If you’ve been following our interviews on corporate carbon offsetting (managing corporate carbon legally, eight steps to offsetting your business and why consumer offsets are failing), no doubt other questions before or beyond offsetting have popped into your mind. Carbon offsetting, experts recommend, is important to consider at the end of the line –– after your business has become as energy efficient as possible. Carbon audits, we learn from Carbon Concierge, is not only good for the planet, but it’s also very good for the bottom line. They help you see energy hogging processes in the business, and can offer immediate steps to turn the problem around.
Today Carbon Catalog offers 5 green reads you can follow to help your company become more planet-friendly. Consider buying these books for executives in your business, or the “green” – leaning people on staff. Who knows, these books might start a whole new chapter in your business’ practices of corporate social responsibility. And as we learn, being energy-efficient (and green) is also good for the bottom line.
Green Business: A Five Part Model
This book takes you on a journey through the challenges that some of America’s top companies faced when embarking on greening their businesses. Seventeen case studies, including Patagonia, IBM, and Mitsubishi Corporation might help your company avoid common pitfalls, and understand how green practices enhance the performance of companies in terms of employee retention, customer loyalty, and overall profits.
Patagonia, for example, encouraged its employees to be active outdoors and paid them to work for non-profit organizations. IBM saved $17.8 million dollars one year by encouraging employees to turn off unused lights and equipment. Implementing greener practices is credited for a 1,100-percent increase in stock value since 1992 for Suncor Energy.
This book explains what is driving this movement and what a company needs to do to improve its environmental performance.
Harvard Business Review on Green Strategy
It was about only ten years ago that some “radical” companies decided to adopt a green business strategy. Associated with fringe environmentalism at the time, so much has changed. A massive shift in perception and social consciousness of pollution and climate change has happened; companies realize that a financial plan that is good for the world, can also be excellent for business.
“Green Business Strategy is no longer an option,” writes the editor of this collection of articles, “the future depends on it.” This book gets to the heart of why socially responsible green strategies should be at the top of every CEO’s agenda.
The Ecology of Commerce
Ecology and commerce? Ever thought the two could meet? According to Paul Hawken the answer is obvious. Reviewers say that Hawken, the entrepreneur behind the Smith & Hawken gardening supplies empire, is no ordinary capitalist. Drawing on influences from Baba Ram Dass to WalMart, Hawken pens “a one-man crusade” to reform the world’s economic system.
He demands that first world businesses reduce their energy consumption by 80 percent in the next 50 years. He also argues that business goals be redefined and judged on whether or not the work environment is aesthetically pleasing or if the employees are having fun. Hawken suggests a culture of business in the real world that supports and mirror’s the natural world. This might not be a book to judge major “green” business decisions on, but worth a read for discussing with your employees.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things
If you and your business are seriously thinking of creative and alternative ways to green your business –– through energy efficiency, producing less waste, recycling –– then this book will be your second bible. It’s a must-have to learn the lingo of the green crowd and to see what unusual ideas have been put out there for businesses, before you start dreaming up your own. Here’s an excerpt from an Amazon Review:
“Paper or plastic? Neither, say William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Why settle for the least harmful alternative when we could have something that is better–say, edible grocery bags! In Cradle to Cradle, the authors present a manifesto calling for a new industrial revolution, one that would render both traditional manufacturing and traditional environmentalism obsolete.”
They authors create an easy to read guide book, giving a number of good examples of corporations that are doing less harm to the environment, and making more money in the process.
The Necessary Revolution
How can the excess energy from one business be used to heat another? Could there be a world where office buildings produce energy instead of sucking electricity, and the production of green products easier to supply than wasteful ones?
This is the vision of The Necessary Revolution, a book which describes some recent case studies on how companies are banding together to make business practices and the supply chain, environment-oriented. Examples of companies in the playing field include traditional ones such as Costco, Nike, and BP and numerous others who are forming partnerships with NGOs and stewardship organizations for the sake of the planet. The end-result can be win-win for business and the world, suggest the authors. “There is a long way to go, but the era of denial has ended.”
For more green reads, see Carbon Catalog’s: Six Non-Boring Books For Lightening Your Carbon Load