Environmental Considerations

[orion_joel]

Hi All,

It has been a little while since i have posted a new topic, and i have one today for your consideration which i am very interested in a range of views.

I have been considering a new website (no domain available yet) Regarding the effect of business on the environment, and how businesses approach limiting or minimizing this effect. As such i have a couple of questions i would be interested in your answers to.

1. As part of your planning or management of your business do you consider the environmental effect of your business?
2. If you do take into account environmental considerations, what exactly do you consider?
3. If you dont take into account environmental considerations, are planning to look at them in the near future, or not, and why?
4. What information would help you taking the environmental considerations into account with your business?

Please feel free to answer any or all, of the questions, i am just looking for any thoughts, so even anything you would like to share on the topic but not with the questions would be appreciated.

Thank-you for the time to share. I do really appreciate it.

[vangogh]

Interesting idea for a site.

I'm environmentally conscious in general, but I can't say there's anything I do specifically when it comes to my business. My business is virtual so there isn't a manufacturing/product chain to follow. My office needs have always been minimal.

My major contribution to a negative environmental footprint where my business is concerned is likely my computer use. I couldn't see myself choosing a computer based solely on it's environmental impact. I'm still going to choose the best computer in terms of what it can do, however all things being equal I would go with the more environmentally friendly option.

Same is true for web hosts. If I knew more about how environmentally conscious web hosts were I would likely go with the more environmentally friendly host. Assuming of course they provided the same general service.

In general I'd say making me more aware of typical products and services I use and how friendly or unfriendly they are to the environment could help swing me toward the friendlier options. I can't say I sit here and think about it with every purchase I make, though again I don't make a lot of purchases for my business. I do consider environmental effects more as a personal thing than a business thing, but naturally the personal does affect my business choices.

[KristineS]

I don't have a personal business, but I can tell you what our companies do.

We do consider the environmental impact. We reuse packing boxes, work with companies that are environmentally friendly and try to reduce the impact of our buildings on the environment.

Mostly we consider how our products are made, and what we can reuse and recycle.

I think the information, in a general sense, that would most be of help is simple and economical ways to be green. Also, information about how various things, buildings, packing material etc. impact the environment. I think sometimes people don't know what impact a certain action can have.

[orion_joel]

Thanks for the Reply's Vangogh, and Kristine

@Vangogh, I can understand your point's here. This is what i believe comes back to weighing up the needs of your business against the environmental impact. The idea that you have not really thought about it to much is not to surprising i think for the most part it is a issue that usually sits on the back burner for many.

If i recall correctly though you actually use a Macbook, the Macbook is actually promoted by apple as "The worlds greenest lineup of notebooks" So maybe you were onto something here without even realizing it.

The only thing that i find to be interesting was a statistic i found earlier in the week while doing some research, a study done of this group of companies found that less then 1% of claims by companies to be environmentally friendly were entirely accurate, which i think is not really such a good figure. And maybe in regards to web hosts if there are any that are green it would be interesting to see how they back this up.

@Kristine Thank-you for your response, it is good to see that the company you work for has these things in mind already. The one thing that you didn't mention which i think could be applied, which you may already be doing is to look for ways to Reduce. Reducing the consumables items that you use, eg paper, ink, toner, plastic packaging in favor of recycled packaging.

I think when it comes to economical ways to think green one of the biggest things is reduction, if you reduce what you use in the way of the things i mentioned above, then you should be saving money even if in a small way. There is really a lot of points here, many of which i am still working on finding out, but it is something that i am looking to share in this site, which i think will be a positive idea at this stage.

[huggytree]

There is nothing environmentally friendly about plumbing products

the manufacturing process for pvc is horrible
the primer i use is basically nail polish remover

i recycle my waterheaters and scrap metal (a guy comes over to my house to pickup for free)...i advertise this fact w/ homeowners...1/2 the people seem to care

i am considering low VOC glue/primer (6x the cost)...i may start giving the homeowners the option because it stinks their house up w/ chemicals and i have gotten complaints...plus my health. on new homes it would just be another thing to kill me on prices...cant do it.

i have started to offer Pex water pipe...its supposed to be better for the environment and not leach chemicals into the water (the leaching thing may be B.S.)...anyways i have a green builder who is demanding it to compete w/ other green builders.

i use a plumbing van which gets 8 mpg...Al Gore doesnt like my van

[vangogh]

Joel I wouldn't say I don't think about environmental issues. It's more that I think about them in my personal life as opposed to my business life and that's mainly because of the kind of business I have. I work on a computer all day so naturally I'm using electricity. I don't do anything special to cut down that use on the computer, but I am conscious of the lights I have on and keep those to a minimum.

