices.  You may find it help­ful to find other busi­nesses with which you col­lab­o­rate with and part­ner with them on how to sup­port each other in green practices.

Advent, an expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing firm in Nashville, TN, part­nered with Lip­scomb Uni­ver­sity to cre­ate the 2008 Ten­nessee Green Busi­ness Sum­mit and Expo.  The sum­mit pro­vided entre­pre­neurs, busi­ness peo­ple and trade pro­fes­sion­als the oppor­tu­nity to learn about the rapidly grow­ing field of green busi­ness.  As this part­ner­ship con­tin­ues grow­ing, so does Advent’s sus­tain­able busi­ness practices.

I encour­age you to be proac­tive and seek ways in which your busi­ness can imple­ment green prac­tices.  Remem­ber the three P’s – Peo­ple, Planet, Pros­per­ity and you’ll grow greener in more ways than one.

Teresa Drozak

Mar­ket­ing Coordinator

Advent – 2008 TN Green Busi­ness Sum­mit and Expo Event Partner

www.adventresults.com

Addi­tional Resources

Be True Green pro­vides addi­tional ways to be greener in the office.

Wilmot, Inc. works with busi­nesses to offer low-cost solu­tions com­bined with high tech, high per­for­mance approaches to con­serve resources, improve health and save money.

Lip­scomb Uni­ver­sity is now offer­ing a green MBA pro­gram to equip indi­vid­u­als with skills and knowl­edge to lead busi­nesses in the area of sus­tain­able practice.

Authored By Advent

Advent partners with organizations to help them visually express differentiation.