We emphasize value-added activities that will increase perception of your company and help marketing efforts. Use these tips in conjunction with energy-saving efforts that lower operating costs.

1. Go renewable–and let everyone know

Renewable energy bolsters public perception of a company. It marks you as a responsible, conscientious, caring organization. Harness this perception to attract more customers and increase your market share.

Whole Foods, for example, has established a “Green Mission” that includes offsetting all of its energy consumption with wind energy credits. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency named Whole Foods its Green Power Partner of the Year in 2006 and 2007. A slew of good publicity followed.

Other large corporations, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, Costco, and Safeway also have renewable energy programs.

2. Market to guilt

Image: Stuff Young Jewish Adults Like

Humans, specifically Americans, generate most of the CO2 emissions that contribute to global warming. This sordid fact weighs on the public conscience, compelling consumers to seek out products and services green enough to assuage their guilt. Offering ways to mitigate enviro-guilt draws more customers to your company, which ultimately can boost your bottom line.

For example, the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) recently became the first airport in the country to offer carbon offset kiosks. With a simple swipe of a credit card, customers contribute to reforestation and biofuels, assuaging their sense of guilt about boarding a fuel-hungry, CO2-emitting jet. The program certainly differentiates SFO from other nearby airports, potentially boosting perception to the point of attracting more fliers.

Oil- and gas company BP is another example. It touts itself as one of the first oil companies to “take precautionary action to address climate change.”

Company officials emphasize that BP has made efforts to reduce emissions at its extraction operations, innovated a new type of gas that emits fewer toxins, and invested in clean technology research.

Does that absolve BP from the fact that it makes money by mining oil? No, but by emphasizing its efforts to mitigate the damage, BP is tacitly admitting that although it’s a bad guy, it wants to do good by the environment. In other words, it is appealing to consumer guilt.

Note: Some might label BP’s efforts as greenwashing. Regardless, it is using the tried-and-true tactic of addressing consumer guilt to clean its image.

3. Green your logo

Speaking of greenwashing, we make this point with a caveat: If you green your logo, please do something to back it up. Run your organization off renewable energy. Weatherize your building. Donate to eco-wise nonprofits. Sell green products. Otherwise, you risk being seen as a greenwasher.

Back to whipping boy BP. It’s an oil company, but its logo–a green flower-like symbol–evokes feelings of green. Does BP’s green logo and website design make the oil company look more environmentally friendly? On a subconscious level, it does.

If I didn’t know what BP was, and saw its logo for the first time, my first impression would be of a pretty green flower. Logo-wise, it looks much greener than, say, Chevron, whose red-and-blue logo evokes more patriotic feelings on first impression. Design counts.

4. Donate to Earthy causes

Reserve a portion of your profits for a nonprofit that works to restore the planet, like 1% For the Planet. Or make monthly/annual donations to an organization that preserves and restores nature. Making a financial commitment will show the general public that you put your money where your mouth is. Make sure that you publicize your donations well.

5. Sell eco-minded products

Image: Zazzle/Eco Girl

Nobody was buying canvas bags in the 1980s. Now, almost every grocery store sells lines of reusable shopping bags at the checkout counter.

People want to go green–and they’ll spend money to do it. Address that need with new products and services. They can complement your current offerings, or represent a deviation from your traditional wares. If you’re a service, develop a new brand that addresses the needs of people in the burgeoning green industry. Or market to people who want to feel more green.

Read up on what other bloggers have to say at BlogActionDay.org.

In the spirit of the soon-to-be phased out Cash for Clunkers program, Americans have a new incentive to get rid of inefficient resource-suckers. This time it’s appliances. According to American Public Media’s Alisa Roth, Congress included $300 million in the stimulus package this year to use as rebates for consumers who buy new, more energy-efficient appliances.

