Innovation

The GreenBiz website was launched in an attempt to provide synergistic opportunities for private corporations and the environmental sector, to show that they do not have to operate in contradiction to each other, instead that they should and could in fact work together to achieve mutually beneficial results. Of course, this is an altruistic endeavor, but the founders of GreenBiz also foresaw the opportunity for this to become a massively profitable market in the future when more and more large companies start to embrace the idea of environmental sustainability as not just something to do because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is profitable for them to do so.

Move forward to today and the world has changed massively. The majority of major companies throughout the world are embracing their role in mitigating the effects of climate change, both from a business point of view as well as from a good will perspective. From a business point of view, many companies have started to realize that the effects of climate change, as well as other environmental issues, have started to damage their bottom line in numerous ways, including damage to their supply chains and losing out on energy saving and environmental based tax deductions. GreenBiz is at the forefront of these endeavors through their website, their events and their executive network program. Going forward, GreenBiz will continue to innovate and flourish within their sector by being at the forefront of treating environmental and climate change issues together with social equity, inclusion, and racial justice issues as part of a systemic problem that needs to be solved together instead of each area trying to be solved separately, especially within private business operations. Any company, especially large-scale corporations, can see the financial effects of not properly addressing their environmental footprint, as well as poor human capital and workforce issues.

Inspiration

The inspiration for Greenbiz comes from both co-founders Joel Makower and Pete May. Together, their mission is to reconcile the opportunity and risk that the environment and social issues raise for companies. The inspiration for addressing these issues and inspiring other companies on how environment and big business impact each other came into fruition when big businesses such as Walmart, General Electric, Hewlett Packer, etc. began talking about “going green.” Joel and Pete agreed that it was the perfect time to begin creating a more powerful media outlet to address the bigger market to inspire other big businesses to ride the green wave and ultimately address and work towards a resolution of the biggest environmental and social issues the world faces today.

Overall impact

Greenbiz has created a forum where large organizations such as large corporations, governments, regulators and non governmental organizations can collaborate on sustainability and the impact that they have on the environment. Their main focus is helping companies by being the platform where the discussion on sustainability happens. Greenbiz currently has many different mediums for which they use to continue to shape the dialogue on sustainability and creating the clean economy. Greenbiz has the ability to address the urgent existential crisis of climate change, which has created a new wave of interest from governments, large companies and startups. Their vocation of sustainability has led organizations to take a more active role in integrating sustainability into their value chain.

Business benefit

The inspiration for the big businesses to go green is to mitigate overall risk such as addressing issues of the world today such as environmental sustainability, diversity equity, and racial justice which results in the business being more efficient. These types of issues have been around for decades, and companies like Greenbiz are doing their best to bring forth the awareness even more today. Pete May stated that by companies mitigating environmental and social risks, this, in turn, will benefit the business. Companies embracing the existential threat of climate change allows them to make changes to become more efficient in the way they may build their buildings and operate their factories. The more efficient these businesses can become in terms of being environmentally and socially sustainable, the better their overall business runs and the better their stock prices will be. Pete also mentioned that it is riskier for these businesses to not address these types of risks. This in turn shows that the business cannot adapt, which will lead to its competitors gaining the edge.

A few ways that Greenbiz address these practices to big business are by their live and virtual events. Greenbiz also hosts an Executive Network that invites the chief sustainability officers from big businesses such as Google, Citibank, Target, etc. to the group to discuss best practices. Speaking with these big businesses and others, as well as posting articles and different podcasts and media information, Greenbiz is leaving no stone unturned. By the topics they cover and the big corporations they deal with, Greenbiz has created leverage to inspire positive environmental and social practices that have a real scale and impact on the world.

Social and environmental benefit

As Pete has mentioned, the main goal of Greenbiz is to reconcile the opportunity and risk that environmental and social issues raise for companies. Greenbiz has created a nonprofit website called Greenbiz.org that looks to address these issues from the inside out. Pete stated that the purpose of the non profit organization of Greenbiz.org is to align concerns about racial justice and addressing diversity, and environmental issues by creating paths of entry of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) into fields of sustainability and reconciling these too. The message of the change should be represented by people involved in the change. Greenbiz also is aiming to develop support to build programs to help foster opportunities for a more diverse community to play within the sustainability realm.

Greenbiz’s media team also does a great job with posting and sharing different articles relating to how businesses can help the social and environmental issues of today. By sharing this information to all these different types of media outlets especially social media, Greenbiz is increasing the exposure and the audience which will ultimately create more awareness.

Interview

Pete May, President & Co-Founder