TerraShares

he world is 'Going Green' at an astonishing pace.
The main reason businesses Go Green is to become more competitive, more efficient and more profitable... on average, 15% more profitable.

When markets 'Go Green' -- demanding sustainable products and environmental and energy practices -- they can do so with sudden speed. A company's competitive position and market access can shrink or evaporate overnight. The need to BE GREEN has become an urgent reality for an increasing number of companies serving large customers involved in international commerce. Like Walmart and the Fortune 500. A vendor not already Green may get little credit for merely 'Going Green'.

Most American businesses lag much of the world in sustainable practices. Realizing they are already paying for efficiency improvements out of profits, whether they install them or not, an increasing number of US companies and organizations want the strategic and marketing advantages available by adopting 'Environmentally Sustainable' business practices.

The good news is, Green companies tend to enjoy tremendous marketing and financial advantages. TerraShares' mission is to help create such advantages.

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Who is 'Going Green'?
Most of the world -- 170 nations, so far -- has already committed to reducing greenhouse gases and waste of all kinds and creating sustainable environments. From a business perspective, the emerging picture is one of not only 'Green' or 'Enviromentally Sustainable' energy savings and waste reduction, but thousands of companies and organizations able to operate more efficiently and competitively -- with lower costs and higher profits. Consumers and business customers are learning to prefer green products and services, as well.

The pressure is on. Recognizing that US companies and organizations are substantially behind competiitors in Europe and elsewhere, business managers across the US the risk is loss of comptitiveness and even being shut out of lucrative markets as new standards are adopted. In response, hundreds of US corporations and organizations, 700 towns and cities and 20 states not waiting for federal leadership have already committed themselves to voluntary sustainability programs. In fact, about 65% of US businesses have some kind of Green program.

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How important is the 'Green Movement' to US business?

Take a Lesson from History...

The Quality Movement of the 1970's offers a direct parallel to the current Green Movement. It reminds us what can happen when a major strategic shift is ignored.

In the 1970's and 1980's US manufacturers, led by the US Chamber of Commerce and the Nat'l Assn of Manufacturers, rejected the Total Qualitiy Managment methods developed by US statistician W. Edwards Deming. The reason: the supposed 'high cost' of Quality and Reliability.

But others, notably European and Japanese competitors, eagerly embraced his ideas and virtally pulled the rug out from under US manufacturing. Even after later adopting TQM, the game was over for much of US manufacturing. US manufacturing jobs, then about 50% of US employment, dropped to less than 10% today.

Ford, just one example, has never caught up in the marketplace, and is still fighting the quality battle. Thirty years later, 'Quality is (still) Job One' at Ford. Meanwhile international competitors have moved on to other Green strategies, like Zero Landifill Waste, that will keep Ford under competitive pressure for many years.

A growing number of US industry leaders are anxious to not repeat the lesson. The US Partnership for Environmental Action, more than 150 leading US businesses and organizations, have been encourage the US government and major industry spokesmen, like the US Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers to take action. They are not waiting, and neither are hundreds of cites and twenty states, who have intitated their own green requirements .