Unlike the Cash for Clunkers program, you don’t actually have to turn in your old refrigerator or washing machine to receive the incentive. When you buy a new appliance with an Energy Star rating, the EPA and the Energy Department’s highest rating, you can get up to $200 back. Looks like the appliance lobby worked a little harder than the auto industry lobby for this program. Here’s to wishing I owned some GE stock.

Like Cash for Clunkers, Roth says this benefits both he environment and the economy.

So one part is getting people to upgrade to more energy-efficient machines. And the other is to stimulate the economy by encouraging people to buy expensive stuff.

The program should begin in late fall.

I have some old shoes that are letting water in through the sole. This is causing me to have to dry my socks out several times a day, thus using electricity for the dryer. I need new shoes. Do you think my stimulus is coming soon?

Image Credit: infrogmation, Flickr

Two weeks was all it took. Once it set in, the culture shock numbed me to the media. It turned bathrooms, cars, and roads into outrageous luxuries. It even robbed me of my short-term memory for a while.

I’d experienced severe culture shock once before, after months in Africa. This time, I hadn’t even left the US Southwest. And I’d only been gone for 16 days.

It almost wasn’t fair. Except that I came out of my Grand Canyon river trip a wiser person. Moving at the speed of the Colorado River, living a life devoid of crowds, traffic, electricity, and noise, I learned a few lessons about sustainability.

I’d like to share three of them with you. They have altered how I think about sustainability. I hope that you find them useful, too.

Lesson #1: Excess is Normal
Taught by: The Groover

Good Lord. That’s a lot of water.

This was my first through upon entering the bathroom stall at the Hualapai Lodge lobby in Peach Springs, Arizona. Inside, there was a toilet. In that toilet, two gallons of clear, placid water anticipated my waste.

After 16 days of rafting down the Grand Canyon, I hardly remembered what a toilet looked like.

The trip toilet had consisted of army surplus ammo cans. Known as “groovers,” these metal boxes served as our 16-person group’s only waste repositories. Approximately every four days, one of the cans would fill up. At this point, we clamped it shut, loaded it on a boat, and dragged out a new empty one. We literally sat on the can every time we had to do our business.

All that water…for a single bowel movement?

Back in the Canyon, we hand-fetched and filtered our drinking water from the Colorado River. Two gallons of water was precious.

Using water to rinse our waste away simply wasn’t done. It was too much work to fetch and filter it. We also wanted to keep the river clean. It was our home.

Here in civilization, each bowel movement is honored with its own two gallons of water. Pull the flush lever, and the waste swirls into a hole and disappears. It’s wasteful, but it is standard. We consider it normal.

Lesson #2: Adapting Nature is Work. Adapting to Nature is Easy.
Taught by: Canyon Campgrounds

I continued to marvel at the toilet. The white porcelain bowl sat on impeccably scrubbed tile, laid for the sole purpose of making visitors’ bathroom experience more pleasant. An wall-mounted electric machine dried hands at the push of a button. Faucets with sensors decided the amount and temperature of the sink’s water. Wide walkways, high ceilings, inoffensive artwork, and air conditioning optimized the sense of comfort.

Just a day earlier, our group had been paddling down the Grand Canyon’s scorching innards. The Canyon didn’t care how comfortable we felt. In its world, we were inconceivably small, flesh floating on the coattails of a millisecond.

Despite the heat, bugs, and work of setting up a new camp every day, our ancient playground offered abundant amenities. At every camp, we found flat surfaces on which to set up our tents. A chilly Colorado River offered bathing, drinking, and cooling off. Trees secured our rafts. A wild panorama of stars replaced evening TV shows.

We hadn’t altered the environment to suit ourselves. Yet the Grand Canyon was complete. Our primitive setting felt in place, with everything perfectly arranged. Our duty was to adjust to it. And that took surprisingly little effort. Don a coat in the rain. Put up a wind shield to protect cooking food from gales. Clean sand out of stuff.

After indulging in the wilderness, coming back to climate-controlled, polished-floor, double-wide-sidewalk America felt like a taser shock. Despite all the mining, building, and paving required to make an environment comfortable for humans, being back felt incomplete.

