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While the green movement and green ideas has received much criticism, parts of the business has embraced green ideas, both in marketing and as a means to cut costs. There are several options of how to reduce the carbon footprint, and I will discuss several of these in this short essay.

A substantial amount of money is paid for the use of electricity around the world. Much of this could be reduced by changing to environmental solutions. Changing to low-energy light bulbs, turning off lights and equipment when they are not used and installing motion sensors or timer switches are alternatives that could reduce such costs dramatically. Even unplugging equipment can reduce the costs, as several electronic devices are never completely shut down unless you do this. This should - of course - be used mostly for devices not used all the time. One important thing that many companies do not practice is turning off the computer at night. Leaving it on costs money and it should be turned off at night (and at least put in sleep mode with the monitor shut down when not used during office hours).

An alternative is to switch to an eco-friendly provider of electricity, such as the British Ecotricity. Another alternative is to make investments in producing your own electricity, by investing in solar power or wind turbines, or replacing electricity with heat pumps or ground-source heat. By doing this, costs should obviously be compared to gains made. A final alternative to reduce the use of electricity is to reduce the heating temperature one or a few degrees, or similarly reducing the use of air conditioning.

While bio-ethanol has received its share of criticism lately, it still is an alternative for reducing the carbon footprint of transportation of goods or people. Another obvious effort is to encourage employees to leave the car home and take the bus (or bike) to work. Some companies has given benefits to employees who are doing things to stay in shape, and this could be done, as long as it is legal. If it's hard to make employees do this, maybe they could drive together to work?

Many people would perhaps neglect water as a source of CO2 emissions. This is an incorrect assumption, and reducing the use of water is an alternative if you want to reduce the carbon footprint. Preventing and repairing leaks, re-using waste water (for example to water plants) and installing toilets that use less water to flush are means that could be used.

Reducing waste and recycling are obviously also efforts that could be made to reduce the carbon footprint. Replacing plastic cups with reusable alternatives and buying products that use little packaging are good means to reduce the waste, and so is recycling. Almost everything can be recycled today and this would reduce the carbon footprint. The use of paper can probably also be reduced on almost all offices around the world. Setting your writing program to print two pages per A4 page would reduce the paper used by 50%, and opting for electronic storing of documents reduces the use of paper.

Not every company can make use of all these suggestions, but I do hope someone might be inspired to do one or a few of them. It takes very little effort to shut down equipment or to reduce the temperature a little in the winter.

Learn more about this author, J. Hoff.
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