It seems a lot of companies want to go green in the working world. There are many ways to easily accomplish this. One of the first ways to go green is to teach your employees/customers. You can teach this by doing something green yourself and promoting it. This is a big of a greenwashing, but sometimes thats good!
Its one thing to talk to the talk but another to walk the walk! By taking action on your next project you maybe able to incorporate green technology as a part of it. I know many business build buildings and remodel. When your (re)building why not try and get familiar with federate and state regulations on reducing energy usage as well as possibly becoming LEED. By using LED lights you can cut down on the cost of light bulbs as well as the electricity. This promotes green within your company and the CFO should be happy because you have a better ROI. LED last longer then standard light bulbs even though they cost a bit more.
Depending on your products you can also intense customers by offering them rebates or money saving coupons by going green. You could even offer X amount goes towards carbon offset for each product sold. Customers who are buying a product might think twice and buy yours because the revenue goes towards offsetting carbon. Sometimes your product waste can be turned into something usable. For example Intel took their semiconductor wafters that never turned into a final product and sold them to other companies to reuse them in solar cell production. Transforming vegetable oil into biodiesel also creates some interesting byproducts. One use of the byproduct after washing is wax for snowboards!
During my time at the University of Vermont I had a chance to tour NRG Systems a 46,000 square foot build that is gold LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. NRG Systems sells data loggers for wind turbines. The goal of building green should always be a highly efficient building using the latest in energy efficiency technology. One way NRG Systems is effective in going green is by using wood pellet-fired boilers provide heat throughout the building, wood pellets are half the cost of propane while being 30% cheaper than oil! The use of a “energy recovery wheel” is also in place, which recovers 75% of the heat in the winter and about the same 75% for the cool air in the summer. The use of air tight roofs and walls also help with the efficient of keeping the building at a set temperature. They use two layers of foam insulation on the roof as well as a air barrier to lower the amount of leaking air. As for lighting, must of the lights are through windows that bring in sunlight, but when need they use highly efficient fluorescent lights in the offices. There are many other great ideas that NRG Systems has deploy, I suggest you read over their plans as well as contact any of the companies involved with the building.