Since coming back, I feel more comfortable, but only marginally. Cool air from vents feels nice in summer. My mattress beats my Therm-a-Rest. Yet modern amenities haven’t improved my quality of life that much at all.

Lesson #3: Think About Origin
Taught by: The Colorado River

When we traveled the river, our necessities came from rafts. Each raft was rigged to the hilt with supplies. The river provided transportation, baths, and water, but everything else—food, shelter, kitchen, toilet, trash—stayed on the raft during the day.

At night, we would lug everything up to camp, where we set up our kitchen, tents, and other necessities. The next morning, we packed it all up again and reloaded the rafts. The 16 of us easily lived from those four rafts.

Instead of being insulated from my surroundings by cars, thick walls, and a computer screen, we lived in and on the Earth. Whenever I altered the environment, I saw the effects of my actions. I watched my feet trample plants, my tent pad level wind-sculpted sand, my garbage feed fire ants.

I also noticed how little propane we needed to cook our daily meals. I reveled in stars, and didn’t miss electricity at all.

Fast forward to home. It’s a hot summer morning. My air conditioner, powered at its origin by coal, keeps my bedroom cool. A reservoir, running through a system of pipes, hydrates my shower. The wastewater goes to a treatment facility. My trash goes into a container, which then goes onto a truck, which in turn dumps it into a landfill. It’s much more complicated than living off a raft.

Now, as I rumble around in my car, recharge my laptop batteries, and crank the air conditioner, I think about where things comes from. I still feel connected to the Earth, despite the layers of concrete noise that separate us. I wonder how I am impacting it.

I think about how I, like all my resources, came from the Earth, and will one day return to it. Maybe humans and toilet water aren’t that different, after all.

The House approved the “Cash for Clunkers” program yesterday, a $4 billion program that subsidizes new, fuel-efficient cars for people driving clunkers. CNN has more:

The measure would give consumers vouchers worth as much as $4,500 to turn in gas guzzlers and buy new cars that are more fuel efficient.

However, cars that have not been insured for the past year or those that are older than 25 years are not eligible to be traded in for vouchers.

Autoblog adds:

The vehicle has to have been insured for the last year and there is no trade-in value beyond the voucher. The program is also available for leases. Dealers are required to provide proof that the vehicle (1984 MY or later) has been crushed or shredded, and the government estimates that around 25 million vehicles are eligible.

Not sure if you drive a clunker? Go to fueleconomy.gov and research your car’s official gas mileage.

Some people will welcome the chance to trade in their old cars, whose resale values have likely plummeted, for something smaller. But I doubt this bill affects enough people to significantly stimulate the auto industry. It’s a friendly gesture to a certain group of people, but little more.

If the government were serious about getting gas-guzzlers off the road in the short term, it would increase taxes on gas. But that wouldn’t be necessary. The market will naturally price out gas guzzlers once the price of oil increases again.

The government is wasting its time with this bill.

Warren Buffet may have announced a dismal quarter, but Berkshire Hathaway-owned Clayton Homes just released a PR hit. Fast Company has more on the iHouse, a prefabricated home pimped out with energy-saving features:

Clayton Homes, the largest manufacturer of modular homes in the U.S., officially introduced its i-house this past weekend at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting. Popular Mechanics says the i-house “looks like a house you’d order from IKEA, sounds like something designed by Apple and consists of amenities–solar panels, tankless water heaters and rainwater collectors–that one would expect to come from an offbeat green company out of California selling to a high-end market.” But the much-anticipated house, which Clayton claims is at least 30% more energy-efficient than traditional homes, is perhaps the most affordable option for a low-carbon lifestyle, with monthly energy costs of under $70.

Clayton’s i-house will likely be attractive to first-time home buyers due to its low price, but the modular home could also appeal to anyone searching for a cheap, energy-efficient vacation home. The company, which has sold 1.5 million homes since its start in 1934, expects to sell 2,000 i-houses per year within 18 months of its launch.

