A Bay Area journalist is using his 25 years of reporting experience to benefit the environment and businesses through a free online resource site.
Proper pollution management and energy efficiency can reduce waste, save money and generate good public relations, said Joel Makower, president of the Green Business Network and editor of the monthly newsletter The Green Business Letter. He is a regular environmental commentator on the PBS broadcast of “Marketplace” and former syndicated columnist.
Since June, Green Business Network, an Oakland-based nonprofit organization, has used the Internet to broaden awareness of the environment in business operations.
The information on GreenBiz.com was collected from government agencies, trade associations, corporations and nonprofit organizations.
In the past, waste management issues were only traded in small, corporate circles, Makower said.
“We’re trying to make this information much more accessible to the congregation instead of just the choir,” he said.
– Web Site Links To Green Groups
The Web site links to environmental organizations, including the San Diego-Tijuana Border Wastewise Project, the San Diego Manufacturing Extension Center, Inc., and the San Diego State University Industrial Assessment Center.
The site also features environmental policy statements and annual reports from companies such as Pacific Gas and Electric, a northern California utility firm that operates two nuclear reactors; Shell International, a company that regularly disposes of petroleum waste; and National Semiconductor, a firm that uses massive amounts of water.
In all, the site has more than 1,100 pages on waste management reports and 231 links to corporate Web sites featuring environmental and energy issues.
“Smart companies actively tell their environmental story to a number of audiences, but employees are among the most important as are the customers, the suppliers and the local regulatory community” making environmental disclosure good public relations material, he said.
Successful companies benefit from the information contained on the Web site because pollution results in lost income, Makower said. Pollution represents a bought commodity, that can’t be sold and is costly to dispose of.
– Site Designed For Business Leaders
The Web site was designed to organize environmental and economic issues for business leaders to review.
Makower said much of the information available previously was disorganized and environmental agencies almost never cross-marketed information.
Among the companies missing from the corporate link pages are San Diego firms.
Makower attributed it to the idea that telecommunications firms and biotech companies don’t do a lot of manufacturing and are therefore not pressured to disclose such information.
“That doesn’t mean companies in San Diego aren’t actively improving their environmental performance,” he said.
Studies have been conducted to correlate stock prices with a firm’s environmental record, but results are inconclusive, he said.
The San Diego State University Industrial Assessment Center, a commercial energy efficiency survey group comprised of undergrad and graduate students, and faculty members from SDSU, is continually denied access to manufacturing plants even though their service is free.
– Firms Look For The Hook
Most companies expect to pay for the group’s services or think they’ll have to buy a product after the survey, said IAC director Dr. Asfaw Beyene.
“A lot of companies don’t believe that it is free,” he said. “It is really very rare that you go and give a free service unconditionally without anything attached. How many organizations are there like that? I know only mine.”
The group has been off the last three months because of summer vacation. But with the recent energy crisis, Beyene believes the IAC surveys will be in demand.
“Probably, we’ll have more interested companies,” he said.
