Most of the companies think that environmental protection is expensive and investments are not remunerative. One of the biggest obstacles for companies to implement new environmental measures is very often the lack of appropriate information and the widespread misbelieve that being ‘green’ costs a lot. In order to change this view, disseminate the opposite idea KÖVET Association has developed the Money Back through the Window program.
The idea behind the program is that the best way to change such fears is to present and disseminate already living and operating positive examples, therefore the program is based on examples of companies experiences, applied environmental measurements that at the same time result in economic profit. KÖVET is aware of that commonsense measures in enterprises often bring environmental and financial benefits in parallel.
In 2002 we started to collect case-studies from companies to prove that money spent on environmental protection is not „money thrown out the window”, rather a good investment that pays back in a short period, and gives economical advantages to environmentally aware companies. In the first year we documented 44 measures from 12 companies that brought environmental and financial benefit at the same time. The case-studies were published in a case-study book called „Money Back through the Window” in Hungarian. Since 2002 we have been gathering case studies, publishing a case-study books.
The Environmental Savings Awards are given in three categories every year. The categories are differed according to the payback period of the measures. There are immediately remunerative changes (which don’t need investment), measures that payback in three years, and investments with a payback period more than three years. The investments having a payback period less than three years are called „low hanging fruits”. Based on this fruit-tree comparison, we call the investments with long payback period „high hanging fruits”. The measures that do not need any investment are called „washed fruits on the table”. Since 2007, the immediately remunerative „washed fruits on the table” category has been changed to the category of SME-s, encouraging the smaller companies to apply for the Award, and emphasising that environmental savings can not only be found at big companies.