What Are the Different Types of Green Business Ideas?
Green management means that the company adapts to the requirements of the sustainable development of Socio-Economic Town, and integrates the concepts of saving resources, protecting and improving the ecology and environment, and benefiting the physical and mental health of consumers and the public, in order to achieve sustainable development. Continue to grow and achieve the organic unification of economic, social and environmental benefits.
Green management
- green operation
- With the popularization of green environmental protection and eco-economic concepts, it has also had a significant impact on the company's business philosophy and business model. Paying attention to environmental protection and advocating green operation is no longer just an expenditure and investment for enterprise operation, nor is it only an economic burden that is opposite to corporate profits, but a new source of wealth for enterprises. Establishing a green business philosophy and adopting a green business model has become an inevitable choice for enterprises to increase profits and gain growth.
- Increasingly severe resource and environmental situations have forced companies to transform their original production models. The increasing public awareness of environmental protection has gradually made the enterprises that cause environmental pollution lose their living space. The public's investigation of corporate social responsibility makes it necessary for enterprises to assume their due responsibility for environmental protection.
- In the early 1990s, in order to solve environmental problems such as environmental pollution, energy crisis, and resource depletion, some developed countries began to take the environment as an important part of their operations. In the 21st century, green business capabilities have become an important factor in determining the competitive advantages of enterprises. An enterprise that does not have green operating capabilities (or an enterprise that does not pay attention to environmental protection) cannot truly stand or even win in the fierce market competition. Therefore, green management has become an inevitable choice for modern enterprise innovation and a new important source of corporate competitive advantage.
- The 21st century is the "green century." People are paying more and more attention to the harmonious coexistence between man and nature, and protecting the environment in economic activities has become increasingly fashionable. Accompanied by the "green management" has become a major trend in business management, and become an important content of sustainable development of modern enterprises. Enterprise green operation is to integrate the concept of environmental protection into the company's production and operation activities according to the requirements of the green economy, pay attention to the management of resources and the environment, and achieve sustainable development of the enterprise by saving resources and controlling pollution. Green management is essentially a repositioning of the company's impact on the external ecological environment, and is an inevitable choice for sustainable development. From the perspective of people and the environment, the development process of an enterprise is also a process of continuous adjustment of the company's operating methods. In summary, it can be divided into the following four stages:
- 1. Predatory mining and production stages. Traditional enterprise production and operation are based on the inexhaustible natural resources and unlimited environmental capacity. It uses resources as much as possible, even through predatory mining, in order to obtain the maximum profit, without considering or rarely considering environmental and social benefits. It is this traditional mode of production and operation that has caused most of the world's identifiable resources to become a shortage of resources and an increasingly severe environmental crisis.
- 2. Passive pollution control stage. Beginning in the 1960s, subject to the pressure of environmental protection and environmental regulations, enterprises began to passively develop and adopt some end-of-line treatment technologies to control pollution. However, passive pollution control can only temporarily control pollution, cannot fundamentally solve the problem, and cannot maintain high operating efficiency and best results. New pollution problems often occur during operation.
- 3 Proactive prevention phase. Driven by national and international environmental protection laws and regulations and driven by their own economic interests, many companies are increasingly aware of the importance of conserving resources and improving the environment. Although it may meet the government's requirements by adopting "end-of-treatment" type pollution control measures, this "installment payment" method is too costly. With the continuous emergence of high and new technologies, some enterprises have begun to seek lower-cost, more applicable solutions, and vigorously develop and design products and processes that meet or even exceed environmental standards. Pollution control began to move from end-of-life treatment to full-process control, and companies began to move from passive pollution control to active pollution prevention.
- 4 Green management stage for sustainable development. In the 1990s, with the continuous development of sustainable development, some companies began to focus on the role of environmental factors in the overall socio-economic development with a forward-looking vision, taking ecological environmental protection as the management goal and ecological environment governance as the operation. The content takes environmental factors as one of the strategic elements for building a competitive advantage and gaining greater profits for the enterprise. By seeking to achieve a unified green business strategy of economic, social and environmental benefits, the company achieves the goal of sustainable development.
