How Ben & Jerry’s, Walmart, Patagonia, Marks & Spencer, and Toyota have gone green

Green America Certified Business
Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company

Are You Getting Your FULL Share
of PROFITS From Going Green?

Ben & Jerry’s Is! How did two hippies with no business experience create the second-largest super premium ice cream brand, working from a garage in northern Vermont? Actively developing green, socially conscious business practices—and actively courting green, socially conscious customers—is a big part of the story.

Walmart Is! Green initiatives at the world’s largest retailer—not a place where “tree huggers” work or even shop—have MADE tens of millions in new product revenues (like organic food) and SAVED tens of millions by slashing energy use.

Patagonia Is! Imagine a clothing company so secure in its market that it advertises urging customers to think about weather they really need to buy another jacket. A company that has incorporated sustainability throughout its supply chain and voluntarily takes used items back at the end of their useful life and reuses the materials to close the waste cycle.

Marks & Spencer Is! The giant UK department store chain’s fabled Plan A measures and publicly reports (in a real-time electronic billboard) its progress on 180 different sustainability criteria. The company started by measuring 100, but added the extra 80 after evaluating the enormous positive impact on profit from the measuring the first group.

Toyota Is! Prius gave Toyota an enormous boost in the green market. Competing automakers have plenty of hybrids now, but when most people think “hybrid,” they still think “Prius.”

Marcal Is! Once the company stopped hiding its eco-story and started marketing its six-decade leadership in green materials sourcing, it became Number One in its category (a dramatic turnaround from its bankruptcy a few years earlier).

The Green Building, Food, and Personal Care Industries Are! All of these sectors experienced enormous growth even during the recession, while the traditional, nongreen portions of the sector were contracting or treading water.

Your Neighbor or Competitor Is! Thousands of companies, from one-person home-based businesses on up to major corporations employing thousands of people, are creating reliable and profitable new revenue streams and slashing costs with green initiatives in every facet of their operations and marketing. Why not be among them?

Don’t Buy the Lie! You’ve heard that going green is too expensive. Well, it can be, if you go about it wrong. But here’s the wonderful truth: if you understand that profitability is a key objective, going green should MAKE you money and SAVE you money.

Get Help from an Expert on Your Green Profitability Quest Going green, and marketing green virtues to green and non-green customers—whether B2B (Business-to-Business) or B2C (Business-to-Consumer), should be a smooth and easy process, starting with the “low-hanging fruit”: the places where you’ll have quick payback and rapidly turn former costs into new profit centers. I’m Shel Horowitz, owner of Green And Profitable. As a green business profitability consultant with 40 years in both the green world and the marketing world, bestselling and award-winning author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, and the writer of the internationally syndicated monthly column, Green And Profitable, here are some of the ways I can help you on that journey:

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