Green Options

Yet again, a LinkedIn question (asking for top 10 greening tips) got me thinking.  Is there really a thing such as a generic list of top 10 tips for greening? I don’t think so.

As a start, the foundation of a green program lies in what a business is already doing. Do you recycle? Do you use CFLs? Do you have a programmable thermostats? Do you leave their PCs on all night? How much water do you use? What are your transportation needs? Depending on the answers to these and other questions, you will be able to identify the areas where the top green opportunities lie.  Even if you business practices are not very green now, you will probably find that you’ve adopted a green business practices already, and that you can implement others with no cost or change in business performance.  As an example, for most small businesses, changing to high efficiency lights or using recycled copy paper will have no direct impact on your core business operations.

So how do you know what the top 10 things you can be doing to green yourself are? One way to determine which greening practices will yield the most bang for the buck (a.k.a. be a top 10 tip) is to focus on the largest expense areas. There is often a correlation between expenses and volume of use. If you cut back on what you spend, you will likely reduce what you use.

So, whether reducing paper use or switching to high efficiency lights is a top 10 tip depends, well, on how much paper and electricity you’re using.  A business may want to target all expense areas over a certain threshold amount. You can measure this in dollars or as a percentage of overall expenses, such as any expense on which you spend over $500 a month, or that represent 10% or more of total expenses. A list of business expenses can guide the planning process. Start with the areas of the business that will have the greatest financial impact. You may not be able to change things as dramatically as you’d like, especially at first. Look for actions that are achievable and cost effective to implement. If staff leave lights on in unoccupied rooms (bathrooms, storage sheds), you may want to make turning off the lights in unused areas a priority. That step may be as simple as posting signs on light switches. If, on the other hand the lights are generating significant added costs, they may want to install motion sensors or bi-level light switches.

Editor’s note: This week we’re serving up the first ever year end best-of Gas 2.0 series with our most Dugg, most up-voted reddit, most Stumbled, and most viewed stories of 2008. As a special bonus, we’ll finish off the week by handing out the first ever (yet sure to be highly coveted) Gas 2.0 Post of the Year Award.

Ah, reddit. In many ways the cute little bugger is the forgotten genius brother to Digg, and, no matter how hard he tries, his smartness can’t seem to shine above Digg’s trophy-winning varsity jock prowess (if you hung out in the periodical room in high school, you know what I mean). But perhaps this is for the best, because what we’re left with is what civil commentary can look like on the internet when it’s dominated by graduate students, scientists, know-it-alls, and the generally reserved.

And as it turns out, all of those folks enjoy reading Gas 2.0. So, without further adieu:

Last week, in writing about this year’s AIA Committe on the Environment’s COTE Top Ten winners, representing the best “examples of sustainable architecture and green design solutions that protect and enhance the environment,” I asked “Are COTE Winners Too Much of the Same?” While I am certain I’m not alone in that viewpoint, I’ve come across some other perspectives on that question.

One of the jurors from the panel that selected this year’s COTE Top Ten wrote about her experience and some of the things that she saw in the jury. And the question of great architecture versus green architecture was also raised in the AIA weekly newsletter this past week as well. The COTE Top Ten showcases some very attractive buildings with some serious green building credentials (LEED Gold and Platinum buildings and a building that claims “carbon neutral opearations”, to name a few). But the larger question seems to be how much green building and good building design are, or can be, connected.