- I. Green management is an important source of corporate competitive advantage
- According to the theory of traditional economics, the business strategy of a company is how to form its own competitive advantage when the company and its competitors face customers together. This competitive advantage is mainly achieved through the four elements "Q (quality), C (cost), T (time limitation), and s (service)". This traditional business strategy is customer-oriented, with the ultimate goal of winning customers and obtaining maximum profits, but it ignores the relationship between the enterprise and the ecological environment and dilutes the external negative effects of its economy, that is, corporate activities on the environment Destruction. With the change of the external environment of the enterprise and the enhancement of the public's awareness of environmental protection, the public is not only concerned about the product itself, but also the environmental impact of the product. The public started to look at the business behavior of enterprises from a holistic perspective, especially considering whether the company cares about social issues and shoulders social responsibility. An important aspect of corporate social responsibility is the sensitivity of the company to ecological and environmental issues, that is, the implementation of green management. Because the core of green management is to change the traditional production and management methods that consume a lot of resources and waste resources and even damage the environment, and establish new resource-saving production and management methods that are conducive to environmental protection. Under the impact of the green wave, environmental indicators, environmental labels, and life cycles of products have become basic elements of corporate competitive advantage. Therefore, the new competitive advantages of enterprises not only come from Q, C, T, and S, but also reflect green production,
- 1. Establish a green business philosophy. Implementing green management is a strategic decision, so the change of mindset is the first priority. The biggest challenge in implementing green management lies in changing the business ideas of business operators. Therefore, business operators must take the lead in taking environmental protection as the foothold of business operation and development, and establish the company's business policies and business strategies without jeopardizing the environment and human health. Specific measures to implement this guiding ideology to each employee, so that all employees realize that all business activities of the enterprise must be combined with environmental protection, environmental protection is an inescapable social responsibility of the enterprise.
- 2. Develop a green business plan. The key to green management lies in the formulation and implementation of green management plans, including the establishment of strategic goals, implementation steps and countermeasures for implementing green management. Enterprises must first analyze the current status, existing problems and gaps of green management, and then combine the various elements, resource characteristics and levels that can be achieved through hard work to finally determine the green business strategic goals to be achieved. The company shall specify the strategic objectives of green business operations as the overall tasks to be completed and the total level to be achieved during the planning period, and based on the task decomposition, propose targeted countermeasures to solve the problems to ensure the smooth operation of green operations Implementation.
- 3 Promote green production. Environmental problems are not just problems at the production terminal, they can occur in the entire production process and in all aspects before and after. Therefore, the implementation of green management must attach importance to the overall control and prevention of pollutants, and green production (mainly clean production) is one of its best methods. Cleaner production includes two aspects of clean production processes and clean products. To achieve clean production, two full-process controls must be implemented: First, the entire process control of the product life cycle, that is, from raw material processing and refining to output products, product use, and all stages of disposal must take necessary cleaning measures to Implement prevention and control of material production and human consumption pollution. The second is the control of the entire process of production, that is, the control of pollution from product development, planning, design, construction to material production. To produce clean products, we must focus on the following three aspects: First, the choice of materials. It is necessary to choose non-toxic and harmless materials to reduce the health hazard and safety risks of the product; choose new lightweight and energy-saving materials to reduce the weight of the product and the consumption of resources and energy; choose renewable and recyclable new materials, In order to reduce the consumption of resources and facilitate waste disposal, biodegradation and recycling; use waste materials in the production process as a part of product raw materials to achieve waste material recycling and improve resource utilization. The second is product design. It should be beneficial to reduce processing procedures and production assembly to facilitate production and reduce energy consumption; pay attention to recyclable design, including detachable design and modular design, to reduce the difficulty of scrap disposal, improve resource utilization and reduce the environment Pollution; the third is the packaging of the product. It is necessary to adhere to the 5R principle: reduction of packaging materials (Reduce); reuse of packaging materials (Reuse); recycling of packaging materials (Recycle); packaging materials flow into the recovery system (Recovery); research on packaging materials technology and methods (Research).
- 4 Strengthen green management. The first is to establish an enterprise green management system. IS014000 is the second series of management standards introduced by the International Organization for Standardization following IS09000. Its purpose is to regulate the behavior of organizations such as enterprises, save resources, reduce environmental pollution, improve environmental quality, and promote sustainable and healthy economic development. To implement IS014000, first of all, we must incorporate the idea of sustainable development into the corporate strategic system, formulate an environmental policy, set up a green management leadership group to be responsible for the establishment and implementation of the green management system; secondly, we must incorporate green management into organizational management activities and quality management systems. Coordinate with each other to form an organic whole, to achieve resource sharing; Thirdly, according to the ideas and requirements of IS014000 standard, the environmental planning of the product or production process life cycle should be carried out, so that the company's green management directly penetrates into the product life cycle To promote the implementation of pollution prevention and improve environmental performance. The second is to implement a green accounting system. Green accounting is based on currency as the main measurement standard and based on relevant environmental protection laws and regulations. It studies the relationship between business operations and environmental protection, and measures and records the costs and expenses of corporate pollution, environmental prevention, and development and utilization in order to evaluate corporate environmental performance and The impact of environmental activities on corporate financial costs is an important condition for companies to implement green operations. It requires accountants to correctly, timely, and reasonably calculate the extent to which an enterprise consumes environmental resources when it conducts business activities. Its content mainly includes the assessment of natural resource consumption costs, environmental pollution costs, enterprise resource utilization rates, and environmental costs. Wait.
