Businesses join green movement

With the message of being green infiltrating nearly every aspect of today’s culture, businesses are finding it necessary to maintain the status quo of sustainability to stay competitive. Whether their efforts are centered in genuine concern or public relations is irrelevant, some experts say.

“I don’t think there’s an environmentalist out there who would say, ‘They did it for the wrong reasons, so they shouldn’t be congratulated,’ ” said Chuck Laszewski, communications director at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “We don’t really care about what the reason is for doing the environmentally friendly thing. We just want them to do it.”

Alfred Marcus, a professor in the Carlson School of Management, is on the front lines of this phenomenon. Demand for his course “Business, the Natural Environment and the Global Economy” has skyrocketed in recent years — a trend he attributes to the fact that everywhere students look, whether it’s BusinessWeek or The Wall Street Journal, they’re bombarded with news about how companies are becoming more sustainable.

“It’s on everybody’s mind,” he said. “It’s happening — and it should happen.”

In every aspect of the business world, emphasis has been placed on being sustainable.

“It’s taken for granted now. It’s kind of expected,” Marcus said.

While Marcus said he realizes many of the students enrolled in his course are just looking to be more attractive in the job market, others are committed to finding solutions to pressing environmental problems.

Whatever their motives, it’s a good sign that individuals and companies are feeling pressure to, at the very least, put up a front that shows they’re concerned about the issues, Marcus said.

“The fact that people even have to join the club is very significant,” he said.

Ten local businesses, including such giants as Best Buy and Piper Jaffray, are taking an active role in Marcus’ course by helping groups of students develop projects.

Mark Schiller, energy analyst for Best Buy and University of Minnesota alumnus, is leading a group that’s focused on developing marketing strategies for Best Buy’s in-store and international recycling programs.

Businesses should go beyond the standard energy reduction programs and become leaders in their respective fields, Schiller said. For Best Buy, that means capitalizing on their extreme capacity to reduce e-waste, electronics that end up in landfills or shipped to another country. While this goes a long way toward reducing a company’s carbon footprint, it also has the synergistic effect of increasing economic competitiveness.

“We’re becoming one of the largest consumer recyclers in the United States,” he said. “For that, we’re going to drive a lot of people into our stores.”

While large corporations have found ways to capitalize on the green movement, other mom-and-pop companies began to sprout up, dedicating their entire business models around being green.

“The owners of those shops came from an environmental background,” Laszewski said. “They believe in doing whatever they can to help the planet, and this is just an extension of their moral beliefs.”

Green Darlene specializes in eco-friendly residential house cleaning through the use of non-acidic products that don’t have the harsh chemicals of traditional cleaning products.

The idea for the company came when David Bearman’s wife, Cindy, was battling breast cancer and became sensitive to the harsh chemicals in the products they used. The company, which Bearman and his wife formed almost a year ago, is working with a group of students in Marcus’ course to develop marketing strategies.

“There are many people that heard about being green and haven’t experienced it,” he said. “We come and clean their house and introduce them to the green movement. We’re hoping someday they’ll adopt more practices of being green.”

While smaller companies like Green Darlene are looking to capitalize on a niche market, they’re coming at it as much from their hearts as their pocketbooks, Laszewski said.

The environmental movement has gone through stages, Marcus said. In the 1970s, it was driven by government regulation. During the Reagan era, a voluntary movement arose, driven by both public relations and genuine concern, he said.

Now, nearly every company’s advertising scheme is based around being environmentally friendly, Marcus said.