03/03/2016
CONSCIOUS ENTREPRENEURSHIP 2: Conscious Entrepreneurship Improves Your Bottom Line AND Our Environment
One of four guiding principles of conscious commerce is a clean environment, which a business budgets as a large and variable expense. How is it supposed to make a profit while also safeguarding Planet Earth?
Consistently done by all small-business stakeholders, methods that allow nature the upper hand in maintaining a well-functioning environment save money in the long run. Purchase new technology which supports environmental sustainability such as solar or wind energy. Track energy and water usage to reduce it. Recycle. Trim dependence on fossil fuels and encourage public transportation and ride sharing, perhaps with a policy of flexible start and stop times. Set up a system to reward teams creating ideas to reduce carbon footprints. Celebrate your company’s environmental successes in advertising and marketing. Keep innovating to find even better ways. These simple actions support the environment and business sustainability as well.
It has been shown that cleaning up the environment doesn’t cost us, it saves us. Examples:
• Acid rain because of sulfur dioxide emissions have been cut in half over 20 years. Laws set up a trading system under which polluters had to buy rights to pollute. As they cleaned up their waste, they sold their rights to other companies. It was cheaper to buy scrubbers than to buy rights, so pollution was reduced quickly. Overall, costs were 1/10 of what was expected.
• According to David Wolfe in his book, The Pursuit of Purpose and Profit, long term stock performance in one study of 30 publicly-traded companies showed higher investment returns over 3 years, 5 years and 10 years for Stakeholder-Centered companies versus profit-centered companies. (Strong, Be the Solution, p. 84) Stakeholder-centered is defined as those businesses conscious of the well-being of all involved, including employees, customers, trade unions and associations, communities and environments, financiers, suppliers, government and political groups, as well as investors.
It’s being proven that profits are maximized when they are no longer the only goal. Built into the mission of conscious commerce is the vision of interdependence. Conscious businesses strive to create financial, social, intellectual, cultural, spiritual, ecological and physical health for all stakeholders, who in turn become its enthusiastic, loyal customers. In this way, all stakeholders are investors.
This cycle of success supports both sustainability of the business and a cleaner environment. Why didn’t we think this way sooner?
