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Many companies striving to be good corporate citizens today face an internal tug of war between giving attention to community initiatives that address social problems and the growing demand to make environmental issues paramount.
2010 Conference: Riding the Green Wave
By Alyson Genovese, Guest Blogger
Everyone knows that today, “green” is the new “black.” But how are companies creating new strategies that can move a company from looking at the environment from a philanthropic perspective and instead using environmental programs to create business value? Stan Mierzejewski at the Tennant Company, Michael Dupee from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and Bruce Klafter at Applied Materials showed that their diverse companies – one’s a coffee roaster, one’s a floor-cleaner manufacturer and one’s in nanotechnology – were each benefiting from introducing new products, cutting costs and/or differentiating themselves from competitors using green business strategies.
A few key findings:
- Each company started by establishing goals, which were concrete, measurable and realistic given their company and industry environment.
- Each company engaged with stakeholder groups interested in environmental issues rather than keeping them on the sidelines. This helped to gain new perspectives and allies in their environmental improvement efforts.
- Each company had to take a “step back” away from how the business was currently run to look at how things might change systemically to create new environmentally-progressive practices. For real change, it’s not about switching to new lightbulbs, it’s about doing business differently.
- Customers and consumers are increasingly demanding to know what companies are doing to be more environmentally-minded, but large and systemic changes are much more difficult to communicate.
So much to add… Center members can view their presentations in the member community.
