The nice people at Webreality gave me a call a few days ago to say that the blog for the website was finished and I had to start using it.  Unfortunately, I had drawn the short straw and was being forced to leave the little rock and brave the big smoke of London - alone.  Since we know as much about business as a polar bear knows about sunblock, the others decided that one of us was going to attend the business startup seminar in London; as I was out of the room at the time, the honour became mine.  By the way, whoever decided it was a good idea to have a tube station at Kensington and one at Kennington should be shot!

After making my grand entrance, I wandered around a bit and stumbled upon a small booth where a couple of gentlemen were pitching their 'green' organization.  Always the curious one, I stopped and had a little chat.  Turns out these guys sell a service of going green for their customers.  I was told this was aimed at larger corporations and businesses that wanted green credentials but were too busy to actually do it themselves.  It was my understanding that it worked a bit like this:  Big Smoke inc. wanted to appear to be more environmentally friendly and signed up for this service.  For a fee, the green organization does some green stuff on Big Smoke inc.'s behalf.  Big Smoke inc. proudly announces that it has done the green stuff, the tree huggers are happy, the investors are happy and the stock rises so the public is happy.

Has Big Smoke inc. actually done anything?  If the green organization planted a forest, started a recycling program and cleaned up a beach (for a fee) under the guise of Big Smoke inc., just so Big Smoke inc. could appear more eco friendly, does it change the end result?  Cause or effect?

Have you stayed at a hotel lately?  I'm sure you've seen the 'help us protect the planet by re-using your towels' signs in the bathrooms.  We both know that they want you to re-use the towel to save them money on laundering them.  Isn't the result the same?

The caffeteria at my day job is encouraging people to bring in their own bowls for salads and their own mugs for coffee to help save the environment.  Is there any doubt that they want us to do this to save money on expensive disposable plastic take away trays and paper coffee cups?  Does the landfill care if they are sincere or not?

So the big question is - are we offended by companies who use environmental concerns as an excuse to save money?  Are we more worried about the cause or the effect?

Drop us a line with your thoughts.

Little Green Rock