Big Business and Sustainability: A Contradiction in Terms?

O'Riordan, Timothy. "Big Business and Sustainability: A Contradiction in Terms?." Environment, June 2006, 3.

As businesses strive to strike the delicate marketing balance between being user friendly and being green, they also are a lead player in the transition to sustainability. This is for a couple reasons, the first being that companies can afford to be patient and projecting over a 20-year lead time. The second reason is because politicians are slow to act when the items they are pushing won’t see results for many years to come. They want a quick return on their investment of time and energy. Big business must be a partner in the movement to sustainability because they can influence politicians. And if businesses are keeping their customers happy with sustainable products they will lean on the politicians to create new, even more sustainable, legislation with new regulations. This shows that if companies can come up with the right scenario that people will be willing to give sustainable options a try even at an added cost, but not until they receive something in return.