The State of Green Business? More powerful than a Chicago Blizzard.

I concur with Karen’s blog post that the Report Card offered by Joel Makower and the greenbiz.com folks is dismal.  But judging from the attendance at the State of Green Business conference in Chicago, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.  Truly, the weather was awful.  The snow started around 8:00 Monday night, and by Tuesday morning there was about a foot of it on the ground.  Yet by 9:00, when the conference started, the room was pretty full.  By 10:00, it was a definite full house.

Knowing that the vast majority of consumers rank their convenience and comfort well above their concern for the environment, the crowd’s willingness to brave definite inconvenience and certain discomfort spoke volumes about the importance of the topic and the commitment some folks in the business community have to the green market.  Further, I met many small businesses and start-ups.  That tells me the economy has not squelched green entrepreneurial thinking — and maybe the economy’s even stoked it.

There were a few good presentations from large companies implementing innovative, thoughtful,  green efforts (ebay in particular), but I was sad to see that a few top executives at large companies talked about unplugging things and buying carbon credits as if those were big ideas or even represented a real commitment to being green (only 14% of the population thinks that qualifies a company as green).

My hope for next year’s conference is that Joel invites more of the start-ups and young businesses in the room — the folks inventing really cool new green products and technologies — and gives them a forum to share their thinking.  Panel discussions pairing up Fortune 500 companies dipping their toes into the green market with small start-ups going to market with big ideas and little money would be fascinating and educational for everyone.  At the end of the day, we all have a lot to learn from each other.

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