Customer Reviews

75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make a Difference, by Glenn Cruston, is a terrific guide to get you started in a green career.

The 75 businesses are divided into 11 larger segments, like "Fueling Green Energy", "Finding Business Solutions in the Living World," and "Green Farms."

The reader is encouraged to view the 75 careers as a starting point, and Cruston encourages mixing and matching them and thinking creatively about more opportunities. This makes a lot of sense, as we are in the infancy of the green movement, and many other green work choices will soon develop.

For each career opportunity, Cruston provides information on what the market need is for the service/product, the mission, any special challenges, what education is required to do the job, the capital required, the timing, resources and examples of actual businesses.

Here are some examples of green businesses:
* small wind-turbine installer
* Green chief sustainability officer
* Philanthropy management
* Building green homes and businesses
* fab green prefabs
* Green building certification
* Paperless office consultant
* Sell or manufacture reusable shopping totes
* Eco-friendly and healthy fast food
* Home food safety testing kits
* Green bed & breakfast
* Green car dealership
* Gas free gardening
* Green cafes

This book is loaded with great real life examples of green businesses and includes lots of resources. As Cruston notes, these 75 job opportunities are just the beginning. A careful reading of the book can motivate and be a great starting point for a successful green entrepreneurial career.

Highly recommend.

By the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.

My husband and I are more than half way through this book and we highly recommend it for anyone wanting to start a green business, work for a green business and/or invest in a green future. Each business venture is broken down with a chart to understand any start-up costs/skills involved and puts it a "reader friendly" perspective. The book is loaded with referral websites and it's apparent the author has done his homework.

75 Green Businesses is a terrific jumping off point for anyone thinking of starting a venture in the ecological economy. Dr. Croston (full disclosure, I attended graduate school in the same laboratory as Glenn, he remains a close friend even though he didn't use my suggestion for the subtitle of the book: "Green Is The New Black") has outlined 75 business opportunities in 11 categories with a wide range of requirements with respect to training, interest and capital.

The review boxes are very helpful in making the reader aware of capital and special challenges right off the bat. But just because a particular opportunity isn't for you, keep reading- every page has several cool nuggets of information. The insets serve to break up the text nicely, making this book very easy to read.

With the government pouring billions into the green economy, there are a myriad of ways to get a business off the ground. Dr. Croston has provided 75 good ideas. Maybe green really is the new black.

Croston provides a heap of examples of some very green businesses that will surely make some profit given the right management and market, along with some rough initial start-up costs (scale from $ to $$$$$), the time to start it, and the knowledge required as well as any special challenges that may lie ahead. He also includes reasons why it would be a smart idea and profitable.

However, the only thing I find lacking in this book is a simple section on "the first steps to get started." As I mentioned in the title, this is great when you have some business experience and have done it many times before, but to earn that extra 5 star I want it to be open to all individuals regardless of experience.

I bought and read this book along with Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health and Careers in Renewable Energy: Get a Green Energy Job.

This book is everything I could have wanted and more--it exceeded expecations. For each of 75 "opportunities" sorted within eleven chapters it provides a summary table (Market Need, Mission, Knowledge to Start, Capital Rquired, Timing to Start, and Special Challenges, along with a multi-page discussion and a variety of "sidebar" elements that vary but generally address Related Trends, In the Long Run, Green Leader, Industry Information, Information Resource, Eco-Tip, or Eco-Issue.

This is a book that can be read quickly to focus in as I did on an opportunity that I believe anyone could pursue in any area, as a Sustainability Savings Officer (the author uses Chief Sustainability Officer which I consider too grandiose). The value propositiion here is straight-forward: go into any client, offer a free evaluation and recommendations of remediation measures, and collect 20% of the savings in year one, 10% in year two, 5% in year three, and then repeat the cycle.

I have this book set aside to go through a second time, for two reasons: it has a ton of interesting information that I picked up "in passing" and want to go back to (for example, most chemists are not trained in toxicology, bottled water costs 10,000 times more than tap water, use Google Earth to identify best neighborhoods for offering energy saving white roof service, and on an on.

The second reason I want to go through this book a second time is because many of the opportunities that are listed can actually be used within a localized web site to become the "go to" local area consultant for all matters having to do with greening, including LEEDs certification, bioplastics substitution, increased receycling, paper reduction, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This book, in other words, can become "Ref A" for a sustainability services and support consultancy.

I liked the author's observation that energy is everywhere, we just have not figured out how to tap into it. This ties in with my being enormously impressed by Nokia's new cellular telephones that do not need electricity for life support, but instead recharge themselves with ambient energy--combine that with the new foot-powered battery packs (soliders on the march charge the batteries, they can be used with radios, etcetera) and mobile solar power panels, you have the makings of "jacking in" the rest of the world, and using information as a substitute for violence and wealth, and as an educational platform for unleashing the entrepreneurial energies of the five billion poor.

This is a GREAT book for those who accept it as a tutorial. It is not the be all end all but I for one am VERY imprressed. For the larger picture and other impressions, consider the books below (or just my summary reviews).

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity

I enjoyed the rather comprehensive perspective of the author's selections, however, I could not help but think that there are many more ideas than he poses. Ideas are there and website references to research your idea. Actually very informative on each subject.

A fully comprehensive yet easy to read guide to starting your own "green" business. I was impressed with the variety of business ideas which ranged from simple to complex. I also liked how he set out in front whether the business would require a lot of capital. Very well written!!!

This should be required reading for anyone considering a career in this area.

This book is a nice complement to Ecopreneuring by John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist, in that while the latter is a lifestyle book, i.e., what would it be like to be a social entrepreneur, this book cuts to the chase and describes, as its title says, 75 different green business opportunities that people can start. It gives a relative scale on how much capital may be required, and how long it may take to get started for each kind of business.

The potential market for this book is huge. As described in the preface, "77% of Americans are concerned about the environment and feel it is urgent to get involved and make a difference." Add this sentiment to the powerful entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and the center of your Venn Diagram becomes a large and potentially powerful group.

Croston describes opportunities as diverse as sugarcane ethanol production to sustainable catfish and tilapia farms. Croston has done his research and describes the opportunities well. Anyone already in the green community will recognize much of Croston's arguments around why there is a need for a particular kind of business, but for the layperson, it is quite the educational piece.

One might argue that there is more to starting a green law firm than is covered in that particular chapter, but Croston gives readers a teaser into what the need is and how it could be filled, rather than the nuts and bolts of becoming a law firm. There are obvious limitations to this style of book, as editors will only allow so much room for each kind of business, and a true to form business plan would be 70-80 pages. In all, Croston does a nice job balancing the need for important facets of the business with the limited space available for each.

Some opportunities are simpler, and require nothing more than willpower, and others much more complex. This mix makes the book valuable to readers in most economic, lifestyle, and social conditions.

In interviewing Croston about this book, I asked about his upcoming plans. As it turns out, we are kindred spirits, with our life missions currently pointing toward helping as many aspiring social entrepreneurs succeed as is possible. This book is part of that puzzle, and a valuable item to have on the bookshelf.

This book has a lot of great ideas, and plenty of details for each business, whether they require a lot of money or a little to start and how much expertise. If you're thinking about starting a green business, this is a good book to begin with.

If you want to start your own green business or are just thinking about it, then this book is the place to start. Glenn Croston has researched the spectrum of green business, from those that can be started with pocket change to the capital intensive ones - they are all here.