Green to Gold Gives Business Strategies for Riding the Green Wave

Share Your Stories With NAWBO Publications for an Opportunity to Win This Book

Businesses today are having serious conversations about their practices. While it’s a tough business environment, it’s one where innovation is essential to survival and value-added products and services trump the competition every time. It’s for exactly that reason that authors Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston encourage business owners to use environmental strategy to build their competitive advantage in Green to Gold.

This book addresses the fact that business and the natural world are inextricably linked as our economy and society depend on natural resources. The environment has emerged as a critical issue for companies of all sizes as a growing number of stakeholders are concerned about the environment. Green to Gold gives case studies from leading companies in various industries around the world to show the real cost, choices and trade-offs companies face when they make environmental thinking part of their business strategy.

Not only does this book give the top 10 environmental issues to watch, but it gives business owners strategies for identifying and seizing environmental opportunities; managing the downside of making the transition; capitalizing the upside of the switch; tracking results and inspiring employees.

According to Esty and Winston, here are five reasons small businesses should adjust their business practices:

(1) Laws that previously applied to big business now apply to small businesses. For example, bakeries and gas stations must comply with air regulation.

(2) Going after the consumption choices of individuals is difficult politically, but advocacy groups have more success asking small businesses to curb their impacts. For example, personal cars don’t come under NGO attack, while emissions from taxi fleets or delivery services do.

(3) The information age is reducing the costs of pursuing smaller-scale actors. New sensors, information systems and communications technologies make tracking pollution and monitoring regulatory compliance cheaper every day putting your organization in the spotlight.

(4) Large customers are putting pressure on small business suppliers to comply with environmental standards.

(5) Small companies are more nimble than their larger competitors. Entrepreneurial businesses can move quickly to take advantage of changing circumstances or meet niche demands.

Submit your “going green” story to publications@nawbo.org, if we choose your business to feature in our next Member News, we’ll send you a copy of the book.