Greening Your Small Business: How to Improve Your Bottom Line, Grow Your Brand, Satisfy Your Customers

Greening Your Small Business: How to Improve Your Bottom Line, Grow Your Brand, Satisfy Your Customers — and Save the Planet
by Jennifer Kaplan

In Greening Your Small Business, author Jennifer Kaplan shows how adopting sustainable practices for your small business can not only help the environment, but also cut costs and improve profitability.

Paperback, 320pp

Penguin Group (USA), November 2009

ISBN-13: ISBN-13: 9780735204461

Barnes & Noble online price: $17.05

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SYNOPSIS

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Greening Your Small Business is the definitive resource for those who want their small businesses to be cutting- edge, competitive, profitable and eco-conscious. Filled with stories from small business owners of all stripes, Greening Your Small Business addresses every aspect of going green, from basics such as recycling, reducing waste, energy efficiency and reducing the IT footprint, to more in-depth concerns such as green marketing and communications, green business travel and green employee benefits.

For companies too small to hire consultants to draft and implement green policies and practices, this guide is designed for easy use, featuring:

Simple ways to make the workplace greener;
Two plans of action for going green (divided into two levels); and
Definitions for green terminology and jargon.

Greening Your Small Business was also selected for Small Business Trends’ Editor’s Choice Awards: 2009 Best Small Business Books.

LIBRARY JOURNAL
Kaplan, a a former small business owner and founder of Greenhance LLC, provides a book “designed to guide you through the green planning process, and provide you with the practical information and resources you need to go green.” She includes definitions, historical background of the “going green” initiative, case studies of companies and advice on recycling, conserving water, developing a green plan for a company and communicating the green mission to stakeholders. She also provides useful nitty-gritty information, such as how to decipher recycling symbols and what eco-labels are. Especially helpful are the web resources and bibliographical references for further research.

VERDICT: An excellent first book for learning how to “green” the small business. For practitioners and students.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Kaplan founded Greenhance, LLC, a business consultancy dedicated to providing marketing and communications strategies to small businesses going green. An Adjunct Faculty in Marketing at Marymount University, Kaplan has conducted in-depth research into consumer attitudes about how small businesses can most effectively go green. A former small business owner, she brings her experience working with small businesses and her firsthand knowledge of consumer responses to going green to business owners everywhere.