Green Plus » Dale Hammer

Sustainable Forest Products and Your Small Business

Dale Hammer — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:57:37 +0000

Does your business know the origin of its paper and wood products? Do you know if they came from sustainable forests? Do the products come from forests that impinge on the lands and rights of indigenous people? Can your business really trust the recycled or sustainable label on its purchased paper and wood products? While forest products are renewable goods that store carbon and have a lower environmental impact than non-wood products, forest products can have significant negative environmental effects if not produced legally or sustainably.

The World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development have recently partnered to produce unbiased, well-researched, and “easy-to-understand” information to aid businesses in their purchases of wood and paper-based products. Such information has been compiled into a comprehensive guide called the Sustainable Procurement of Wood and Paper-based Products. Applicable to businesses of all sizes, the guide focuses on 10 key issues related to the production and ultimate sale of wood and paper-based products, including origin, information accuracy, legality, sustainability, special places, climate change, environmental protection, recycled fiber, other resources, and local communities and indigenous people. During a time when legitimate products are advertised among greenwashed pretenders, such a guide allows gives small and large businesses a valuable tool for making socially and environmentally conscious decisions.

To read the full article on GreenBiz.com, click here.

To download the Sustainable Procurement of Wood and Paper-based Products: Guide and Resource Kit V1.1, click here.

To read more about the World Resources Institute, see their website here.

To read more about the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, see their website here.

Obama’s Proposed Health Care Reform: Friend or Foe?

Dale Hammer — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:09:47 +0000

President Obama’s healthcare reform has been the topic of heavy debate in recent weeks, especially among small businesses who have both a lot to gain and a lot to lose from such a reform. Of the 39 million Americans who do not have healthcare, an estimated one-third are employed by small businesses. The most recent Congressional proposal would mandate that any company with over $400,000 in payroll costs per year to offer employees healthcare or surrender a penalty totaling 8% of total annual payroll. Such a reform would exempt small businesses with payroll costs under $250,000, but would employ reduced penalties for those small businesses with payroll costs between $250,000 and $400,000.

The President’s Council of Economic Advisors reports that these health care reforms will benefit small businesses both by lowering their health care costs and by increasing coverage options for small business employees. A study by economist Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T. concluded that health care reform would benefit small businesses by streamlining the purchase of insurance and by lowering administrative expenses associated with insurance policies. Gruber’s statistical analysis concluded that health care reform would save small businesses between $546 and $855 billion over the next decade.

So, health care reform is a friend of small business, right? Unfortunately, the answer is a beautiful shade of gray. Analysts agree that in the short term, the proposed reform will actually cost small businesses $6.5 billion in profits this year alone. As a result of reform, small business profits in the US would not increase until 2013. Amidst an economic recession where many small businesses fail to make any profits, a final decision on a healthcare reform with a component aimed at small businesses will be difficult to make.

To read the full CNN story, click here.

To read more about Gruber?s analysis, click here
To read more small business opinions on the proposed health care reform, click here.

A New Marketing Tool for Small Businesses…Twitter

Dale Hammer — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:41:49 +0000

What if small businesses and entrepreneurs could advertise and perform customer service for free and reach more potential clients than multi-thousand dollar marketing plans? Enter Twitter, a completely free social networking and blogging service that allows users to send and receive posts that are up to 140 characters in length. Such posts are delivered to the author’s followers and can be received either on the receiver’s profile or via text message.

In June, CNN profiled several small business owners on Twitter’s remarkable utility. Kris Drey is the Vice President of Product Marketing at Fliqz, an online video-hosting service based in Emeryville, California. When Drey maxed out the company’s $15,000 marketing budget, he turned to Twitter, posting three to four updates a day as @Fliqz and following the 140 character updates of anyone who seemed at all interested in the online video industry. Within just a few months, Drey had 1,358 followers and was able to land a $6,000 per year contract because of a lead from Twitter.

Drey is by no means alone in using Twitter as a tool to expand one’s small business. 52Teas, based in Wichita, Kansas, began using Twitter in 2007 to post updates about the company. In 2007, the company shipped one or two packages every two or three weeks. Currently, 52Teas has over 3,400 followers on Twitter, and they ship about 52 packages a week.

While Twitter has functioned as a tremendous free marketing and networking tool for small businesses around the country, it is not without its flaws. For example, Twitter executives are working hard to prevent company-name theft. Regardless of the potential drawbacks, Twitter offers small businesses a way to increase profits and revenue without paying a dime for marketing and networking.

To read the full CNN story, click here.

To read a related story with tips for using Twitter as a small business, click here.

Follow Green Plus on Twitter at www.twitter.com/greenplus.

Business Sustainability in 2009

Dale Hammer — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:53:43 +0000

What exactly does it mean to have a sustainable business in 2009? While no concrete and universal definition exists, Adam Werbach concludes that there are four equally important essential components of business sustainability: social, economic, environmental, and cultural. Adam Werbach’s new book entitled Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, discusses sustainability in today’s business world. While sustainability was defined in the 1980s as a business’ ability to increase its earnings steadily, the definition of sustainability in the business world has matured and grown to encompass a more holistic approach. Once a philanthropic or optional issue, sustainability has become a core issue that businesses can ill afford to ignore.

Currently, going green is a huge trend among small, medium and large businesses. Werbach acknowledges the importance of green businesses, green jobs, and new green economies, but he cautions that green alone is not a broad enough approach to sustain a business for the long haul.In order to achieve sustainability, Werbach encourages businesses to state ‘North Star Goals’, which are “strategic directions that embody a global human challenge larger than any organization. Such goals should be consistent with the strengths of the company, have a connection to its core business, and elicit the personal contributions and passions of its members.” In addition, North Star Goals should be challenging, but attainable within 5 to 15 years. While North Star Goals and such an approach to sustainability only seem applicable to large businesses and corporations, small and medium sized businesses should not be discouraged. Most businesses are small and it is important to remember that it is all about scale. While a large corporation’s commitment to economic, social, environmental, and cultural sustainability might be global in scale, a small business’ sustainable commitment will be much more local in scale with North Star Goals addressing local challenges. While sustainability remains a major challenge for businesses around the world, it also remains an issue that is applicable to businesses of all sizes.

