How does your business go green?

We eliminated one family vehicle by making sure we were located close enough to one worksite that we could walk.

My office is ten times more energy efficient than my home office set up(difference is age of buildings and energy efficiency of the relative office spaces).

25% of my business is over the internet.

Work from home. My office is visually separate from the house, so it is not a big temptation to spend too much time there.

95% of my work is done online or by phone.

Printing on un-used sides of paper.

Recycling.

Composting.

Energy efficient light fixtures.

South, east, and west exposure with heaps of natural light - minimal additional lighting required.

Super insulation - can heat the place with my propane stove in under an hour (usually under 30 minutes) and it stays warm all day.

Buy carbon offsets to balance carbon usage.

Print to pdf files instead of paper whenever possible.

Recycle books by donating to library.

Walk to post office.

Have telecon meetings.

Staying conscious and noticing what we DON'T do is a challenge. Keeping eyes and ears open helps.

Reduce buying things in packaging that can't be recycled.

Recycle anything that can be, including products, by taking them to places for resale, donating to charity, take them to stuff swaps, etc.

Re-purpose and reuse items in ways that they may not have originally been intended for.

Print on both sides of paper, unless official documents like contracts.

Use refillable pens and pencils.

Buy recycled: paper and office products when possible, decorating products, etc.

I drive a vintage volvo that was purchased from another owner who purchased it from the original owner - so my car has been recycled 3 times! No, it's not alternatively fueled but I also haven't consumed loads of new resources (minus parts for repairs, etc.) by buying a NEW car repeatedly throughout the years.

I combine my errands, which sometimes means waiting to do certain ones until I'm in that area aka postponing the immediate gratification that our culture is now so used to. Combining errand runs saves on fossil fuels.

I work from a laptop which consumes less power than a desktop.

Unplug appliances not being used, including chargers. They draw current even when not turned on - did you know that?

Eventually, I'll drive an alternatively fueled (and refurbished?) car and offset my carbon usage. I need a car for what I do so whilst I tried being carless, riding the bus and using flexcar, it just isn't the best choice for a person in my field of work. Oh well! Do what I can do!

i choose to take on projects/clients that in some way advance a healthier society and/or planet. working from a home studio and seldom using the car leaves a rather small carbon footprint--though i wish my wife would crank up the heat a degree or two.

I don't mean to be the downer here. Which just to clarify all this stuff sounds great, it's like when you organize your office, just this happens to be organizing the earth.

Is there a point to where this stuff is effective and how do you know it does anything?

When I had a used car I spent more time and money fixing it up, until I finally got my new car. Obviously thats one worry I don't have on my mind. This can effect your work a bunch! If your car breaks down on the way to work...how do you think you're going to feel and act the rest of the day and/or week? Are you going to be productive? No, so you're waisting energy the entire day because you're upset.

I don't know about you but if I'm happy I work more efficiently. If I'm happy I promote a good aura and my fellow co-workers pick up on that and will be more productive as well. There is a trend here if you can notice.

What I'm saying is this. You can recycle, you can drive a super ghetto refurbished fuel efficient beast and you can plant some trees. All save and make things 'more green'. Yippie.... Or you can enjoy your life, promote happiness, loving and caring and create a productive environment where the energy used is actually well spent.

The way I see it is you can believe the media that the earth is being torn apart by a few humans (they are pulling data from about a 100 year period of the earths life), or you can believe a study on humans and if people work better and learn better when they are happy (data from thousands of people, also have personal experience).

You decide, is your work place as efficient as it could be psychologically?

Gerald, you clearly lean anti-environment & are a climate change-skeptic. Instead of suggesting ways to help Basil's company go "green", you have mocked the very notion.

Basil's company has a set of principles which are based on values, which, in turn, are subjective. Fine. One of their values is to pursue "sustainability" - it's admittedly a very loose term, but Basil helps the audience out by defining what the term means to his company.

If you have thoughts on how to achieve this values-based goal, your contribution would have been a positive one.

The question you raise about how you might know that your efforts are effective and actually "do anything" is an excellent one. It sounds like you would suggest looking at some hard numbers and pursuing the path with the best returns for their efforts. Something to the effect of: we only have so much money to spend & so many hours we can devote to going green, would our efforts be better spent recycling vs building a green roof vs encouraging employee carpools vs telecommuting?

Instead, you spoke of the non-quantifiable and intangible ways your environment might improve your productivity: having a new car so your auto worries don't affect your work & having a good aura which inspires productivity in those around you. Great. I'm not going to argue with any of that, but it's a very similar concept to having a recycling program in the office rather than throwing reams of paper in the trash everyday, or encouraging non-auto means of getting to work. These efforts also foster a good workplace environment - hopefully improving worker productivity as well.

