good business, bad business

by Matt DeNoto

At the office where I work, we get a weekly delivery of the ‘Los Angeles Business Journal,’ a newspaper aimed at people with business-related interests. As I flip through the paper, one thing becomes very clear:

These people love their money, and anything that stands in the way is considered bad.

Obvious, I know. But it never really sank in for me until I started reading these stories about how much it hurt a busines s to have to follow this regulation or negotiate with that union. There was a story about how much it was costing a company to revise its balance sheets after an independent auditor found out how off their books were.

“Awwww, too bad,” I thought, “A company is losing money because it has to actually tell the truth.” Break out the violins.

But stepping back, the disparity between my perspective (as someone who puts the wellness of the world above the bottom line) and theirs shows just how far there is to go before we’re all living in a world where everyone considers the consequences of their actions. To me, it just seems fundamentally wrong to fight so hard against something as obvious as not emitting noxious fumes into the air or dumping harmful chemicals into the ground.

So how do we bridge the gap? In a twist that may or may not be ironic, they may actually be doing some of the work for us.

The uncertainty comes from whether or not you believe that a company’s media campaign actually represents the perspective of the company, or merely the image that company is trying to portray. Over the past few months, large corporations have been advertising themselves as Green, trying to tell us how they’re making the world a better place. GE has been promoting a commitment to the environment it calls Ecomagination. FOX Broadcasting has launched a series of PSAs with the tagline ‘Green it. Mean it.’ Even oil companies like Shell and BP have been putting up spots hoping to encourage the minds of consumers to link those companies with environmentalism.

For the sake of cynicism, let’s say that these companies are not actually interested in saving the planet. They’re just typical corporations that would happily dump their garbage in your pool if it would save them money. Even if all this ‘Green Branding’ is simply companies trying to profit from the enviro-‘fad’ going on right now, it’s still putting the Green philosophy out there, into the minds of the public. If it keeps up, even those in the population who have been resistant to change are going to find that those messages of change have worked their way in. Then the public will start to throw around the power it has always had: the power to vote with its wallet. After that, companies are going to have to practice what they preach.

Until then, there are still businesses out there now founded on principles of responsibility. And thanks to the internet, we can all start voting with our wallets now. For a whole marketplace of sustainable goods, visit World Of Good.