Reasons to be cheerful

Everybody knows green is the new black—not just as a trend but as a business measure. Companies that want to stay profitable need to embrace environmental innovations to draw eco-savvy customers. But what’s the cumulative effect of all these green policies, adopted by firms from Whole Foods to Wal-Mart? Aren’t most of these concerns seeking good public relations more than true ecological improvement? And given the scope of environmental problems today, can businesses realistically make a difference without compromising their mission to make a profit? These are the questions greenbiz.com seeks to answer in its first annual “State of Green Business 2008” report—an admirably ambitious effort to assess the real-world environmental impact of green business practises in 20 fields ranging from packaging and pesticides to energy efficiency and employee commuting.

That’s a tall task, as the report’s chief author and Greenbiz Executive Editor Joel Makower is the first to admit. “There’s insufficient data to show how companies are doing, in aggregate, to move the needle on issues like climate change, toxics reduction and resource efficiency—at least in the United States,” he writes. Based in California, Greenbiz is an online financial information service that offers a number of free daily news reports, electronic newsletters, workshops and briefing papers. What did they find out about the state of green business in the U.S.? The results were mixed, not surprisingly. Solid progress was made in some areas, such as clean technology investments, toxic emissions, green building and recycling. But the news was ominous on e-waste and carbon intensity, the carbon emissions per unit of the gross domestic product. The report also showed businesses don’t always do it alone; positive change sometimes starts with government incentives or regulation.

Overall, greenbiz.com saw modest improvement in most sectors studied, but warned that these gains are often cancelled out by economic growth, leaving us treading water. For instance, the report’s authors tell us that while “greenhouse emissions per dollar of economic activity may be dropping, the growing economy means those emissions are largely unchanged.” The report highlights positive trends in the business world, including Nike’s promise to be climate-neutral by 2011 (Green Mountain Power says it’s nearly there); Target’s and Hasbro’s commitment to reduce dangerous PVC chemicals drastically in the products they sell; Wal-Mart’s victory in exceeding its goal of selling 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs last year (and Google’s plans to invest hundreds of millions in renewable energy technologies); and the commitment of HSBC, Interface, Yahoo! and 27 other major companies to generating no net carbon emissions in the coming years.

“There is much to celebrate,” the report concludes. Poring over this gathering of data, the reader comes away with reassuring evidence that the rise of green business is fact as well as fashion.