Green is really high on the agenda at the moment. Eco-friendly cars that deposit plant seeds from their exhausts instead of emitting C02. Packaging that actually seeps fertiliser into the earth so that landfills develop into flowerbeds. Plastic bags that turn into butterflies once you’ve emptied your shopping out of them.
Ok so none of these products actually exist, but from some of the ad campaigns doing the rounds lately you’d be forgiven for thinking the corporate world is going to save the planet.
The real change however isn’t going to come about through a few banks and a handful of insurance companies offsetting their C02. It’s the collective might of the start-ups and small businesses that counts.
It’s somewhat worrying then, that a recent poll by entrepreneur think-tank the Tenon Forum found that over a quarter of small businesses think the cost of adopting green measures are greater than the benefit they’d bring to their business.
Small business owners are apparently a cynical lot – 60% of them think the government’s efforts to encourage green business behaviour is completely motivated by a desire to win votes.
True or not, it’s a real shame. There’s a lot of scope for fantastic innovation in the arena of green business. And with only a handful of governments across the world taking the green issue seriously, perhaps it is down to the entrepreneurs to make a difference.
