It Pays to Be Green

We’re beginning to see a significant growth in the field of sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility. We learned that some companies, like Disney, began incorporating a few sustainable business practices many years before they realized they could “market” them in the early 2000s.  However, today businesses are increasing their environmentally friendly practices as a way to enhance their brand reputation.

Companies realized that it does pay to be green. There are 4 forces that make a company go green; regulatory compliance, stakeholder pressure, economic motives, and ethical concerns.  It’s also true now that poor environmental performance can ruin a company’s relationship with its stakeholders. Stakeholders want to see that companies are aware of the importance of climate change. Companies are suggested to measure their carbon footprint in order to send a signal to stakeholder’s that they are very serious about the their environmental performance.

It can be very beneficial for a company to promote itself as an environmental company. Nine years after Disney strengthened their environmental policies; their revenues are continuing to increase. Disney has played a leadership role in the field of sustainability. It has taken on numerous environmental problems throughout many aspects of their business. They have made games into some of their environmental initiatives in order to promote their programs, and have focused on youth education.  They have turned recycling into a competition and they also turned biking to work into a competition.

This creates a new field of marketing. When working in the field of corporate social responsibility, you’re essentially working to market your environmental achievements. This is a great opportunity for environmental change because it comes within the company. Companies are beginning to compete for better environmental policies. There always seems to be a debate about whether or not it’s a good thing that companies doing corporate social responsibility just to enhance their reputation. However, I think that as long as companies are doing positive things in the field of corporate social responsibility it shouldn’t matter whether or not they’re doing it just for the brand enhancement. They are a business, after all, and they are going to do whatever is profitable.

It’s clear that Disney has been able to achieve a lot of good things: they’ve collected cooking oil for biofuel, wasted no food because of their composting efforts, saved millions of gallons of water through water reduction efforts, set up huge recycling initiatives, reduced their energy use, and began promoting cycling. Other companies have made similar accomplishments in the field, though many not as notable. Imagine what it would be like if every company made this much progress in the field of the environment.

Another benefit from this form of marketing is that they’re marketing the environmentally friendly mindset. Especially when you look at Disney’s campaign which focused on an outreach to kids in order to educate them about the issues. Regardless of the strategy, it’s beneficial for people to be constantly reminded of the importance of a more environmentally friendly approach.