BusinessWeek offers a piece explaining that the green movement is taking over campuses across the nation. Sounds like an opportunity to me. Selling organic shirts, foods, etc.. For example, would people protesting in support of Kyoto wear non-organic shirts? I bet margins are better on these products also.
The article explains that not only must the schools worry about student’s concerns, but recruiters are being faced by students who won’t work for companies that don’t have their green act in gear! (Talk about an opportunity to exploit corporate recruiters?)
From the article,
“Now the first wave of Millennials is entering the workplace, and businesses that want to attract the most qualified candidates say they must appeal to students’ environmental sensibilities. “They’re the future leaders of our company, the future investors, and future consumers,” says Lorraine Bolsinger, vice-president for GE’s Ecomagination strategy. “Gen Y folks think that the environment is twice as important as the economy. We absolutely have to think about their concerns.”
Over the next 10 years, there will be a major exodus from the work world as baby boomers retire. By 2012 there will be just one person entering the workforce for every four who leave, according to Labor Dept. data. So companies ranging from Whirlpool (WHR ) and Ben & Jerry’s (UN ) to Google (GOOG ), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), and General Electric (GE ) say they must understand what motivates climate activists.
Corporate recruiters are encountering more and more candidates like Ananda Baron. When she applied for a job with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PCG ) last year, the 28-year-old student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management dug deep into the utility’s environmental bona fides. Baron says she was impressed by PG&E’s clean-energy strategy. But before accepting an invitation to attend a final round of interviews, she set up a 45-minute call with the company’s environmental affairs director in Washington. “Business is going to play a role in these issues, and I would like to be there to help out,” says Baron, who wound up accepting the job PG&E offered.