The iHouse’s design making it appealing for uses beyond the trailer park, eg. as a vacation home. It’s not cheap, especially when you factor in land purchase, but a worthy jab at mainstreaming green homes. It would be nice to see a smaller, cheaper version. As it is, I don’t see any reason to buy an iHouse over a deeply discounted McMansion.

PR-wise, however, it’s a hit. The trailer is progressive, attractive to a niche market, and eco-friendly. It borders on being hip–not bad for old Warren Buffet. And the amount of attention the iHouse is garnering can only help BRK’s reputation.

Now, if they would only update their Berkshire Hathaway activewear collection.

Green energy isn’t as innocent as it sounds. The Financial Times reports on how the Italian Mafia is building and selling wind farms to European multinational companies:

Anti-Mafia magistrates in Sicily have opened a sweeping investigation into the wind power sector where local officials, entrepreneurs and crime gangs are suspected of collusion in the construction of lucrative wind farms before their eventual sale to multinational companies.

Italy ranks fourth in Europe in terms of installed wind power capacity.

Fast on the heels of GM’s P.U.M.A., Chrysler subsidiary GEM has released the Peapod, a $12,500 electric vehicle marketed at city commuters. Wired has more:

The long-awaited, often-advertised Peapod will be available for order on Earth Day, April 22.

The Peapod tops out as 25 mph as required by law for NEVs (neighborhood electric vehicles).

Oddly enough, you need an iPod or iPhone to start the car. Wired commenter Kelarius has a nice remark on the fact:

So that makes this over priced golf cart the worlds largest and most expensive iPod accessory?

I’m baffled by the recent insurgence of NEVs. I can see them being used in Europe, but America still has six-lane highways, suburbs, and SUVs to contend with. They’re also overpriced.

NEVs like the Peapod would work better in Masdar City than most US cities.

President Barack Obama on Thursday highlighted his ambition for the development of high-speed passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions, expressing confidence in the future of train travel even as he acknowledged that the American rail network, compared to the rest of the world’s, remains a caboose.

The president noted that his administration’s investments in improving roads, bridges and ports constituted “the most sweeping investment in our infrastructure since President Eisenhower began the interstate highway system in the 1950s.” Still, spending on rail travel in the United States remains a tiny portion of what Eisenhower spent or what Europeans or some Asians are spending.

I absolutely agree with Obama on this. It has been a long time coming.

Like working in your pajamas, greening your home office combines the best of both worlds. You can build an energy-efficient home in a setting that allows for tax writeoffs, equipment sharing, and upgrades that serve you away from the desk, too. Here are 12 ways to create an energy-efficient, eco-friendly home office:

1. Put Your Machines to Sleep

A large copy machine takes as many as 1,400 watts of electricity to operate. Printers, fax machines, desktop computers, and monitors also suck up energy. Turning machines off when you’re not using them use saves energy. Setting your computer to automatically sleep after a short period of time—say, 2 minutes instead of 10—also helps you conserve.

2. Replace Energy Hogs

If you haven’t updated your office equipment in a number of years, you’re probably using energy hogs. They include everything from laser printers, whose quality printouts can be matched by some new inkjet printers, to traditional light bulbs, which lose 95% of their energy through heat. Look for equipment with EnergyStar ratings. Here are a couple of examples:

Energy hog: Incandescent lights.
Replace with: Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

Energy hog: Laser printer, fax machine, copy machine.
Replace with: An all-in-one printer/fax/scanner/copier designed to create high-quality prints, such as the HP Officejet Pro 8500.

Energy hog: Traditional printer paper.
Replace with: Paper that contains post-consumer recycled waste.

3. Lease or Share Equipment

Renting or sharing equipment with other professionals helps you get the best use—and bang for your buck—out of potential energy hogs like printers, copiers, and computer monitors. You don’t have to repair leased equipment yourself, which saves you money. Sharing equipment, on the other hand, lets you split energy costs with a partner.

