Three ways in which recession is driving sustainable business

19.02.09 In response to the global economic downturn, governments are pumping public funds into their economies on an unprecedented scale. While much of this investment has so far gone into the banking system, we are also starting to see prioritisation for ventures which support public policy. For example, it has been widely reported that US President Obama's economic stimulus package aims to double production of alternative energy in the next three years and to develop the country's electrical grid to support this. This will be a major transformation of a significant part of the US's engineering infrastructure, and it presents a new opportunity to businesses offering goods and services that can help it, and parallel investment initiatives elsewhere in the world, to succeed. The downturn is also forcing businesses to re-examine their cost bases, and focus harder than last year on the potential for reducing operating costs. The business case for on-site renewables schemes, where companies reduce their exposure to conventional fuel prices by supplementing their grid electricity supply using renewable sources of energy such as wind turbines, are being re-examined under the new economic conditions. To quote BT's Dinah McLeod, writing on the online journal businessGreen.com before the current economic malaise really took hold, "companies... who think sustainability is merely a fair-weather exercise have been missing the point." The third factor is increased competition, driven by a perception that most goods and services are now being traded in a buyers' market. This has put renewed pressure on firms to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and one of the ways business can do this is to create a 'sustainability built-in' brand, presenting ethically minded customers with a simple choice - buy green by choosing us, or spend time working our what green means for yourself. Choice editing, as this in known in the retail business, has been a familiar concept for supermarkets for the last few years. See All News