Dollars and Sense - Green Business and the Bottom Line

Green Earth, Green Business I love it when I find a business that strives to not only provide a traditional service we all rely on, like an office supply retailer or, heck, even an airline. but adapts a sustainable or environmentally friendlier business model.

The more examples there are of sustainable business and “doing well by doing good” (or at least better) the more it becomes apparent that it simply makes the most sense to consider the full cost of doing business when balancing the books. It isn’t just about dollars and cents, but about dollars and – wait for it – sense.

Following up on Jyle’s example of Blackle.com, the search engine that saves power by using a black screen background while providing Google results, here are two businesses I’ve come across today that are expanding the possibilities for the average consumer to engage green and sustainable business ideas. It is true that every little bit helps, and the average consumer – you and me – can move the market with the choices we make in the marketplace.

Keeping Your Office Green:
TheGreenOffice.com expresses these values as part of the mission statement. They provide a full range of “sustainable office products at reasonable prices”. Each item has a “Green Screen Key” rating, that includes percentage and type of recycled content (post industrial or post consumer), whether it is biodegradable or compostable, has reduced chemical content, is third party certified, or if it is none of the above – a “conventional” product.
Their vision and mission statement is online, and opening an account just took me three minutes.

A Carbon Neutral Airline?
No way you say! When you think of a carbon spewing industry, what sort of business comes to mind? Commercial aviation is certainly one of them.

Jetliners burn much more efficiently than they did 30 or 40 years ago, but the airplanes and the attendant infrastructure of maintaining an airline is far from carbon friendly.

And yet, there is one small airline, Costa Rica-based NatureAir - flying lower and slower, no doubt, than the huge jetliners crisscrossing the earth - that has been honored by the International Community for Ecotourism as the first (and only) airline to offset 100% of their carbon emissions.

Achieved mostly through “avoided deforestation” from funds committed by the airline for land conservation in tropical jungles, NatureAir provides land owners an economically viable alternative to clear-cutting and ranching in these sensitive and vitally important areas. NatureAir flies 74 daily flights to 17 destinations in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. You can read their story and mission statement online as well.

There you have it; two more examples of business models that provide traditional products and services, but with a philosophy that doing good business means more than just the bottom line. It’s up to the consumer, ultimately, whether these innovative businesses will thrive.

Let’s do our part by making our dollars make real sense.

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Dollars and Sense - Green Business and the Bottom Line

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