"A super ghetto fuel efficient beast" is not a numbers type of argument either - it's a values based one. You value a slick car (uh, the monster truck kind? the race car kind?). Whatever. Your value is not worth more than Basil's. But, take note that yours appears to be based on personal desire rather than doing good for the society and/or environment around you.

Also, the earth torn apart by a few humans? Try 6 billion or better yet, the cumulative population of the industrialized world since let's say 1860. A 100 year period? What about the tree rings analyzed spanning 500+ years? The core samples taken from glaciers spanning 10,000+ years?

And why is it either/or? Either you can go green, or you can work & learn better when you're happy? I know lots of happy people who are green, and not all that many happy ones that are not.

I'm not saying it's impossible to go green and promote a happy environment. Actually a lot of people I know who try and go green have a greater concept of life and are actually naturally happy. It is possible.

This was just my view on 'going green'. If you use energy, do spend effectively.

6 billion. Large number. How many of those drive cars? How big is the earth? We humans are insignificant and don't know much about how the earth works. We can't calculate the exact distance between the US and Europe what makes you think we know what is good for the planet?

500 years would still be a fraction of the earths life span, also the glaciers I doubt show anything what so ever other then carbon dioxide levels. We don't know the effects CO2 has.

Look, I'm not saying I'm right about any of this. I'm also not saying we shouldn't do anything to help make the earth last as long as possible. I'm just being a skeptical 21st century kid.

Mocked is a correct term and I do apologize to anyone I offended, that was not my goal. My goal was to tell my belief and reasoning and maybe spark an idea in someones head.

As an artist, I choose to only work in the color green. My clients don't like it, but I tell them that "going green" is all the rage now.

Oh, wait - that's not what you meant? Sorry.

It's funny; since I work out of my home studio the "green" things I do for my home also apply to my business. I hope this is relevant and helpful:

1. I'm a vegan. I don't eat any animal products. There's a ton of data on the benefits of this for the environment, but I won't quote it all here. Try Google or e-mail me. :)

2. Instead of buying a trash can at Target, we bought a HUGE can of tomato sauce at Costco. Two benefits here: dinner and a trash can. We're artists, so we decorated it. In the future they'll sell tomato sauce can trash bins at Target for $50 and people will buy them.

3. I live close to TriMet and stores. I walk or ride my bike, we don't have a car.

4. We work on laptops. We charge them up and then unplug them, using the battery to work. This not only prolongs the battery life, it reduces the amount of electricity we would use by having a desktop plugged in 24/7. I get a good 2 1/2 - 3 hours of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, e-mail, and... biznik of course.

Gerald, you bring up some good points. Although I go in the direction of being what's known as "green," I'm not convinced that global warming is directly caused by humans as Al Gore PowerPointed. I think there's a little bit of human encroachment, skewed perspective, and natural climate change at work.

So why do we do these green things at Sparky Firepants Images? We do them because we have a very low tolerance for waste and a huge love of ingenuity.

Living close to work or working close to the local shops means more than saving gas.

It gives us the chance to be outside, meeting our neighbors, seeing what's going on in our 'hood. That's important for us as humans and good for our business.

I think that more so than recycling or reusing, we need to be more choosy about what we purchase in the first place. So for our business, purchasing anything has to follow a couple of rules:

1. It has to earn back it's value.
2. It has to last or have a use beyond it's intended purpose.

I think that philosophy will not only help the environment, but will save us money.

Interesting legislation on this very topic. There's a bill just intro'd that could provide assistance to small businesses in helping them become more energy efficient.

http://tinyurl.com/5smryd

S. 1657: Small Business Energy Efficiency Act of 2007

Check this out, the company I work for owns this product line and I think it's pretty awesome.. Purely Cotton 100% cotton tissue products. It's not the cheapest stuff in the world but it's virtually lint free (since there is no paper product) and it's soft like cotton. win/win =)

Found this site. Might help.

http://www.wireandtwine.com/green/50/

I maintain a small footprint with my home office in many ways and also buy client gifts from independent, local businesses.

Thanks for that link Gerald. I am actually in the process of planning an eco-friendly themed party for a client and I think we will use some of those tips on the invites.

Living green is about simplifying life so that there are more natural resources for my kids to enjoy when they are my age. I think that we have all been just a bit greedy in the past.

I'll probably use online forms instead of paper forms.

I will be first to coin this: "Paperless Business"

Welcome to the Green World,

-Andrey

I thought that had already been "coined"?

Besides, why couldn't this be a blue world? Why green? Green is a representation of sickness, how can it represent life/earth as well?