Response to Profitabiity vs social responsibility?

I recently read a Blog by Carbon Trader called Profitability vs. Social Responsibility?  This is my response.

I think it can be easier for a small or medium size business to be social responsible.  The Carbon Trader used an example of a large bank making billions of dollars in profits and investing 100 millions in Social Responsibility.  Thats all great, but I think the real issue of Social Responsibility in Big business isn't so much what it does with its profit, but what it does to make those profits.  

If Hypothetical Manufacturing Inc has been building gidgets for 50 years but hasn't updated its factories in almost as long, they should have a social responsibility to clean up their carbon footprint.  Their factory may have lived up to the standards of the day but times have changed.  What if they can save money by buying carbon credits, or even paying the fines, instead of updating their equipment.  Digging into their own pockets and making the changes even if it is not the best option finically speaking, IS Social Responsibility.  Cleaning up their act without being forced to by legislation is Social Responsibility.  

In the case of a smaller business, updating equipment or changes methods is a smaller job.  The big company has Millions maybe Billions of dollars in upgrades where as a small company only has thousands or 10s of thousands of dollars in upgrades.  Now the profit levels aren't as high, but neither is the priority level.  

For example Hypo Manufacturing may have a carbon footprint of 250,000 tons/day and Joe Blow Contacting might have a footprint of 250 tons/week.  Hypo spends $25,000,000 on replacing the filtering system reducing it footprint by 10% to 225,000 tons/day.  Joe Blow might lease a Smart Car for $160 per month for driving from job site to job site and to meeting etc and reduce his footprint by 10% to 225 tons/week.  Same percent outcome for much less strain on the bottom line.  

Smaller companies should have just as much commitment to Social Responsibilities.  Every little bit helps.  Rocky Mountain Flat Bread is a relatively small business with Two restaurants, one in Canmore, Alberta and the other in Vancouver, BC.  They have chosen a Social Responsible way of operating by Composting food waste, using bio-degradable packaging, low flush toilets, buying "Ocean Wise," seafood, using recycled products in the restaurant, using waste wood as fire wood, and buying organic and local as much as possible.  This is one small business making Social Responsible decisions.

Social Responsibility goes far beyond environment issues of course.  There is always the issue of foreign manufacturing and human rights that go along with it, be it child labour or safe work environments with fare pay.  Or the issue of responsible use of natural resources or the effect on natural habitat.  Is it Socially Responsible to produce Nuclear if using a nearby lake for cooling is heating up the lake and killing off the fish stock?  Or to use the limited drinking water in a third world country for manufacturing?  Or is it Ok to use slave labour to make clothing in order to keep the cost of the product down, or the profits up?  

Every company, big or small, is responsible for its actions and the effect they have on others around them.

Keep it Simple

Whenever I come across a blog or article that is environmental and controversial in some way, the comments become more interesting than the source.  More times then not a full blown war breaks out between the lefties and the righties.  Most of the time, I forget what the origins of the argument was in the first place.  One time in particular, and I don't remember the article, someone commented about the Left Wing propaganda machine backing the Climate Change Movement.  He went on to write that New York wasn't under water yet and polar bars weren't extinct.  People responded with, once New York was under water would be a good time to start worrying about the situation.  This evolved into a political debate and so on and so forth.  

The problem is for every person that gives evidence that climate change is a serious problem, someone else gives evidence that it is not.  So I have been putting together a few really simple scenarios, a super basic way to look at all kinds of different controversial opinions and some not so controversial.  Tell me what you think.

If you are locked inside your garage with a running car, what will happen?  Keeping it as simple as possible, you will die!  The car will kill you.  How could you prevent this?  Shut off the car.  If it is a good thing to shut off your car in a garage, how could it not be a good thing to shut that same car off whenever possible out in the rest of the world.  The gasses coming from the car will kill you.

If you had a glass of water and made a cocktail of pesticide, fertilizer and herbicide, then drank this cocktail, what would happen?  You would become very ill and possible die, especial if you had one of this drinks everyday.  How could you avoid this outcome?  Don't mix these chemicals into your water.  How could it not be a good thing to keep these chemicals away from our water sources?

If you threw all your trash into one garbage pail in your home, and never emptied that trash can, what would happen.  Your home would fill with garbage.  How can you stop or at least slow this down?  By not throwing so much stuff into the garbage pile.  You could make an effort to bring less packaging into your home in the first place, or recycle or reuse what you can.  We only have one home, earth, and all our garbage has to go somewhere.  How could it not be a good thing to reduce, however you do it, the amount of trash that we throw away.

If you had a tree in your yard, and you cut down that tree and turned it into paper products, once you used up your paper products where will you get more?  You could change this to your own oil well, water source, etc.  So how could it be a bad thing to limit your usage of these resources, recycle what you do us, and reuse whenever possible.

I know it's not as easy and straight forward as that, but those are my thoughts.