It's funny you mention the Mac. I was going to point it out in my post above, but that didn't really enter my decision when making the purchase. Also I think the environmentally friendly ones they talk about are the model that came out just after I bought this one. I think with the Mac, being environmental fits well with the brand. I doubt people are looking at making the buying decision because they might be more environmentally friendly, but I bet most Mac owners want to be friendlier to the environment in general and it helps justify their purchase.

[billbenson]

Joel, why not do a business to business green shopping cart. Show paybacks, gov't rebates and programs, and other info with each product. Also, maybe you could offer a promotional article for companies going green that buy from you. They write the article for you and you stick it on the site. Could probably pick up testimonials that way. Might be able to get some other green blogs to work with you and put the testimonial on their site with a link back to you.

Could be a niche with a lot of possibilities.

As for me, all I have is computer stuff. Hard to get to green there.

[orion_joel]

Thanks for the additional replies.

@Huggytree - Maybe something that you could work towards is offering a much more green (environmentally friendly) option. I know that there are a few different spec homes that i have seen around that are claiming to be zero impact on the environment, so i wonder what they are doing for plumbing in these type of houses which you may be able to offer. I think the biggest challenge, is ensuring that people are aware and happy with the idea that while they are paying more for the green option it is not just helping to line your pocket more.

I would expect that maybe the green products still are not being used so much, so maybe an option for your HT may be to get in touch direct with the manufacture's and look to work out deals that may be able to help bring the costs for you buying to a more comparable price to what you are using now.

@Vangogh - I tend to agree, The choice i made when buying both my laptop and computer, were not so much based on the environmental impact. I already had the thought that a laptop is going to be better for the environment then a desktop computer, through less power consumption. But the desktop i bought was being promoted as a greener option as it is small form factor and built using pretty much laptop parts.

I think that this is part of the problem, people generally want to go the environmentally friendly option, however tend to think about it more in regards to personal then business.

@Billbenson - Sounds like a good idea. Maybe the only thing is that the product range that i can offer myself does seem a little limited the more i look. I mean there are a lot of products that can take businesses closer, but not all the way. I mean for one example the ideal solution would be to get companies to the paperless, office, which will come at some point, however so many people have been trying for so long, and it seem paper is still part of most offices. Which means printing, there are printers that do take steps towards improving their impact on the environment, however it still is not all the way. So i suppose it will be weighing up to what level i want to take the environmental impact do i want to help people take steps towards or do i want to help them get all the way.

[billbenson]

This might be a case of putting the products up as well as ads? People may search for your site to see what green products are out there, but have no intention of buying. Might help get some links?

[Dan Furman]

I'm one of those people who doesn't think the environment itself is in trouble at all. After all, everything came from the earth (or space rocks). Seems pretty natural to me.

However, I do agree that we may harm the environment for OUR purposes. :) We're a little selfish that way.

Green is also a matter of interpretation, to a point. For example, solar panels and wind power will be so much better as soon as we figure out how to dispose the batteries these things generally require. Or "clean coal"... there's one I never figured out. Coal is a lot of things, but "clean" isn't one of them. ;)

That said, I do try and recycle, turn out lights (and I use a lot of solar lights outside, because they are hassle-free), and I personally don't use poisons/chemicals in my yard (save for a little wasp spray.) I like all the little animals that live here, and don't wish to drive them away so I can have a dandelion-free lawn.

As far as my business, I'm like VG in that I'm largely virtual. I believe in data over paper, too, because I like trees.

[orion_joel]

Dan, thank-you for your response. To many extents i agree with you in respect to how everything has pretty much come from the environment. However not everything is mixed and or combined in such a way as it now, through how we have used, and in some cases abused it.

The eventual affects and such is something that we will never know until they are actually physically evident or actually happens. But i imagine, anything we can do, will only help to delay anything that may happen.

One of the surprising things that i have been looking at and trying to figure out is that it is actually in my opinion possible to consider the environment and actually save money at the same time. So it is actually a double edged win.

[Spider]

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has a LEED Certification process for buildings. (LEED = Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.)

Since its inception in 1998, LEED has grown to encompass more than 14,000 projects in the United States and 30 countries covering 1.062 billion square feet (99 km²) of development area. The hallmark of LEED is that it is an open and transparent process where the technical criteria proposed by the LEED committees are publicly reviewed for approval by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC.

There's lots of info on the web about LEED - a simple search will produce more than one person could assimilate.

One could start here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_in_Energy_and_Environmental_Design

Or here - http://www.buildinggreen.com/