4. Bundle

Bundling your purchases can save you money upfront as well as cut down on waste. Buying software bundles, such as the MacHeist or the Windows 7 Enterprise Bundle, will save you the time, gas, money, and waste it takes to buy software piecemeal. Moreover, bundles offer discounted upgrades, saving you money in the future, too.

Other useful bundles include Internet-cable-telephone bundles and all-in-one printers.

5. Go Paperless

Paper and packaging are still produce exorbitant amounts of landfill waste. Luckily, going paperless is easy. Electronically sign and file your important documents. Print and photocopy on both sides of the paper. Print drafts, notes, and memos on scrap paper. When you must print, purchase printer paper made of post-consumer waste, available online and at chain retailers like OfficeMax. Recycle the paper you waste.

6. Recycle

This includes recycling plastic, cans, paper, ink cartridges, batteries, used equipment, and even composting. Some items, like ink cartridges, require special disposal methods. Devise a system that makes it easy to recycle everything. Put your can/paper/plastic recycling bins in an easily accessible place. Leave the recycling bags that come with ink cartridges in an accessible place, so that you’re ready to mail in cartridges once they run out. Print out this chart on a piece of scrap paper to remind you where to dispose of batteries. Set up a composting in a ceramic compost pot indoors or in a bin outside.

7. Green Your Cleaning Supplies

Swap out traditional toxic cleaning supplies for green ones. Most supermarkets sell brands like Clorox Greenworks http://www.clorox.com/products/overview.php?prod_id=gw, Simple Green, and Seventh Generation. For quick desktop jobs, green cleaners perform about as well as traditional ones.

8. Audit Your Energy Usage

Audit your home yourself, or call your utilities company for a professional—usually free—one. Fixing and upgrading air leaks, insulation problems, old light bulbs, and old appliances will shrink energy costs.

9. Weatherize

This usually comes after an energy audit. Seal your windows during winter. Open them during summer. Consider installing energy-efficient ceiling fans instead of using your air conditioner. Upgrade your insulation. Buy EnergyStar windows for a tax credit of up to $1,500. Read here for more weatherizing tips.

10. Sign Up for Sustainable Energy Sources

Renewable energy credits, wind energy, and home solar systems are a few ways that you can use sustainable energy sources in your own home. Most major utilities companies have renewable energy programs; see your company’s website for more information. Some alternatives may be costly, but they can reduce your carbon impact by as much as 60%.

11. Maintain Your Equipment

It takes little effort to keep home equipment clean and maintained. Cleaning your computer, printer, and even your portable devices every 6 months will keep the machines running smoothly and save you the possible headache of replacing a fried hard drive. At home, minor tasks like replacing your furnace filter and cleaning the lint out of your dryer will stop machines from consuming more energy than they need.

12. Take Advantage of Natural Light

Move your home office to a space with lots of natural light. This diminishes the need for lamps. Add houseplants, which naturally clean air, to the mix, and your home office will feel like a green mini-retreat.

Note to readers: HP has arranged a special offer for our readers to save 20% ($80) on the new HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One. Go here for the coupon code and terms and conditions. Visit here for more product information.

Photo: Reuters

GM and Segway today unveiled the PUMA, a people-mover that resembles a genetically modified wheelchair. The vehicle, which is controlled wirelessly, goes up to 35mph, but looks like it would crumple if a Hummer came within ten feet of it. The Wall Street Journal reports:

General Motors Corp. is teaming with Segway Inc., maker of the upright, self-balancing scooters, to build a new type of two-wheeled vehicle designed to move easily through congested urban streets.

PUMA would have a range of about 35 miles. GM said it aims to use so-called vehicle-to-vehicle technology to avoid traffic problems and potentially have it navigate itself through city streets.

Is GM trying to poke fun at the government bailout with this green, but useless vehicle? Or are they just being lazy, funding Segway’s geek experiments, and proving to Obama that they are indeed changing their business model?