It’s been an especially rough year for retailers and the automotive sector. These and most other sectors and their managers are feeling the need to make changes that will green up their business to appeal to a more environmentally aware and economically stressed customer.
If a company is becoming greener and needs to improve their green quotient of knowledge, or if someone is thinking about starting a new business, consider how getting with the green movement will affect the business owner or the business expenses. Read a good green business book and pass it around to other managers and employees.
Greentailing
Greentailing is a play on the word retailing. It implies that companies should capitalize on the growing demand for organic, sustainable, and wellness-related products. Major retailers like Wal-Mart are working with suppliers of certified organic and sustainable vendors and forcing others to become competitive. The authors of Greentailing and Other Revolutions in Retail: Hot Ideas That Are Grabbing Customers’ Attention and Raising Profits published their book full of case studies and numbers in September 2008. While the global recession has cast a bit of a shadow on their sunny projections, their examples of success, statistics, and advice are worth reading by anyone you knows that he or she is in business for the long term.
Be forewarned: don’t simply “greenwash” by using fresh, natural colors and marketing green-speak. The customer wants to save money. The customer is concerned about dependence on fossil fuels. The customer is concerned about the world our children will inherit.
Green to Gold
One of the best leadership books about business and the world shift toward environmental responsibility is Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, written by two experts from Yale. Their focus is on executive-level issues about managing the environmental challenges their businesses face within the larger society. First out in 2006, the book has been updated and republished in 2009, so be sure to purchase the latest edition.
The authors saw the call for green change coming in the 1990s and recognized momentum building soon after the millennium. They conducted hundreds of interviews and have sorted the information in a text that explains why companies go green. They go deep beneath the surface to discuss the strategies that companies use to green their businesses and outline the pitfalls.
Green for Dummies
The "Dummies" folks have published several books about green living and green business practices. Green Business Practices for Dummies includes practical tips and expert advice for reducing the impact of your business on the environment without reducing the bottom line. Green IT for Dummies is written for management and IT professionals and focuses on technology-related energy consumption and waste issues as well as the things technology can and can’t do to make a business greener.
More Books
A quick search for green business books on Amazon returns thousands of results from books about green marketing to books about green job growth. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things are green movement classics. Learn how to green an office with an A-Z guide or 101 tips book about how to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Consider buying the audio CD and listening to these and other books while driving to work.
Start good green practices and habits and your customers and employees will thank you with greater loyalty to brands and jobs.
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