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comment 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make a Difference
75 Green Businesses is the underdog alternative to a Dummies publication. Like that prolific franchise, Croston has promised to decipher a phenomenon for a mass readership while that trend is still relatively new. What is noteworthy about this book, though, is its appeal to the armchair inventors and entrepreneurial dreamers among us.
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In his text devoted to building green homes and businesses, for example, Croston does not offer more than an overview of cool roofs, green prefabricated homes, or cogeneration. Yet the author’s imagination leaps beyond the cursory information: LEDs will probably catch on more quickly than CFLs—how about designing your own LED lighting fixtures? The same goes for creating duct systems that produce more uniform airflow, or user interfaces that provide real-time power consumption and cost information to homeowners?
Analogously, in another chapter devoted to minimizing water wastage, the author foresees a booming business in graywater recycling systems even though many municipalities’ building codes don’t broach the technology. Pursuing these opportunities requires more formal education than reading a few pages can provide, and certainly Croston has glossed over other attendant frustrations. By the time a reader does implement one of these visions, hopefully some well-financed company won’t have launched the competitor already.
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