Things have settled down here a little at Terra Infirma Towers after the most busy (and it has to be said lucrative) month in our history. I’ve said before that with companies feeling the pinch from falling orders and soaring oil prices, this is not a bad time to be offering cost-cutting services. The great thing about cutting material resource use, as opposed to human resources (hate that term), is that it doesn’t cut your capacity to deliver products and/or services so as the economy recovers you’re not floundering behind.

Of course companies can go beyond simply reducing environmental costs and start exploiting environmental business opportunities. Now you might think that this is a risky time to do so, but both the Guardian and the Times are reporting a surge in green investment and I hear the same from contacts in the banking industry.

Just don’t think you can stick a green label on a duff product and expect it to succeed. Plenty have tried and failed. And I keep meeting more of them.