Eco-Friendly and Budget-Conscious

Who doesn’t want to save the planet? But in this economy, most business owners are asking themselves, “How can I afford to be more environmentally responsible?”

“It’s a false trade-off,” says Jonathan Greenblatt, co-founder of Ethos Water, professor of social entrepreneurship at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, and member of President Obama’s Social Innovation White House transition team. “There are an increasing number of companies that reject the premise that you can’t stay true to your values and make money. You can do good and make money.” Need proof? Greenblatt rattles off a list of successful companies that started small, stayed true to their commitment to sustainability, and made money, such as Honest Tea, Ben & Jerry’s, Good Media, not to mention his own company.

Like any other business initiative, going green is actually financially quantifiable. To measure success by doing good for the planet and doing good for their own bottom line, many small businesses have incorporated triple bottom line accounting, which expands the traditional reporting framework and puts profits side-by-side with environmental and social performance—or the “people, planet, profits” components of sustainability.

How Triple Bottom Line Works

While the theory sounds ideal, the practice of implementing triple bottom line accounting may seem arduous; but it doesn’t have to be. Businesses with limited resources available for such a project can start small. Joseph DellaTorre, CEO of SkyObs, Inc., a green advisory services firm located in New York City, Silicon Valley, and Boston, provides a basic example of how the triple bottom line can work on a small scale. He explains how to implement the threepronged method in an e-waste recycling program. The bullet points below refer to the three legs of the triple bottom line:

• Planet: Old electronics, such as cell phones, iPods, personal computers, and PDA s, either languish in cluttered drawers or are thrown out and end up in landfills, causing great detriment to the environment. Start an e-waste recycling program that invites employees, customers, and vendors to participate. Consider offering a prize for the individual or team who collects the most e-waste. The ecological bottom line is that you will be diverting dangerous waste away from landfills
• People: The program will not only create a community around employees, customers, and other stakeholders, but the contest can be fun. You also are providing an opportunity for individuals to participate in something that is personally rewarding.
  
• Profit: Some e-waste has scrap and salvage value. Visit websites such as greenercomputing.com/browse/ewaste-recycling, nyc.gov/html/stuffex/html/sell/where_to_sell.shtml, or nj.gov/dep/dshw/lrm/uwaste/ucomplist.htm  for information on where you can trade in e-waste. You can also contact electronics manufactures and retailers, as many of them offer discounts on future purchases in exchange for returning your old products.

“You can set traditional performance metrics— top line, such as revenue; bottom line, such as operating expenses; and human resource metrics, such as productivity and retention—to measure tangible results from each tactic” says DellaTorre. While you may not know how to quantify the environmental impact of your programs, there are many environmental calculators, such as PaperCalculator or Carbon Neutral that can help you. By assigning quantifiable results to your company’s green tactics, you will be able to assess whether or not the tactic is successful.

Getting Started

Once you make the decision to go greener, you must first decide which tactics will have the biggest impact on your economic bottom line and the environmental bottom line. Tom Szaky, co-founder and CEO of TerraCycle and author of Revolution in a Bottle: How Terracycle is Redefining Green Business offers the following tip for small business owners considering taking steps toward green.

“The best way to look at triple bottom line is to look at what is the best thing to do for the environment and many times there is a tipping point,” says Szaky. “For example, look at a soda bottle. It’s inexpensive to make a soda bottle with virgin plastic. It’s slightly more expensive to include some recycled plastic, then even more expensive to use biodegradable plastic. But if you go with a used soda bottle, it’s the most eco-friendly and a cheaper alternative to virgin plastic. That’s when true triple bottom line becomes exciting. The real business excitement is when you can come up with solutions that do great for the environment and create economic wins.”

Szaky also says it is really important for business owners to evaluate who their customers are and what is important to them from a green standpoint. “There are many green initiatives that I don’t think customers care about in the slightest,” says Szaky. “People need to look at true green innovations— can you do something that is ultra green but will make a lot of money or save the customer a lot of money?”