I recently attended a conference in DC and would like to share some business insights that I thought might be interesting to Green Business Matters readers.
14,000 companies currently report their greenhouse gas emissions.
The executive VP of Constellation Energy said that sustainability issues are very real, here to stay, and extremely important to his company.
The director of sustainability for Citibank said that his department is all about efficiency, power purchase agreements for alternative energy make a great deal of sense, and his job is to build the business case for changes that make sense
in each of their operations.
A VP from SAP said that “externalities can be as or more important than cost savings.” His firm encouraged carpooling and his employees said that the informal networking that went on proved to be so important that carpooling caught on. SAP surveyed their customers and found that the five main needs of their clients, related to sustainability, are:
- Operational risk management
- Energy, environment and resource management
- Sustainable supply chains and products
- Sustainability reporting and analysis
- Sustainable workforce.
SAP posts its annual Sustainability Report online and has come to believe that transparency leads to enhanced performance. They are a leader – check them out www.sapsustainabilityreport.com.
The City of Philadelphia breaks its efforts to become the greenest city in America into “the 5 E’s,” which are:
Energy, Environment, Equity, Economics, and Engagement
They are focusing on low-hanging fruit like recycling which will save them a great deal of money. Here is their business case: they pay $50/ton to get trash taken away and they get paid $65/ton for recycling. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why they are spending their time on increasing recycling in their city.
Even local, state and the federal government have gotten the very real and pragmatic message that there are a lot of benefits for becoming more sustainable. They are looking for good ideas. If you have a solution for them, there is quite a bit of support for small businesses who want to sell their green products to the government. They can go to ww.Green.SBA.gov and learn the ropes.
Are you taking advantages of all the opportunities out there for making your business more successful?
