Businesses Reducing Carbon Emissions

What I like about this article is that it touches upon something I feel is often overlooked when discussing corporate social responsibility - the true cost of manufacturing goods.

What I mean is that people will often point to the fact that companies that can offer items at the lowest price will be most successful. So the conversation is about price and not about cost. For example, had General Electric had to take into consideration the millions of dollars of dredging the Hudson River of the PCBs they were found to have dumped into it - a cost they were ordered to cover - they surely would have looked to ways to avoid or minimize the cost. That's just one example, but it shows that if individual companies were ordered to consider the true cost of what they produced, then they'd find ways to minimize that cost. Now, they often do not have to worry about it - in cases like G.E.'s, the government - thus us, the consumers - often have to take on these costs at some point anyway.

The article talks about how many companies are trying to reduce their carbon emissions - some do it for public relations purposes, but others, like Timberland, are trying to do it because it makes economic sense. Since carbon emissions are contributing to global warming, here's hoping that more and more companies look to ways to reduce their carbon emissions.