BGlobal Warming: The Business Response

Going green doesn’t have to cost you a lot and it’s not just the preserve of big, wealthy companies - Brad Howarth finds that, as well as cutting costs, many SMEs are impressing their customers by reducing consumption and waste.

In the past year climate change has evolved from an academic discussion to become one of the most talked about topics in Australia. With consensus reached that the climate is both warming and changing, the main arguments today revolve around what the impacts will be and what should be done to mitigate the causes.

The impacts will be many. They range from the agriculture industry, where crop and livestock production is already threatened by worsening drought conditions, through to tourism, which is predicted to bear the brunt of increasing coastal storm activity, more frequent bushfires, and decreasing snowfalls.

Increased storm activity will also prove costly for the insurance industry, possibly driving up premiums. Decreased rainfall will also lead to increased energy prices as generators are forced to pay more for the water that’s essential in the process of generating electricity. Some manufacturing businesses have witnessed spot energy price increases of 100 percent and beyond.

Many larger businesses, such as the ANZ Bank and News Limited, have taken it upon themselves to clean up their acts on their own, making it increasingly difficult for any business to ignore its obligation to the environment (to become carbon neutral a business invests in programs such as tree planting or renewable energy to offset the greenhouse emissions that it can’t eliminate).

But the benefits are not just in having a green conscience. Rising petrol prices have combined with heightened environmental awareness to drive the sale of fuel-efficient vehicles, particularly hybrid petrol-electric cars such as Toyota’s Prius. Already the insurance company IAG has replaced a third of its fleet of vehicles for insurance assessors with hybrids, and is offering a discount on insurance to hybrid drivers.

While the programs being planned by large businesses often involve multi-million dollar investments in new premises and equipment, making a business environmentally friendly doesn’t need to be hugely expensive. In many cases smaller businesses can learn from the pioneering work done elsewhere in terms of reducing both energy consumption and greenhouse emissions.

Various state government initiatives have also been created to assist small businesses, such as the Victorian Government’s Grow Me The Money website, which provides information on cutting water and energy usage and reducing waste.