DISTRIBUTION AND MARKETING FOR GREEN BUSINESS

Introduction
As per Mr. J. Polonsky, green marketing can be defined as, "All activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchange intended to satisfy human needs or wants such that satisfying of these needs and wants occur with minimal detrimental input on the national environment." Green marketing involves developing and promoting products and services that satisfy customers want and need for Quality, Performance, Affordable Pricing and Convenience without having a detrimental input on the environment.

Green Business
The word "Green" is not the omni-term for anything environmental. The best definition of Green refers to the health impact of what we do on living things. So Green is primarily a health-related issue. A Green business is one that does all good for living things in the workplace, in the community, and the world at large. Green business is key to recognizing companies that truly have the environment in mind.

Some important terms

Green funding
It refers to funding of a project or business that is considered environmentally sustainable. Funding can come from private sources or government sources and can be in the form of loans or other types of debt, equity or grants. Green funding is often focused on goals beyond financial returns, seeking both financial returns and environmental benefits.

Green Marketing
American Marketing Association (AMA) defines green marketing as the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe.

Also known as Environmental Marketing /

Ecological Marketing.

Process of selling of products or services based on their environmental benefits.

 1st workshop on Ecological Marketing was conducted in the year 1975 Jacquelin Ottman published 1st book on Green Marketing. 3 phases of green marketing: 1.Ecological Phase 2.Environmental Phase 3.Sustainable Phase

The green marketing has evolved over a period of time. The evolution of green marketing has three phases. First phase was termed as "Ecological" green marketing, and during this period all marketing activities were concerned to help environment problems and provide remedies for environmental problems. Second phase was "Environmental" green marketing and the focus shifted on clean technology that involved designing of innovative new products, which take care of pollution and waste issues. Third phase was "Sustainable" green marketing. It came into prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000.

For green marketing to be effective, one have to do three things; be genuine, educate your customers, and give them the opportunity to participate.

1) Being genuine means that a)you are actually doing what you claim to be doing in your green marketing campaign and b) that the rest of your business policies are consistent with whatever you are doing that's environmentally friendly. Both these conditions have to be met for your business to establish the kind of environmental credentials that will allow a green marketing campaign to succeed. 2) Educating your customers isn't just a matter of letting people know you're doing whatever you're doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting them know why it matters. Otherwise, for a significant portion of your target market, it's a case of "So what?" and your green marketing campaign goes nowhere.

 3) Giving your customers an opportunity to participate means personalizing the benefits of your environmentally friendly actions, normally through letting the customer take part in positive environmental action.

Why Green Marketing? As resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, it is important for the marketers to utilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the organization's objective. So green marketing is inevitable. There is growing interest among the consumers all over the world regarding protection of environment. Worldwide evidence indicates people are concerned about the environment and are changing their behaviour. As a result of this, green marketing has emerged which speaks for growing market for sustainable and socially responsible products and services.

Go green by..
1. Turning off equipments like lights, fans and other electrical equipments when it's not being used. This can reduce the energy used by 25 percent; turning off the computers at the end of the day can save an additional 50 percent . Replace ordinary light 2. 2. Encouraging communications by email, and reading email messages onscreen to determine whether it's necessary to print them. If it's not, don't! 3. Reducing fax-related paper waste by using a fax-modem and by using a fax cover sheet only when necessary. Faxmodems allow documents to be sent directly from a computer, without requiring a printed hard copy.

 4. Producing double-sided documents whenever possible. 5. Not leaving taps dripping; always close them tightly after use. (One drop wasted per second wastes 10,000 litres per year.) 6. Installing displacement toilet dams in toilet reservoirs. Placing one or two plastic containers filled with stones (not bricks) in the toilet's reservoir will displace about 4 litres of water per flush - a huge reduction of water use over the course of a year.

7. Finding a supply of paper with maximum available recycled content. 8. Choosing suppliers who take back packaging for reuse. 9. Instigating an ongoing search for "greener" products and services in the local community. The further your supplies or service providers have to travel, the more energy will be used to get them to you. 10. Before deciding whether you need to purchase new office furniture, see if your existing office furniture can be refurbished. It's less expensive than buying new and better for the environment.

Green businesses produce green products Lets start by looking at how a business might change their manufacturing operations in order to build eco-friendly products. Many today talk about the triple bottom line which is a phrase that was coined by John Elkington in 1994. Today, it is one of the benchmarks used to measure whether a business has adopted sound environmental policies and practices. Essentially, the triple bottom line takes ecological and social performance seriously, building it into a three-part organization model that functions along three axes: people, planet, and profit. In other words, rather than considering only profit in measuring a business success, the triple bottom line gets companies thinking beyond money to social and environmental factors as well.

In practical terms, this may mean that a green business should consider the following environmental and society strategies: Water conservation: Green businesses understand that our fresh water supplies are limited and that careful conservation is required. At all steps in the manufacturing and distribution process, efforts should be made to reduce the consumption of water and the company should strive to produce products that consume less water during their lifespan as well.

Energy conservation: In addition to concerns about water, another green business opportunity is energy conservation. Sustainable businesses recognize that climate change will have a profound impact on our world at all levels, including business success. Those green businesses that build energy conservation into their longterm plans will not only save money, they will protect themselves against the risk of rising energy costs, and will demonstrate to their constituents their interest in taking climate change seriously (which garners support). Again, for manufacturers, this will mean both energy savings on the factory floor as well as an emphasis on producing products that require less energy.

Solid waste reduction and recycling: From start to finish, the quantity of waste produced during the manufacturing process should be limited. Processes the minimize waste from the start and that have plans in place for recycling and reusing any waste that is in fact created should be the cornerstone of any green business. And as always, the finished product should also reduce waste production. Pollution prevention: Finally, green businesses practices will also include pollution prevention. Many manufacturing processes use toxic ingredients and/or spew toxic effluent and waste into the environment (be it air pollution, water pollution, or ground pollution).

A green business will work to reduce toxins going into their products, mitigate toxins at the end of the process, and create a product that functions toxin-free as well. A really green business may wish to go above and beyond by working to give back to the environment by devising and producing products that actually help the environment. Whether a green business chooses to manufacture highlyefficient solar panels or engineer a new water filtration method, the world needs more products that will not only have less of an impact, they will actually improve the planet.

REMYA KRISHNAN S1 MBA B BATCH