How to Succeed as an Eco-Friendly Company

How to Succeed as an Eco-Friendly Company

Most business owners, whether they are advocates of environmentalism or not, hope that by making their company more sustainable they will attract more customers and, ultimately, increase their profit margins. This is to be expected and can hardly be criticized. However, it can be easy for companies to make the wrong move or say the wrong thing, resulting in a negative backlash that can be hard to recover from.

Keep and Attract More Customers – Avoid “Greenwashing”

“Greenwashing” is used to describe the attempt, by some corporations, to convince their audiences, largely through marketing, that they are environmentally friendly when they are not actually doing very much to make a difference.

Oil giant, Shell, has come under a huge amount of fire lately for using their sponsorship of Britain’s most prestigious wildlife photography exhibition to “greenwash” their environmental credentials. Shell stopped sponsoring the exhibition after intense pressure from groups such as Friends of the Earth and WWF, as well as from the general public. Companies such as BP, General Motors, Novartis, Reebok, and Starbucks have also been criticized for exaggerating their “green” strategies.

The moral of the story is clear. If sustainability is to work as a part of a business, then corporations must practice what they preach. If a discernable effort is made to introduce systems and processes that will reduce a company’s impact on the environment, consumers will both respect and appreciate that company. Honesty, effort, and transparency go a long way.