Pure Growth!

Green. Greenwash. Sustainable. Eco-friendly. Footprint. Carbon neutral.

The buzzwords associated with green marketing saturate communications to the point where consumers’ eyes glaze over and they automatically tune out when they hear them. There are simply too many companies tossing these words around, and a lot of them have no idea why they’re doing it, or what they really mean.

But how else are companies supposed to communicate with eco-concious audiences? These buzzwords seem to be a necessary evil. No matter how hard you try to avoid them, there are some situations where you simply have no alternatives to use.

Aside from these inevitable situations, it’s important to cut down on superfluous greenspeak whenever and wherever possible. Consumers train themselves to skip over these terms as they read them, since they’re so vague and overused. A “green business” could mean anything. It’s up to you to discover new ways to deliver your message and keep readers interested. Buzzwords are the fastest way to fail in this regard.

Using the latest green buzzwords may afford your company a shiny veneer, but is their substance behind what you say? Focus on the depth and meaning of your message. What are you really trying to say? Can you avoid the latest jargon? In many cases, you’ll find that you can. When you start paying conscious attention to the frequency of buzzwords, you’ll see that they are unnecessary in many cases. My advice to you would be to cut, revise, and remove like there’s no tomorrow. You’ll end up with clearer, more direct copy that gets to the point without confusing your readers in a maze of ambiguity.

As always, if you need help re-designing your communications, hire a green copywriter to assist you with the task.

At my last office job, my co-workers and I would sit around and wonder why we had to come into the office at all. On days when we were doing creative work, like content authoring, blogging, etc., it really didn’t make any difference whether we were at our office desk or home desk. Actually, that’s not entirely true. There was one big difference: On days when my physical presence wasn’t required, I was still forced to waste nearly 3 hours commuting. My morale sank like an iron raft. I simply wasn’t as productive.

If your employees have job tasks that can be performed from home, it makes a lot of sense to allow them to telecommute one or two days a week — or more.

Telecommuting is an excellent opportunity to promote greener business practices without sacrificing results or daily production. It is a rare win-win compromise that satisfies employees as well as your bottom line.

Here are a some good reasons you should implement a telecommuting policy for your green business.

1. Telecommuting boosts employee morale. When my co-workers and I discussed how wasteful it was to have us come in on days when we could have done our work from home, we all agreed that if given the chance to telecommute, we would go out of our ways to work even harder! Employees that are given the opportunity to work from the comfort of their home, or even a local park or cafe, will be grateful for the opportunity. Many will see it as an expression of your trust and work hard to meet expectations. No generalizations here: a study reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology determined that “Telecommuters reported more job satisfaction, less motivation to leave the company, less stress, improved work-family balance, and higher performance ratings by supervisors.”

2. Telecommuting provides an excellent opportunity to cut costs. If you find that telecommuting is working for your employees, you can cut down on equipment costs. Instead of setting up an individual workstation for every employee, create an alternating telecommuting schedule so employees can share equipment without conflict when they are in the office. Organizing a system like this can cut equipment costs dramatically by stretching the range of your current resources.

3. Telecommuting means less environmental impact. Telecommuting can make your business greener in a few important ways. First, it eliminates the need to commute, which reduces carbon emissions and the consumption of oil. Secondly, reducing the amount of people that are in the office means less paper will be wasted and less electricity will be used. These small benefits quickly add up to save your company even more money, while the burden on the environment is reduced with each passing day.

If you are unsure of how well telecommuting will work for your company, all it takes is a little planning and foresight. Make sure you have systems in place that will let employees know what is expected of them and what work needs to be completed before they start working from home. Search online for some web-based project collaboration services that can make this task easier. Roll out your new telecommuting program as a temporary trial to evaluate performance and see where improvements can be made. Once you’ve streamlined the system, offer more frequent opportunities to work from home.

I’m confident that you will discover telecommuting is a legitimate opportunity to both green your business as well as boost employee productivity and morale.

More evidence for those who think the current state of green affairs is an impermanent bubble!

Utility officials in Texas voted 2-1 to give preliminary approval to a $4.9 billion plan to create wind energy infrastructure that would carry power from windy west Texas to urban areas like Dallas. Experts are calling it the largest investment in clean and renewable energy in U.S. history. How’s that for a bubble?

“Supporters predict the plan will spur new wind power projects, create jobs, reduce pollution and lower energy costs.”

I think ecopreneurs know an opportunity when they see one