NEW YORK – According to a recent Office Depot survey, there is growing interest in green behaviors by small business so much so that the company reported a 10 percent increase in 2007 of sales of environmentally preferable products in the contract channel.
Sales from the Green Book, which is Office Depot’s catalog of green products, climbed from $660 million in 2006 to $725 million in 2007.
“What these Green Book sales numbers tell us is that our customers appreciate Office Depot s strategy of providing a wide assortment of green products, and promoting them within innovative sales vehicles,” said Steve Schmidt, executive vice-president of the Business Solutions Division for Office Depot, in a statement.
The Office Depot survey, interviewed 2500 consumers across the United States. It noted that 69 percent of small business professionals participated in one or more environmental activities. They include recycling paper, bottles, ink cartridges and technology; purchasing Energy Star rated technology, recycled paper, remanufactured ink and toner cartridges, refillable products and Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs; and printing on both sides of the paper.
85 percent of respondents claimed they were doing green activities to either protect the environment or to save money.
For the contract channel, Office Depot attributes the growth of green sales in the channel to the trend towards going green among large government and private sector accounts.
“Throughout 2007 and 2008, Office Depot was extremely active in creating educational materials and guides to help our customers go green, stated Yalmaz Siddiqui, director of environmental strategy for Office Depot.
Efforts that Office Depot undertook to sell green this year and last include the introduction of not only the company’s Green Book but also the creation of the Greener Office website that features over 5,000 green products including an interactive vignette that brings together all types of office products from supplies, furniture to technology in order to help customers understand the key elements of a greener office.
Other initiatives that Office Depot developed include creating a step-by-step web tool that parallels the company’s power-point presentations on the myths of going green and what are the practical steps to go green cost-effectively. As well, Office Depot has a green office-focused webcast and created a “Greener Alternatives Tool” that helps contract customers convert from rookie to one that offers remanufactured and/or recycled products.
This column was written by Vanessa Ho of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMarCompany
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