Green Business, Moving Forward Responsibly

1. Defining the scope

This report shall serve as a short summary for the readings from Olson E.G., Makower J., Lesourd J.-B. and Schilizzi St.G.M., Galbreath J. In the process, it shall also provide individual opinion on why it is necessary for modern day businesses to involve themselves in becoming greener and see into why it is difficult to find a universal definition for what it means to be green and, hence, to be green.

2. Introduction

Historically speaking, it has not always been the case that green business practice was a concept accepted by everyone. More often than not businesses left it up to the government and public policies to deal with certain consequences of their activities, such as pollution, spillages, water contamination and other negative externalities. The reason for this may lay in the mindset of societies of those days and specialists in different fields differ in opinions. One explanation deals with the fact that, possibly, the negative effects of business activities were on a much lesser scale and some were only seen locally and hence were not taken seriously. (Lesourd J.-B. and Schilizzi St.G.M., 2011) To add to this opinion, it can be said that the media coverage has since undergone a huge increase and today it has become possible to cover even local or regional events almost immediately on an international and even global level via the Internet. Access to information and its availability have enabled people from across the globe to involve themselves with their immediate environments as well as show concern towards the general state of affairs in other countries.

Another reason has to do with the microeconomic theory of the firm’s profit-maximization. Firms might be aware of the impact their activities have on the environment but not always see themselves responsible for the abatement costs as per definition, anything outside of the firms direct grasp is an external factor that the enterprise cannot carry responsibility for...