To read and learn more about Adam Werbach’s approach to business sustainability, see the full article about his new book here.

Revisiting Intuit’s New Software Product: Green Snapshot

Dale Hammer — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:47:57 +0000

98% of all businesses have under 100 employees, yet regulators and activists insist on targeting large businesses when advocating more environmentally friendly business practices. Recognizing this large absence in targeting small and midsized businesses, Intuit has developed a new program called Green Snapshot, which calculates carbon footprint for small and midsized businesses. The program is easy to use and completely free. Here is how the program works. Input all of your business’ expenditures in the last 12 months into Intuit’s Quickbooks software program. Utilizing Intuit’s extensive online database, Green Snapshot software will assign a carbon equivalent value to each logged expenditure. The final product is a carbon footprint assessment that identifies the business’ actual carbon footprint as well as how the business can reduce its carbon footprint. As measures are taken to reduce a business’ footprint, the software adjusts to reveal the improved footprint as well as the amount of money the business has saved. Green Snapshot provides a quick and easy way for small and midsized businesses to immerse themselves in the environmental movement and to create progress reports for clients, consumers, and employees.

To read the full article on Intuit’s Green Snapshot Program, visit the link here on GreenBiz.com or see Liz Liedel’s June 9^th Post here.

To get started reducing your business’ carbon footprint, click here to download Green Snapshot.

To learn more about how Green Snapshot works, see a video demo here.

New Ways to Make Money by Recycling

Dale Hammer — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:35:59 +0000

While recycling benefits the environment by conserving the earth’s resources, it can also be profitable for small, medium, and large businesses. Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, for example, made $12,860 in 2008 alone by recycling over 140 tons of recyclable materials. In addition to recycling its own materials, the Cleveland Zoo has encouraged visitors to recycle certain materials when they visit the zoo like inkjet and toner cartridges, cell phones, and compact fluorescent lights. While such profitable gains only seem possible for large businesses, small businesses can also get credit for recycling by utilizing new companies like Recycle Bank. Recycle Bank collects curbside recycling bins at homes and small businesses. Each bin has a Radio Frequency Identification chip, which records the weight of the recycled materials and converts the weight of recyclable materials to points in your account. These points can be used at over 1,200 national and local Recycle Bank Rewards Partners just like cash. Recycle Bank offers homeowners and smaller businesses an incentivized program that both helps the environment and generates profits.

To read more about how Cleveland Metroparks Zoo has generated so much money through recycling, read the rest of the article here.

To read more about Recycle Bank and how the program works, see the Recycle Bank website here.

To read more about the rapid growth of Recycle Bank and plans for future growth, click here.

Ecosystem Services and Your Business

Dale Hammer — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:08:27 +0000

What if we could quantify the value of the earth’s ecosystem services and natural capital? Utilizing published studies as well as original calculations that estimated the value of 17 ecosystem services in 16 biomes, Robert Costanza of the University of Maryland concluded that the value of the earth’s ecosystem services and natural resources is between $16 and 54 trillion dollars per year with an average of $33 trillion per year. Considering that the global gross national product is approximately $18 trillion per year, ecosystem services have been grossly undervalued being that every business and human being benefits from them. Natural/artificial wetlands for example filter out water pollutant and are an abundant source of decomposed nutrients. Local wetlands can save thousands of dollars that would otherwise be invested in wastewater treatment plants; however these saved dollars do not show up in the gross national product. Farmers rely on bees and other insects to pollinate their crops. Without natural pollination, millions of dollars would be lost in both local and commercial agriculture; however the presence of this natural service is not accounted for in the gross national product either. Understanding the value of ecosystem services is crucial to both conserve the earth’s resources and to sustainably grow the economy at local, national, and global levels.

To read the full article “The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital” by Robert Costanza, see the link posted here.

To read about the bioprospecting model which links the practices of conservation and medical research as an example of valuing the economy and natural resources alike, click here.

Benefit Bank: A Simple Tool For Aiding Small Businesses

Dale Hammer — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:21:15 +0000

What if you could give your employees a raise without costing you any money? A simple tool offered through Benefit Banks offers employers an easy way to help their employees in accessing benefits through leveraging federal resources. By putting low to moderate income earners in touch with tax credits and public benefit federal dollars, Benefit Banks could allow such employees to add the equivalent of a few dollars an hour to their salaries. This would essentially subsidize what some employers seek to provide his/her employees in terms of benefits.

The Ohio Benefit Bank approach of putting low to moderate income earners in touch with federal dollars is a way to boost employee benefits and a way for businesses to improve performance with happier, healthier, and economically prepared employees. A program offered through a public-private partnership between the government and more than 400 faith-based, non-profit, governmental, and private-sector partners. the Ohio Benefit Bank has now spread beyond Ohio into states such as Florida, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania.

The following three stories are short examples of how local Benefit Bank partners are more efficiently aiding communities in 2009 with tax credit and public benefit services.

http://www.ucp.org/ucp_localdoc.cfm/136/13542/9500/9500-9500/8897

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/community/tipp-united-way-ohio-benefit-bank-to-ease-benefit-applications-118421.html

http://www.columbusfoundation.org/media/press/03052009.aspx

To read more about the Ohio Benefit Bank, see their home page linked here.