How Important is being Green?

Answer

North Star,

The short answer is VERY important and lucrative.

I would start by separating CR and ‘Green’ as you put it. Corporate responsibility should be at the heart of any business worth it’s salt, large or small and must be a direct extension of that organisations core values.

This is important because CR can be a highly effective reputation building tool, in fact there are businesses that use it successfully as their primary route to market. Alignment between your products and what you do to support the community you value most is essential.

Finally, it will help your employees and customers to identify with one another and truly buy in to that vision. This increases productivity, customer retention and should inform your future product development.

Being ‘Green’ could be a facet of that approach as in the case of the Yellow Pages. They use a lot of paper in their directories so they invest in sustainable sources and responsible suppliers even though their core activity is all based around small and medium sized businesses. On the other hand a company like Innocent have built their entire business around being healthy and environmentally sound. As such their CR activity consists entirely of programmes focused to that end.

This is compounded in trading overseas where other countries have cultural nuances that can be pivotal in buying decisions. Be remiss in your research at your peril.

To big to be answered here so just some food for thought,

Philip