What's a Green Business?

The businesses in Green America's Green Business Network™ are rewriting the rules of commerce. As green businesses, they challenge themselves to bring the goals of social and economic justice, environmental sustainability, community development, and improved quality of life for people everywhere into all of their activities—production and service, supply chain management, employment and investment, community and vendor relations.

Green businesses minimize waste, recycle, make products built to last, and focus much of their work in life-supporting products and services—affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, education, clean energy and efficiency, fair trade, pollution control, and community health care.

Green businesses spring up in communities other businesses ignore—inner cities, rural and indigenous. They are often started by the people in these communities who, in turn, bring respect and dignity to the people they employ.

Green businesses create jobs that empower workers and honor their humanity. They also serve as models for the role businesses can play in the transformation of our society to one that is socially just and environmentally sustainable.

Green Businesses:

Adopt bylaws or charters that lay out the social and environmental objectives they hope to achieve.

Make transparent to the public their commitment to social justice and environmental sustainability.

Choose to deliver products and services that reflect their social and environmental concerns.

Work to include all the stakeholders when possible in their decision-making processes—their workers, customers, communities, and the environment.

Address economic justice issues within their businesses. Some put caps on the ratio of top to bottom salaries. Many have profit-sharing plans that include all the workers, not just top management, or they are worker-owned. Many are directly involved in Fair Trade with producers. Many recruit a diverse worker base.

Make products that are built to last and designed to reduce waste.

Ensure that their manufacturing and delivery processes are environmentally sound.

Examine their relationships with vendors, urging them—even requiring them when they can—to make social and environmental improvements.

Make their financial investments applying social and environmental screens.

Get involved in their communities.

Educate consumers about the crucial role business plays in ensuring worker rights, promoting social justice, and in protecting communities and the environment. They also encourage their consumers to be more educated about the products they buy and to be more mindful of their social and environmental impacts.

More examples of green businesses and what they do »

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