Travelers Insurance Helps Businesses Be Green

According to GreenerBuildings.com, the insurance company Travelers is offering benefits for green replacements and upgrades for small businesses that have a covered loss, including extra time to rebuild to green standards, especially if those standards were previously attained. And what's more is that it doesn't cost anything extra. "As of October anybody with a renewal or seeking new small business Master Pac coverage automatically gets it (the green enhancements package) without having to ask for it and at no additional charge." The article also notes that they offer a 10% discount in car insurance to hybrid owners and their homepage has an spotlight on discounts for hybrid boats.

More on Greening Supply Chain

We're back from another trip to Chicago where we saw a few Prius taxis, which is an idea that just simply makes financial sense given how much taxis stop and go. What also seems to be making sense for large companies like Clorox is introducing green products, like Green Works. I don't know how truly green it is given that it's a product made by Clorox, but people are buying it. In reading an article this morning about Clorox and their supply chain issues, this quote shows a good reason for the increase in green products: "From internal surveys, the company knows its customers will pay 10 to 15 percent more for greener products." Clearly it makes financial sense to sell a product that is more green. However, the article makes a point that getting the supplies to make the green products is a challenge. Clorox bought Burt's Bees not too long ago, and it has been having problems scaling up the business, which traditionally used many small suppliers. What this tells me is that there is plenty of opportunity for start ups to produce the raw and component materials for this boom in green products. Large consumer product companies like Clorox, GE, etc. need to get materials in large quantities in order to get their products to market. This means that either companies producing the raw materials now need to scale up (hopefully in a sustainable manner) or other start ups can enter the market and help fulfill the large companies' demand.

Government Money to Help Small Businesses Develop Green Technology

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is something that is always included in lectures about alternative ways for start ups to get money besides the more traditional funding from FFF (family, friends and fools), angels and venture capitalists. However for my students it's often just an interesting note since it is focused on high tech, like nano- and biotechnology, which undergraduate business students are not likely to be involved with. But now, as GreenBiz News reports, SBIR seems to be working with the EPA to offer a set of grants specifically focused on green technology, which includes "pollution prevention, biodiesel and ethanol, solid and hazardous waste, air pollution control and homeland security" in addition to nanotech. Grants are $70,000 and will be given to 25 companies. Proof of concepts are due by May 21.

However, GreenBiz doesn't provide a link to the news source and I can't find the solicitation on the SBIR website. I'll keep looking into it, but if anyone knows more about the program please leave a comment or contact me.