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The Future of Green
It seems everything is going green these days - green building, green cars, green food.
This is not a new or foreign concept. The architectural, engineering, and construction
industry has been promoting sustainability and green design for years. Yet, it wasn't until
recently - with the combination of sustainable design, rising gasoline prices, and demand for
organic foods - that green has gone mainstream. Even the Oscars were green.
This cultural shift has been a boon to those companies that provide environmentally friendly
materials and products to meet this demand. With the appropriate certification or stamp of
approval, green companies are able to expand sales and charge a price premium for their products.
For entrepreneurs, it has never been a better time to go green with eco-friendly products.
How strong is demand? According to the Organic Trade Association, sales of organic foods and
beverages reached $16.9 billion last year, a 22.1% increase from $13.8 billion in 2005.
Sales for nonfood organic products, such as soaps and paper, was $744 million in 2005
(no data is available for 2006).1
So what's next?
The next evolution of green will go one or maybe two steps forward - process and workflow.
Today, some companies not only provide a green product, but utilize a "green" process to get there.
For example, Xerox recently launched what it calls, "High-Yield Business Paper," which requires
half as many trees and fewer chemicals and less energy to manufacture.
Plus, it weighs about 10% less, reducing postage and trucking costs. They market this paper
as a "greener" product to commercial printers and large business and plan to expand to the
office market where users are "increasingly concerned about environmental performance."2
Does this same concept translate to workflow? The answer is most certainly yes.
With the growth of the Internet, use of PDF files, and the electronic distribution of
information, many processes once driven by paper have migrated to some electronic media.
This is not to say that "green" paper will be replaced. It is only to say that a paradigm
shift in how businesses transact may be more evolutionary than revolutionary.
With the benefit of being green by reducing the production of paper, plus the upside
of faster communication, better collaboration and data retrieval, the electronic production
and distribution of content in PDF is more than likely. It is the expectation.
Richard
Bluebeam CEO
1. Osukoya, Kemi. Small Firms See Big Potential in Going Green. The Wall Street Journal. June 12, 2007; B4
2. Bulkeley, William M. Xerox Develops a 'Green' Paper, But Will Firms Add It to Fold? The Wall Street Journal. July 30, 2007; B3
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