10 Steps To Jumpstart Sustainability in Your Business

10 Steps To Jumpstart Sustainability in Your Business

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10 Steps To Jumpstart Sustainability in Your Business

The world's first net carbon neutral merchandiser shares how to begin your company's journey toward being both sustainable and profitable.

By Entrepreneurs' Organization , null @EntrepreneurOrg

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Lou Cysewski, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO)  member in Seattle, is co-founder and CEO of Coolperx , the world's first net carbon neutral merchandising company. She's on a mission to transform the merchandising industry from a toxic environmental polluter to a conscientious connector of people and values. We asked Lou how entrepreneurs can build and grow more sustainable businesses. Here's what she shared.

Why Sustainability Matters

Promotional products represent a nearly $30 billion industry that produces about $24 billion in landfill waste in the United States every year. The reason for the immense waste: On average, recipients only keep promotional swag for eight months. This is the industry I'm in.

To build a drastically different merchandising company, I had to make decisions that were both sustainable and directly impacted our bottom line.

Since day one, we've built our company with sustainability in mind . Last year, we took it further: We began tracking the carbon footprint of products we didn't produce but sold--and discovered a massive amount of untracked carbon. We realized that,