Grow Your Business

Aside from economic and financial incentives they stand to get, business now have more reasons for becoming eco-friendly

It used to be that being “green” was largely the pursuit of tree-huggers, idealists, heart-bleeders, activists, and dyed-in-the-wool “social engineers,” all grimly determined to save the world from environmental ruin.

These days, however, going green is now a badge of honor even for celebrities, for businesses big and small, and for just about everybody else. Other than getting public approval for professing concern for Mother Earth, there are also economic and financial incentives to those who go green.

Indeed, environmentalism is good for business, for it boosts public awareness of the need to clean our surroundings; helps preserve our forests, rivers, lakes, and oceans; promotes the reduction of gas emissions that pollute the air we breathe and degrade the earth’s protective ozone layer; and, as a welcome bonus to commerce and trade, heightens the demand for the products and services that address these concerns.

By going green, you can literally start from the ground up as an entrepreneur. You can recycle discarded paper and wastes from the public market and process them into organic fertilizer, like what CORDNET and the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation are doing in the Cordilleras.

Or you can literally go green by selling seeds that transform into beautiful blooms or edible greens, like what the young proprietor of Mr. Seeds started simply as a hobby but has grown into a profitable distribution business.

Of course, if your business is big enough, you may have enough muscle to take the lead in producing green products like biofuels, just like what Seaoil did, or perhaps come up with renewable energy alternatives like what Solarco has done.

The good thing about going green is that aside from making money, most everybody would love you for it. After all, green businesses do help save the world in small or big ways, and even the most jaded people would normally be supportive of such essentially good and beautiful pursuits. Indeed, going green is the ultimate win-win kind of business!

This article was originally published in the August 2009 issue of Entrepreneur Philippines.