- 5. Carry out green marketing. Green marketing refers to marketing methods that take the impact of products on the environment as the core, or marketing practices that use environmental issues as the driving point. It involves four elements: enterprise, environment, consumer, and market. It has more "environment" elements than traditional marketing. To carry out green marketing, one must collect green information. Enterprises should start from the market and establish a green marketing system that can collect, organize, store, retrieve and analyze green information. Second, we must develop green products. The product should be safe and non-polluting when it is produced, used, and discarded. The raw materials and packaging used by the enterprise should be conducive to environmental protection. Third, we must set green prices. Enterprises should consider the internalization of environmental resource costs, that is, product prices should reflect the company's green costs in terms of raw materials, use technology, and three waste disposal to ensure that natural resources and ecological environment values are reasonably compensated in the process of utilization. Fourth, we must choose green channels. Enterprises should choose reputable wholesalers and retailers, set up green counters, green monopoly stores or green chain stores. They can also carry out direct sales activities of green products to shorten channels and reduce pollution. Fifth, we must implement green promotions. Enterprises should use various forms of promotion such as green advertising, publicity reports, staff sales, business promotion, etc., to widely publicize their green products in the market, so that more consumers understand and become familiar with the company's products and establish a good green image of the company.
- Green Management and Corporate Competitive Advantage
- Facing the growing green market, companies must win the market and win consumers if they want to be invincible in the new round of competition. To this end, enterprises should update their business concepts, locate in green markets, invest appropriate human, financial and material resources, and actively develop green products that meet market needs. According to the report, the sales price of most green foods living in the United States is about 50% higher than the sales price of similar ordinary foods, and 80% of consumers are willing to pay excess value for environmentally friendly products. In Europe, the retail price of green food is 50% to 150% higher than that of ordinary food, and producers earn 10% to 50% more. Despite the high price of green food, consumers are still willing to pay higher prices for this. At this stage in China, although consumers purchasing power for green products is not as strong as the data of developed countries show, green consumption represents the direction of market development, and this trend cannot be reversed by any country. In such a revolution in consumer demand, the first companies to implement green management will certainly seize the market opportunity and decide on a differential advantage.
- Pollution is usually a manifestation of wasted resources. When waste, hazardous materials or energy are used in an unsafe, inefficient or inefficient way, it will become a kind of pollution in the environment. Within an enterprise, the inefficient use of resources is usually manifested in unsafe use of materials or poor management of finished products, resulting in unnecessary waste or storage. There are many hidden costs embedded in the product's life cycle, such as the distributor or customer discarding packaging materials at will, and the random disposal of waste during the production process. These waste resources and increase product costs.
- Enterprises implementing green operations will better avoid environmental risks and gain more competitive advantages from outside the market. Environmental risk refers to the risk of companies being forced to pay giant fees for environmental pollution, as well as the credit risk that comes with it. With the continuous improvement of China's environmental protection laws and regulations, environmental law enforcement will become more stringent, and the environmental risks of enterprises will also increase. Its main risks are threefold:
- First, fines paid for environmental damage caused by polluting the environment. At present, in some developed countries, the cost of environmental pollution control paid by Internet companies to bear the responsibility for environmental damage caused by pollution has reached a historical high, and severe penalties have even forced some enterprises to stop operating activities;
- Second, financial institutions are increasingly focusing on the impact of corporate environmental issues on their credit and investment decisions. Many banks now require environmental assessments of businesses before providing loans. When an environmental accident occurs for a company, the bank's loan costs will increase. Borrowing companies will be forced to increase environmental protection expenses due to fines and cleanup pollution, resulting in insolvency due to difficulties in working capital;
- Third, investors require that the companies they invest in comply with environmental standards. At present, when some foreign trust and investment companies choose listed companies, they announced that they would only invest in public companies that meet social and ethical standards. All these enlighten modern enterprises to conduct green operations and examine their environmental protection responsibilities to avoid environmental risks.
- The first companies to implement green management will gain first-mover advantages over those using traditional production methods and technologies. Because in the early stage of the development of a green economy, a country often uses a series of means such as price, taxation, credit, and charges to encourage market players to move toward environmental protection. The leading enterprises will gain more competitive advantages in order to enjoy these green package preferential policies.
- Wal-Mart's Green Management
- Wal-Mart's green initiative began as early as the 1990s. In 1992, Wal-Mart began to establish factory inspection procedures, including various provisions on supplier social responsibility, and environmental protection is one of the important contents. Since entering the 21st century, Wal-Mart's green pace has further accelerated and gradually developed in depth, setting off a green wave at the same time in the United States and its global market.
