The Best Money-Saving Green Tech Business Practices: Green Technology Articles: Eco20/20

The Best Money-Saving Green Tech Business Practices

The field of green technology covers the evolution of generating power, of finding alternatives to commonly used toxins, and of reducing wastes and pollution, along with reducing the consumption of finite resources. Perhaps oftener than people realize, green technology may also address money saving concerns. Here are a few money saving aspects of these time-honored green technology issues.

* How does reducing wastes, pollution and the consumption of finite resources save businesses money?

o Perhaps the best known green technology issue is the improvement of energy efficiency. When a business can use fuel and resources more efficiently it is, virtually by definition, a money saving accomplishment.

o The internet is absolutely a money saving, eco-friendly technology. Tremendous sums are saved by businesses using the two greatest practices for reducing waste and consumables: paperless billing and on-line payment options. Plus, every time a cross-country conference is conducted on-line versus on-site, it not only reduces fuel consumption, and therefore pollution, it improves the bottom line of doing business, by saving the company air-fares, hotel costs, and per-diems.

* Who benefits from eco-friendly power generating?

o This issue is trickier. The cost of generating private eco-friendly power comes from buying and maintaining the equipment to gather the energy and distribute it to your business. The cost of buying power from a utility will include all of that, plus the profits, pensions, and what-not of the utility company. Unless your business is an especially large one, you may find the utility company has a better handle on the issue. But that doesn't mean you don't benefit from alternative power.

o As the designs of solar collectors and wind turbines continue to improve, producing alternative energy will become less expensive on a global scale. That cost reduction is attracting investors, which in turn is encouraging a more aggressive development that will further boost output. These efforts are raising the alternative energy industries to the status of a fast growing market.

o For large businesses, the return-on-investment from alternative power may still be slow, but with government incentives available, if a business makes the effort to analyze their power consumption they may find, based on their needs, that a private power station will improve their bottom line.

How does a business save money by using alternatives to cleaning toxins?

o Common toxic chemical solvents used for cleaning often lead to asthma in adults, and are three times more likely to cause cancer than air pollution. You may find creating a healthier environment for your employees will not only reduce lost productivity, and prevent lawsuits from employees who are exposed to chemical toxins; f you provide your employees with a health plan, it may also result in a lower insurance rate from your health-care network.

Then, of course, there's the question of what value will you set on the concept of ethical responsibility. Any company executives out there so ignoble they would refuse to practice good stewardship of the planet, or improve conditions for employees, based entirely on their assessment of the cost sheets should be set down and forced to read more Charles Dickens.