Social media drives green values to business (Vol.4)

Turning environment..

Let's move on from environmental challenges to new business ideas evolving from the need of sustainability.

I believe the only way to weave environment into business is by looking at the entire environment of the business through value chain thinking.

Environmental value chain analysis offers a way to manage the business processes as an entity that takes environment into consideration.

..into new business ideas

Passion drives change. BSAG was born of the relentless passion of Ilkka Herlin. Same passion drives environmental investments in Canada.

Private passions that have driven the environmental movement for decades are now spilling over into mainstream business ventures.

Material efficiency is often the key factor in cutting variable costs. But that efficiency should be looked at as a bigger picture: one must optimize the entity. It is possible to streamline the use of a certain ingredient in the production process and, at the same time, increase the cost of its final waste disposal. There, too, the answer lies in life cycle analysis.

Material efficiency should thus be connected into the management system, as is often done with the energy efficiency. Efficiency thinking should be based on value chain analysis, says professor Juha Kaila, Helsinki University of Technology (InnoSuomi 2009). R&D is facing the challenge of how to get the most out of the raw material in its total life time. The scope is about to change as the life cycle cost must include also the cost of recycling.

A change toward non-tangibles?

How about Slow movement? It offers yet another view in consumption. Slow life allows room for services that do not exploit the environment. Non-tangible services are bound to burden less than producing tangible goods. An excellent example on that are different charity projects: Buy a cow - donate a well - buy a vaccine - or plant a tree are all examples of a non-tangible gift (F) to someone who already has everything.

As you can see, sustainabity makes sense. It also opens new horizons for innovation.