Our History

2007

Green Light for Business is a non-profit association established in 2007 by a group of international students at Bocconi University in Milan with the goal of “inspiring engagement in green business”.

2010

Green Light for Business organized Europe’s largest student conference on sustainable business: 3-days long, with 300 participants from 44 nations, and 60 speakers including top leaders, politicians, and academics. The recruited speakers were from organizations such as UNEP, Goldman Sachs, Vodafone, World Bank, European Climate Exchange, McKinsey & Company, MWH, P&G, Cisco, US State Department, Accenture, UPS, Italian Senate, Norwegian Embassy, Nestlé, Fiat Group Automobiles, and Deutche Telecom.
It has been the first such event in Italian history.

Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-19.45.22

2010 - 2013

We held two main events:

  • “2011 Environment and Mobility Referendum”,with Edoardo Croci, Research Director IEFE at Università Bocconi and former Councilor for Mobility and Environment, Municipality of Milan.
  • During the “Next Generation Sustainable Cities Conference”,we hosted several experts discussing the topic of sustainable urban lifestyle.
11157411_10152765106027117_7417760045755310898_o

2013 - 2014

In collaboration with the Bocconi Sustainable Committee, Green Light for Business has introduced water fountains, removed plastic water bottle dispensers on campus to reduce plastic waste and created the new Green Campus division focused on promoting sustainability awareness around Bocconi

2017 - 2018

The main events of these three years were:

  • “Redesigning Sustainability”with a number of opening speeches followed by insightful talks about Green Investment, Smart Cities and Slow Food.
  • We held the event “Non essere cattivo”, where we talked about the relationship between profit and sustainability.
  • In 2018 we celebrated our 10th anniversary and decided to redesign our logo.

2018 - 2019

In 2019 we held the event “Fashion Revolution: La moda ai tempi della sostenibilità”, organized by Green Light 4 Business in collaboration with HERE Connecting Creativity, on sustainable fashion.

Then we also discussed ocean plastic pollution with speakers such as: Federica Brignone, Alex Bellini, Fabrizio Longo of Audi Italia, Stefano Pogutz of SDA Bocconi and Andrea Binelli of University of Milan

2019 - 2020

We contributed to a park cleaning of Piazzale Selinunte and we were mentioned on the pages of newspaper “Il Giorno Milano”.

In partnership with Università Bocconi’s Commission of Sustainability and B.lab Bocconi we created a brand-new reusable bottle, given to freshmen with their welcome kit.

The CSR Italian tour ended in Milan in October and the final conference was held at Bocconi University.

We took part into an event with Bocconi Surf Club, welcoming special guests (Eleonora de Sabata – Clean Sea Life, Fabio Zambelli – See You Surf and Giulio Magni – One Ocean Foundation), discussing how we can tackle the issue of plastic in our oceans.

2020 - 2021

At the end of 2020, a very peculiar and difficult year, we proudly overcame the obstacles set by the pandemic. We achieved the following goals:

– We interviewed the founder of Green Light for Business, Thomas Baade-Mathiesen.

We featured in the first Bocconi Sustainability Report published in the beginning of October as the main association addressing sustainability issues in the university.

We organized with BSI Bocconi a digital event about the challenges that sustainability is addressing in the fashion industry. Our guests were Tina Logar Bauchmüller – founder and designer of Mila.Vert -, Francesco Minghini – marketing and sales manager for Armadioverde -, and Matteo Ward – co-founder of WRAD.

We discussed the Green New Deal with Dr. Antonio Navarra, president of the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change, and Dr. Ivan Faiella, senior economist at Banca d’Italia and part of the working group on energy transition at the G20.

With Bocconi Students Food Association, we elaborated on Food Wastage, starting from the report published by Irene Miraglia, member of our K&R division. For this occasion we hosted Camilla Serra – Too Good To Go Area Manager -, and Caterina Racca – co-founder of Heaven_avena.

2021 - 2022

During this academic year Green Light for Business was able to adapt its operations to fit the post-pandemic reality we found ourselves in. We were able to organise events in-presence once again, including:
– a green start-up conference where the founder of VAIAa manager of illuminem, and sales member of Too Good To Go came to present their operations while providing us with the opportunity of a Q&A at the end

– a nuclear debate, where members of gl4b presented and debated on the pros and cons of nuclear energy in Europe following the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy crisis

– a food distribution drive, where food which would have been thrown away was collected by members of our team

Some other projects included our first sustainable consulting project with carbon off-setting company ZeroCO2, and the creation of our first yearly magazine by our Blogs and Social Media teams.

2022 - 2023

We launched our Podcast “Green Talks” on Spotify and organized several events, including:

– an event on nuclear energy, hosting experts from Politecnico di Milano, where we analyzed the contribution of nuclear energy to climate goals

– two clean-ups, during which we collected lots of trash from the Ravizza park

– an online event series called “Alumni Career Talk“, during each event we met GL4B alumni who currently work in the sustainability sector and they gave us precious insights and advice regarding the market for green jobs in Sustainable Finance, Sustainable Consulting, and Miscellaneous Sustainability Careers

– an event on sustainable fashion, hosting companies that specialize in managing waste and producing fabrics from it

– a volunteering day in collaboration with Banco Alimentare to fight food waste and help people in need.

Green Light for Business is constantly coming up with new ideas to make our campus, city and world greener.