It’s fall, and as the temperatures drop, thinking about the climate may or may not be front-of-mind. While it’s a bit late in the year perhaps to start building a garden or starting to ride your bike to work maybe, you can still make an impact on the planet by investing in a green local business!
By going green with your investment in a local small business, you can not only put your money where your values are, but you can help support those businesses that are fueling your local ecosystem and innovating sustainable solutions to local problems.
Investing that makes a difference to your neighborhood and your planet
Want to know how you can stay in the loop about local green businesses that are looking for investments? Join our newsletter for small business advocates like yourself.
How shopping (and investing) local helps you go green
The first way that you can go green this Small Business Saturday is by, well, shopping local! Shopping local has the potential of lowering your carbon footprint because local shops tend to source locally and require less transportation for you to get to.
Also, the kinds of businesses you choose to support can certainly make a difference if they’ve got a sustainable bent. Maybe you want to pick up produce for your holiday cooking from a local farm (or gifts if they also sell items like local jams and soaps). Or maybe you want to stock up on cleaning supplies from the local refill store for all sorts of environmentally-friendly products.
Choosing to invest in a local green business is another way that you can go green and make a sustainable impact on your community. By voting with your dollars, you can have a say in shaping the community where you live, and what you want to see in it.
What do we mean by “green business?”
At Honeycomb, we’ve gotten to work with a variety of businesses that are working on making a green impact in their community - though not all of them would maybe classify themselves as a “green” business. Let’s check out a few of our alumni campaigns who all have a sustainable mission for their business:
First of all, there are the obvious examples. Some businesses have it written into their business plan that their goal is to make an environmentally friendly business, like refill shops. Refill shops such as Little Spark Refill Shop operate on the mission to reduce plastic use and promote sustainable cleaning and hygiene products. Little Spark Refill Shop, who raised $65,950 in investments to open up a second location, has helped redirect over 6,000 plastic containers from landfills!
Small, family-run farms are also a kind of green business that are vital to their communities because they use sustainable practices and they grow food! Blackberry Meadows Farm is a small farm outside of Pittsburgh that grows organic produce and is well-known for their community-supported agriculture program. They were also looking to diversify their farm’s offerings, so they looked to Honeycomb to raise funds to purchase canvas cabins so they could offer an AirBnb to customers looking to get back to the land.
Other kinds of green small businesses you might find a little further off Main Street. For example, there’s composting companies like Compostable LA, who raised $60,000 to grow their urban composting business or businesses like Marek Landscaping in Wisconsin, an ecological landscaping company that raised over $142,000 on Honeycomb to go towards building their headquarters in Milwaukee. Although you can’t exactly walk into a shop or go to a farmer’s market to work with these small green businesses, they’re still making a major contribution to their communities’ ecosystem.
As we mentioned before, these are some of our superstar alumni businesses who’ve crowdfunded in the past through Honeycomb. You can see what businesses are currently running investment offerings for their growth on our live campaigns page!
Why do green businesses need your investment?
If you’ve got an ear to the ground on investment news, you might already know that sustainable green businesses are making their way into many investors’ financial portfolios. However, this so often manifests in investing in large companies, energy companies, that sort of thing, and small businesses are usually left behind.
This is a sad trend that’s impacting small businesses in all industries, where small businesses face a major gap in accessing funding they need to grow. The community banks which would normally lend to them are disappearing, and larger banks often won’t give young small businesses the time of day.
How can we support local green businesses this Small Business Saturday?
Shopping locally and sustainably
You’re probably already planning to do one of the best things you can do to support small green businesses in your neighborhood - shopping at them this Small Business Saturday!
Have a gameplan ready - you might already have some businesses in mind that you’ll want to visit. This is also a great opportunity to perhaps get holiday gifts for those on your list for whom you honestly have no clue what to get. Who doesn’t love sustainable soap, or some local farmer’s market goodies they can consume?
Investing in a local sustainable business
Not only is Small Business Saturday one of the best times for shopping locally and showing your support that way, but investing in local small green businesses is another way you can make more of an impact!
Check out Honeycomb’s live campaigns to see if there’s a green business that resonates with you! If not right now, you can always join our investor newsletter and be informed when a business with a sustainable mission does choose to crowdfund for their growth.
Shouting out small green businesses
Another amazing way of supporting small green businesses also gives you a bit of a chance to brag. Shout out your favorite farmer, refill shop, compost club, or whatever you want to show a little love to. You don’t need to be an influencer or anything like that to make a difference, after all.
Maybe your post to Instagram or Facebook about the refill shop down your street will reach the feed of one of your friends who’s looking to make some sustainable changes. Or perhaps if you want to celebrate your investment in one of these businesses, that’ll lead more people to invest as well, helping the green business grow by word of mouth and community capital!
Think Globally and Invest Locally by Going Green!
This Small Business Saturday, you can make a difference in more ways than one by investing in businesses on your street that are making a difference! Check out Honeycomb’s live campaigns now to learn more about businesses that make sustainability part of their mission, from the way they operate to the way they choose to raise capital.
As a disclaimer: this is not investment advice. These are financial investments and there is no guarantee of a return; small business lending is risky and investors could lose part or all of their investment.
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