- 1. Optimize marketing mix
- For a long time, Wal-Mart has positioned its target market for low-income groups. Wal-Mart's competitive advantage has always been price, and its marketing mix is based on daily low prices. The specific performance is low prices, stable product quality and superior to competitors, and service, convenience, information communication and store environment reaching the industry average level, because Wal-Mart has constructed a business process of low-cost procurement, low-cost distribution, and low-price sales, making Wal-Mart's purchase price 10% lower than competitors, operating costs 10% lower than competitors, and profit margin 0.6% higher To ensure that Wal-Mart can well meet the needs of its target market. After implementing green operations, Wal-Mart's marketing mix has undergone a qualitative change.
- (1) The product structure is upgraded to green and environmentally friendly products. For example, in 2004, a Sam club in the United States sold 190,000 sets of yoga sportswear made of organic cotton; Wal-Mart operated 400 kinds of organic food in a supermarket in Dallas; organic baby JU] E, organic seafood fish (to environmentally friendly (Seafood and fish) and organic vegetables and fruits have been included in Wal-Mart's sights. In cooperation with suppliers, we actively support organic products and promote environmentally-friendly production processes among suppliers.
- (2) Recessive changes in price strategies. The basic slogan of daily parity has not changed. What has changed is that they give it a new connotation, that is, daily parity not only guarantees that the price of the underlying product is low, but also means that Wal-Mart is full of service and responsibility to customers, such as l00 % Use renewable energy to achieve zero waste and sell products that are harmless to the environment and natural resources.
- (3) Improvement of shopping environment. For example, in 2005, Wal-Mart proposed to invest 500 million U.S. dollars in the development of "green buildings" within three years to reduce the energy consumption of stores by 30% and reduce energy waste by 25%. According to the company's plan, on July 20, 2005, Wal-Mart opened a large supermarket based on the concept of sustainable development and green technology in the suburbs of Dallas, Manigin, Texas. The architectural design of the supermarket adopted more than 20 A measure that targets green features. Wal-Mart (China) is also actively taking measures such as maintaining a 26-degree indoor constant temperature, using an infrared air curtain, using T5 energy-saving lamps, and defrosting in stages.
- It is not difficult to see that Wal-Mart in green operation is more in line with customer needs than Wal-Mart in traditional operations, and is closer to and meet new customer needs than other retailers. Wal-Mart's green actions are in line with the direction of customer value migration, which is consistent with the internal requirements of customer consumption upgrade.
- 2. Develop a green strategy
- Wal-Mart has formulated a clear sustainable development strategy, including the gradual realization of 100% sustainable energy use in all of its U.S. supermarket chains; a 25% reduction in solid waste within 3 years; and a requirement for all private brands to streamline product packaging within two years to support the green cause ; Wal-Mart also formulated a reform plan for commodity packaging, with the goal of reducing packaging materials by 5%. In 2004, Wal-Mart proposed to gradually achieve the goal of "zero waste", and also required 60,000 suppliers to also develop their own environmental protection plans.
- 3. Take More Social Responsibility
- Actively cooperate with the government, media and social organizations to carry out many environmental protection activities; actively donate environmental protection projects, and jointly carry out environmental protection community activities such as degradable shopping bags and old batteries recycling, garbage collection, and tree planting with the community. Moreover, Wal-Mart (China) Investment Co., Ltd.'s future work will still focus on integrating environmental issues into its business, coordinate actions with global procurement, save energy and protect the environment, and save every penny for consumers.
- The above facts show that Wal-Mart's green actions cover three levels of business content, business environment and corporate social responsibility, and are three-dimensional green actions. For Wal-Mart, green action is not just a short-term, partial strategy, but a strategic arrangement and adjustment of the company's development and operation. It not only establishes the important position of "green" in the future development of the company, but also Specific management arrangements; at the same time, different green actions are taken at different times, different locations, and different operating links to implement the company's green strategy and goals into specific actions. It can be seen that Wal-Mart is gradually upgrading from traditional retailers to green retailers, and is developing from the world's largest retailer to the world's greenest company.
- Green operation is a new business operating profit model. It does not simply implement energy conservation and environmental protection measures in a certain aspect or a certain operation link, but a new business philosophy, profit concept and business operation model. Green management, as a new business concept and business model, is a revolutionary change to the traditional business model. Implementation of the green business model requires corresponding changes in many aspects of corporate management. Based on the requirements of green management, enterprises formulate brand-new strategic goals, operating models, and distribution systems. Change the reverse incentive policy in corporate management. Don't encourage all departments and their employees to increase output and output value by increasing consumption. Performance evaluation does not depend on output value and is based on efficiency and effectiveness. Gradually complete the transition from traditional business model to green business model Change. Of course, the implementation of the green business model also requires government departments to change the traditional evaluation standards for enterprises to provide them with good socioeconomic conditions.