The socioeconomic system surrounding us has moved from the era of mass production and mass consumption toward a new mature society in which environmentalism and eco-consciousness permeate.

The business community has already accelerated their efforts to promote green business or eco-business, developing a huge market and vitalizing new business creation. Meanwhile, eco-friendly activities have been spreading widely at the consumer front and in local community level, with the aim of conserving energy and resources, harmonizing our economy with environment and achieving sustainable society.

Some of them are voluntary, while others are for-profit. We can observe emerging eco-business of which purpose is to realize an eco-friendly society.

In this research we refer to those initiatives collectively as “eco-business.” The research aims to grasp the reality and the status quo of the eco-business through specific case studies. Moreover, the goal is to identify what are potential challenges that may be faced by various forms of eco-business. Furthermore, it attempts to provide some solutions for the entrepreneurs to attain expected goals, with the help of academics and experts in respective areas.

For this objective, we held six meetings in total to discuss multiple agendas under the Chairmanship of Prof. Morikawa of Graduate School, Nagoya University. We invited notable leaders with extensive experience of developing and pioneering sustainable eco-business, and had the opportunity to hear their reports of previous efforts and future prospects in five of the meetings.

This report comprises three parts: Chair’s executive summary; members’ summaries; and an abstract of five presentations including an edited Q&A session.

Eco-business is just budding in private sector. Thus, we called for each committee member to write freely about it and present their views from their perspectives without hastily making a conclusion on limited pages for the report. We also invited the Chair to compile an executive summary including the essence of each presentation.

We hope this report would provide some meaningful messages for those who will take interest in the future of eco-business in local spheres of ordinary citizens.

Lastly, we would like to extend our sincere appreciation to the following: Prof. Morikawa (the Chair) who guided us in the research, committee members who provided valuable opinions at every meeting, and guest speakers who provided insightful presentations.