Seeing Green: Environmental Friendliness As a Business Strategy: A Franchise Business should Determine Whether Greening will Serve Any of Its Goals, And should Determine Which Ones Matter (Fw Focus: Management Operations‪)‬

Recently, my son and I went to a all game. Before the first itch, the announcer introduced the "Green Team," which passes through the aisles between innings collecting recyclables. I paid for drinks served in recyclable, corn-based, "plastic" cups using cash I had withdrawn from my bank, a bank which posted an "environmental commitment" on its Web site announcing, among other things, that the bank "has more buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council than any company on Earth." Earlier, we had driven to the game in a car whose manufacturer relentlessly advertises its vehicles' high-fuel economy and environmental friendliness. Why do the baseball team, the bank, and the automobile company "see green?" How should a franchise operation think about whether to have a corporate-sustainability or carbon-emission policy? Should the effort focus on the business's operations or its products? How much measuring and reporting does the business have to do? A business that wants to "green" itself can have any number of different objectives. Individuals within the organization can have different objectives for the same strategies. Typically, a green strategy will have a main proponent. The environment, health and safety director or the marketing vice president might view the effort as good for one reason (professional reputation or consumer preferences), but he then has to enlist others within the organization who like the idea for other reasons such as cost savings, for example.