Article excerpt:
Your green top 10 list for 2008
So you’re ready to get started. Here are 10 more things you can start doing right away, all in 2008, to create a comprehensive, compelling and results-driven green strategy for your business and brand.

Internally
1. Recycling: Surprisingly, not very many of us are doing it, and not nearly to the level that we easily could. Office recycling programs now easily tackle not just paper, but also glass, aluminum, cardboard, catalogs, magazines, etc. — all in the same bin. Think also about how your company recycles office equipment, computer supplies, etc. Much of these tools can be donated or sold to companies and third-world companies that will put them to good use, reducing the need for new equipment manufacturing, which itself creates an incredibly high carbon footprint.
2. Transportation: Encourage and subsidize more of your employees to use group and public transportation. Rethink whether or not you need that business trip, or if a phone call, WebEx or video conference could suffice.
3. Power management: Consider implementing a PC power management solution, such as those described above. This can have an immediate impact on not only carbon footprint, but also operating costs.
4. Office guidelines: Default all printers to duplex printing. Encourage employees to only print what’s necessary and to use “soft copies” for everything else. Encourage and reward activities across the company that demonstrate employees “living the green brand.” You’ll be surprised what unique and compelling green strategies individual employees come up with that can become internal and external sustainability strategies for your business and brand.
5. Supplier & partner guidelines: Encourage or require your partners and suppliers to maintain certain green-friendly operating standards. Several companies, such as Wal-Mart, are already doing this, and are thereby impacting sustainable practices well beyond their own.

Externally

6. Community engagement & activation: Encourage your customers to be green with you. If you’re enacting PC power management solutions within your business, encourage your customers to do the same. Getting them involved and participating with you in your green strategies is an excellent way to build community and create strong bonds between brand and customer.
7. Community participation: Find ways to actively participate in existing community activities, organizations and other efforts to be green and sustainable, especially efforts that align with your company and brand’s core values and brand message. This can be local or national organizations and efforts — focused on employee participation or widespread customer activation.
8. Channel choices: Consider the carbon impact of your marketing channels, and how you read, influence and empower your customers. Participating in a trade show, for example, is a carbon footprint-heavy strategy compared to an online-based, community-based activity that likely can achieve the same awareness or demand generation results. And if you’re making channel choices based on what’s most sustainable, tell your customers and prospects about it. They’ll appreciate the motivation behind your choice.
9. Competitive advantage: If being green is truly a key and possibly new part of your brand message and positioning, lean into it. Make it something that everyone across your organization — sales, marketing, customer support, etc. — is reciting as a mantra in their individual engagements with your customers and prospects. Make your green strategy a true competitive advantage.
10. Endorsements & associations: Partner with Energy Star, buy products from suppliers with strong environmental stories (such as HP for computers and printers), and work with credible speakers, writers and authorities already in the green and sustainable world to align with your brand, endorse your strategy and help tell your story.

Learn more, get involved, live the brand!
These pointers, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg. Green opportunities are proliferating and the opportunities for smart brands to get involved at a tangible level and make a significant impact — for their companies, their bottom lines, their market share and their employees — is real and very dynamic.

Below are several links to start investigating what other companies are doing, and to spark your own creative juices.

Microsoft has published a strong sustainability white paper detailing its commitment to sustainable business practices. It’s a good read, especially for new ideas that might make sense for your company and brand.
Verdiem is one of the leaders in helping large brands and enterprise companies significantly reduce their PC energy usage, costs and carbon footprint. Learn more about them here. You can also learn more about broader opportunities on Green IT.
Check out several well-written green marketing blogs, including Sustainable Marketing, Marketing Green and Green Wombat.
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is another simple, fast step to help you and your company do its part.

Matt Heinz is senior director of marketing for Verdiem and the author of Matt on Marketing. Matt also recently completed work on two books, Are You Selling Pants, or Selling A Dream? and Move The Mouse & Make Millions.