Focus The Nation -Business Seminar

Dr. Kate Lancaster - Associate Professor, Accounting Department

-Product Stewardship
- Need to close the loop of a product life cycle and reuse the waste
- Cradle to Cradle philosophy
- Interface, Ray Anderson and Bio-mimicry
- Triple Bottom Line (People, Planet, Profit)
- Urges all to vote their values

Dr. Norm Borin - Professor Marketing Department

- Need for sustainable consumers
- Ski resorts try to deal with warming by making artificial snow, but this severely drains water resources for local towns
- The questions is how do we get the consumers to switch to green products
- 3 types of consumers
-- periphery consumers = only doing it because it benefits them in some way
-- mid level consumers = does because it will affect household and community
-- core consumers = willing to pay premium price for goods that are green

Dr. Eric Fisher - Professor, Economics Department

- Weightless Economy
- Service Economy
- We are polluting less, but we consume more so the emission levels are about the same.
- CO2 emissions last long periods of time and there is no immediate stop or fix to it
- Green is a 12 trillion dollar economy

Christopher Perello J.D. - Lecturer, accounting Department

- Doom and Gloom thoughts
- The market will react to stimuli
- Need to make green more profitable in the short run so business will adapt it into their business plans
- Business will not consider issues unless they have to
- Good thing is they are going to ban plastic shopping bags in California
- Believes forced government actions must occur
- Good business practices like Patagonia