Why Business Must Lead on Climate Change

– Contributed content –

(Enrique Lopez Garre, Pixabay)

20 Feb. 2020. The climate crisis is affecting the whole world, yet world leaders seem lost with what to do about it, so much so that a teenager has more to say on the matter. This is just one of the reasons why it is down to businesses and business leaders to take action and lead the way to combat the climate crisis, but there are more reasons than that.

There is an increasing demand from both consumers and employees

When you break it down, all the people who are campaigning for climate change are your customers, your neighbors’ customers, your competitors’ customers, and your employees, your neighbors, your neighbors’ employees, and your competitor’s employees. So, if you think about it, if every business takes action and encourages its customers and neighbors to do the same, then eventually everyone will be covered, and together companies can drive this force for change.

It is not just the environment that will benefit from your actions either, but you as a business will too. As it is the public who are demanding the change, then if you are showing your commitment to the environment, customers are more likely to choose you over your competitors. Of course, your competitors will soon follow, and that can only mean a good thing for the environment.

It’s not that hard to influence people

It might seem like it’s hard, but have a look back over the past ten years and think about the change in the use of plastic bags for grocery shopping. It’s now normal for people to have their bags for life in their cars or to carry a little bag around with them for when they’re shopping around town. This is a massive change to how it was a decade ago when people just took plastic bags for granted.

There are businesses such as urmining.com, dedicated to electronics recycling. You can also see the shift happening with the use of water bottles; you see people carrying around their reusable water bottles instead of plastic ones, and it’s becoming more popular to see people using their reusable coffee cups too. Finally, you only have to look at the statistics on Veganuary to see how influential that campaign has been. Look at the supermarket shelves also and see the vegan options, the bookstores and see the vegan books, restaurant menus for the vegan options, and even the wine shops have labels on to say if they’re vegan or not. This not only shows how some businesses are leading the way and making a change, but it also shows how important it is to people to do their bit for the planet.

It makes good business sense

As mentioned above, it is consumers demanding this, so it can only be good for your business. When it comes to running a successful business, then often, one of the best things you can do is to follow other more prominent and successful companies. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, announced this week that he is launching a climate change fund with $10 billion of his own money. Now, of course, he has the money to do this, but it also shows the importance of it and that he knows that it’s up to businesses to lead the way.

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