Businesses for Environmental Responsibility: Morality, Compliance, or Opportunity?

The objective of this research is to understand underlying motivations which impacted business owners to make environmentally responsible choices for their business. Some of the business owners started their business due to core environmental beliefs while others reformed their businesses while jumping on the “green bandwagon.” This paper will explore whether motivations were due to regulatory compliance, business opportunity and increasing profit, or true environmentalism. It explores business strategies, pros and cons of business “greening,” and future business initiatives or plans. Interviews and questionnaires were the chosen methodologies for research. It will investigate the leading reasons these paths are taken, how they took shape, motivating reasons to push forward, and future goals and initiatives.The importance of this document relies on a “greening” trend affecting not only environmentally responsible businesses but also businesses currently reforming to greener standards and emerging green entrepreneurs. Many entrepreneurs claim the time is ripe and opportunities are vast for selling renewable energy systems and green buildings.