Smart Green: How to Implement Sustainable Business Practices in Any Industry – and Make Money

Jonathan M. Estes
ISBN: 978-0-470-38779-5
Hardcover
224 pages
March 2009
US $29.95

Buy the book: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Borders, or find a local bookseller at IndieBound.com

As eco-conscious citizens and consumers search for answers to today’s environmental problems, businesses are rushing to deliver the sustainable products, services, and business practices they want. But how can businesses—including yours—do this without sacrificing profitability? Can we find a way to keep the Earth and the bottom line healthy?

“Do you think going green will give you a competitive advantage, even save you money? Do you think your customers are more likely to buy if you are green? Do you want to do better by the environment and your community? If so, you are not alone. Many feel the need to go green. Jonathan Estes in Smart Green turns this need into value and lays out the steps for going green. Read it and get ahead of your competition and the green tsunami sweeping the country.” —Frank Phoenix, PE, LEED-AP, Partner, Greenbridge Developments, LLC

So much energy and enthusiasm surrounding the endeavor of entrepreneurship has not been seen since the heyday of the early dot-com era. Back then, everyone was scrambling to seize the opportunity to profit from the Internet boom. Today, everyone is scrambling to get in on the ground floor of the green boom—and cash in on the eco-conscious products, practices, and technologies we need to build a sustainable world.

“Estes’s book articulates the opportunities, challenges, and trends of the blossoming conscious consumer movement using insightful research to make the case for growing a green business. His compendium examines and dissects our cultural shift in which a handful of people are optimists, many are ambivalent, and everyone is a skeptic.” —David Lubensky, President, Bagatto, Inc.

While there is more interest than ever in sustainability in the business community, there has never been a practical, real-world guide that shows entrepreneurs how to meld sustainability and business success. Smart Green explores the best ideas in sustainable business, helps you plan a sustainability strategy, and presents case studies and business principles to show you how it’s done.

“Smart Green is a very practical guide for getting started with greening your company. Estes has taken the principles of business planning and applied them to a very complex subject. Worth the read.” —Michael Knupp, former CEO, The RETEC Group, and former member, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Smart Green is the perfect book for entrepreneurs. But it’s also great for anyone interested in business, the environment, and how they interact. It answers questions we should all care about, including:

• What is sustainability?
• How do you build a strategic plan to achieve it?
• What are the benefits of marketing your green initiatives to customers?
• What are the key issues entrepreneurs will face in achieving sustainability?
• How can we reduce tension and create cooperation between the business and environmental communities?

“Estes’s Smart Green is a great resource for small to mid-size enterprises that want to make measurable improvement in performance and align themselves with the global green wave. From strategic planning to practical how-to examples, Estes demonstrates how we can go green and make some too.” —Aaron Nelson, IOM, President and CEO, Chapel Hill-Carrboro (NC) Chamber of Commerce, and Executive Director, Foundation for a Sustainable Community

Entrepreneurs are the stuntmen of the business world—taking risks others wouldn’t in exchange for rewards others can’t imagine. Today, there’s a massive gap between the environmentally-conscious products and services consumers want and what businesses have to offer. Government won’t solve the problem of sustainable business; smart, green entrepreneurs will.

For business leaders who want to find a way to go green without giving up greenbacks, Smart Green offers an analytical, verifiable model that ensures profitability, lowers risk, and decreases the environmental impact of business.