50 Ways to Green Your Business - Part III

21 Casual Friday might not resonate with natty Italians, but when the country's largest power company, Eni, wanted to save some energy (and money), it asked its workers to embrace "lighter and cooler" attire and raised the thermostats at HQ one degree Celsius. The summer's savings: 217,000 kilowatts and CO2 emissions equivalent to 140 employees taking public transport for a year.

22 The much-hyped Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Tower, which will be the second-tallest building in New York when it's finished next year, is the first skyscraper in America to pursue LEED Platinum certification. Our favorite innovation: a geothermal heat-exchange system that's the first of its kind in a high-rise. In the winter, pumps will draw heat from groundwater to help warm the building; in the summer, the process will work in reverse, pumping excess heat into the bedrock beneath the tower. The system will contribute to the building's goal of using just half the electricity of a conventional building its size.

23 Meeting LEED standards isn't the only way to green a building. Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) likes to nix office space entirely. Its Open Work program, 10 years and 20,000 participants strong (that's 56% of Sun's workforce), gives employees the option to work from home. Talk about a triple bottom line: In 2006, Sun saved $67.8 million in real-estate costs, prevented nearly 29,000 tons of CO2 emissions, and increased worker productivity by 34%. The master of the virtual workspace now has a consulting practice to help other companies do the same.

24 Timberland awards its employees who buy hybrids not only with a primo parking spot but also with $3,000 toward the car's purchase. Bank of America has a similar program. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is one-upping both with a $5,000 incentive.

25 At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, about half the fleet--more than 334,000 vehicles--gets more than 28 mpg (nearly 10 times the number of fuel-efficient vehicles offered by its closest competitor, Enterprise boasts). The company is adding thousands of hybrids and FlexFuel cars.

26 At its Manhattan headquarters, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is starting renovations at the top--on the roof, 53 stories up, where the bank is building what is essentially a giant pan to collect rainwater. The water will be funneled into a 55,000-gallon tank in the basement, filtered, and then piped up for toilet flushing. Coupled with new low-flush urinals and toilets, this system will cut the building's water use--and cost--by 30%.

27 The corporate restroom isn't fully green without Dyson's new Airblade hand dryer, which does its job in half the time (12 seconds) and with half the energy (1,400 watts) of conventional dryers. It costs four times as much up front, but the energy savings can pay you back in three years. AMC Theatres is testing the units now.

28 California-based managed-care provider Kaiser Permanente knew that its vinyl floors weren't doing Mother Nature (or patients or employees) any favors: PVC in the vinyl releases dioxin when it's created, and it lets loose other harmful particulates when buffed, to say nothing of the harsh chemicals used in cleaning it. Kaiser started replacing the floors in 2005 with PVC-free recycled rubber, which costs more to install but pays for itself in five years by slashing maintenance costs by as much as 80%. A side benefit: fewer slips and falls (and calmer actuaries as a result).

29 It was 1853 when Otis introduced the first safety elevator and forever changed the urban landscape. With the introduction of the company's Gen2 lift, the company has re-imagined what has largely been unchanged for more than 150 years. Replacing steel cables with a flat, polyurethane-coated steel belt, Otis was able to eliminate a bulky machine room and create a lubrication-free system. The result is not only a quieter and smoother ride, but combined with "regenerative drive" technology that returns electricity to the building grid, the new elevators are 75% more efficient than conventional drive systems. Gen2 lifts are becoming de rigueur in the slickest, greenest new towers, including Fast Company's new home, 7 World Trade Center.

30 Unlike most big-box retailers that are debuting discrete green product lines, Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS) has eco-modified a whopping 3,000 of its mainstream private-label products to include at least 30% post-consumer waste. From sticky notes to shipping boxes, nearly all of the new offerings do not have a nonrecycled alternative in the product line. The end goal: to pressure the entire industry to follow suit.


From: Fast Company

UK enjoys green consumer boom

The rapid growth of the market for firms producing environmentally sustainable and ethical products and services was again highlighted this week after a new survey revealed sales of "ethical" goods in the UK were now worth more than retail sales of beer and cigarettes.

The report found that UK ethical consumerism was worth £29.3 billion in 2005 up 11 percent on the previous year, and also accounts for a higher proportion of consumer spending, as overall household expenditure only grew 1.4 percent.

Sales of ethical food such as organic and Fairtrade goods soared 18 per cent to £5.4 billion while expenditure on energy-efficient electrical appliances, green mortgage repayments, home based renewable energy generators and green energy tariffs was up from £3.8 billion to £4.1 billion.

Spending on eco-travel, tourism and transport costs climbed fractionally from £1.7 billion to £1.8 billion, while sales of personal products, such as humane cosmetics and green-fashion, was up 5 per cent to £1.3 billion. Monies in ethical finance, which includes ethical banking and investments, stood at £11.6 billion, up from £10.6 billion last year.

The report proves there is a booming market for green products. However, the Co-operative Bank - which carried out the research in association with research group The Future Foundation and has established itself as one of the leading exponents of ethical banking - argued the market was not moving fast enough to tackle global issues such as climate change and as a result more government intervention was required to encourage more firms to adopt environmentally sustainable practices.

Craig Shannon, executive director of business management, urged governments to act, claiming in a statement that while the ethical market was booming spending was spread over a large number of different products and had only become the norm in sectors where legislators had intervened.

“Where the ethical or eco-choice has become the market leader, for example in sales of A-rated energy fridges (which account for some 60 per cent of the market), this has been underpinned by an EU labelling scheme, inefficient products being removed from sale and the support of well targeted subsidies," he said. “If, as many scientists are saying, we have ten years to make a dent in climate change, it is this type of radical overhaul of the choices made available to people that is going to deliver the rapid market changes required."

“The efforts of far-sighted, highly motivated consumers need to be leveraged and supported with business innovation and government intervention,” he added.

From: businessgreen

Who are the green consumers?

Understanding the demographics of green consumerism can help entrepreneurs explore the environmental market, and home in on likely prospects. Research has shown that green consumers:

• are sincere in their intentions, with a growing commitment to greener lifestyles;
• almost always judge their environmental practices as inadequate;
• do not expect companies to be perfect in order to be considered 'green'. Rather, they look for companies that are taking substantive steps and have made a commitment to improve.

However, they also:

• tend to overstate their green behaviour, including the number of green products they actually use;
• want environmental protection to be easy, and not to entail major sacrifices;
• tend to distrust companies' environmental claims, unless they have been independently verified;
• lack knowledge about environmental issues, and tend not to trust themselves to evaluate scientific information about environmental impacts. However, at the same time they are eager to learn, and this means that consumer education is one of the most effective strategies that entrepreneurs can use.

The most responsive age group tends to be young adults, many of whom are influenced by their children. In addition, women are a key target for greener products, and often make purchases on behalf of men.

The best 'green' customers are people with more money to spend. As a result, the most promising products for 'greening' tend to be at the higher end of the market. The most promising outlets for green products are retail stores frequented by better-off shoppers.

In general, green consumers have the education and intellectual orientation to appreciate value; they will understand evidence that is presented in support of environmental claims.
In the US, children and teens are generally more concerned than adults about the environment, and are more knowledgeable about green alternatives. Increasingly, they influence their parents' purchasing decisions. Equally importantly, millions of them will reach adulthood in the next decade, and gain purchasing power of their own.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum, US consumers born before the 1950s are the least 'green'. As their numbers diminish, their share of consumer purchases will dwindle.

In Canada, children and parents alike tend to have strong environmental concerns. Older people, too, tend to be active green purchasers.

From: bsdglobal