What’s a Green Business?

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What’s a Green Business?

Triple bottom line company. Mission-based business. Social enterprise & social entrepreneurship. Socially responsible investing & impact investing. Green business.

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  Green America's Green Business
  Standards

Green America awards Green Business Certification to companies and organizations that meet or exceed our standards for social and environmental responsibility.

See All Standards

Green businesses adopt principles, policies and practices that improve the quality of life for their customers, employees, communities, and the planet. The members of the Green Business Network are changing the way America does business. What do green businesses have in common?

 

footprint

Green businesses are socially and environmentally responsible.

Green companies adopt principles and practices that protect people AND the planet. They challenge themselves to bring the goals of social and economic justice, environmental sustainability, as well as community health and development, into all of their activities — from production and supply chain management to employee relations and customer service.

 

workers

Green businesses care for their workers.

Green businesses ensure they don’t use sweatshop or child labor. Everyone who works directly for them or their suppliers earns a living wage and works in healthy conditions. They create jobs that empower workers and honor their humanity. They also serve as models for the role businesses can play in the transformation of our society to one that is socially just and environmentally sustainable.

 

customers

Green businesses protect their customers and clients.

Green businesses ensure that they use the safest ingredients, to keep their customers and clients and their families healthy. They also provide green living alternatives to improve quality of life, with products and services that help in areas like affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, education, clean energy and efficiency, fair trade, healthy air, clean water, and more. And they reduce, reuse and recycle, setting a good example.

 

fair trade chocolate workers

Green businesses improve their communities.

Along with ensuring their facilities aren’t polluting their local communities, many green businesses take steps to make the places that they call home better. Green businesses often spring up in marginalized communities—inner cities, rural and indigenous communities. Many are even started by the people in these communities who, in turn, bring respect and dignity to their employees and the wider neighborhood.

 

Get Certified

Green America’s Green Business Certification is the leading authentic trustmark for true green business practices.

This seal recognizes businesses that excel in social and environmental responsibility, and have met or exceeded our green business standards.

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