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Going Green Business Ideas

Guest post by: Zeeman Haus

Article Overview: Going green business ideas are everywhere on the internet. Some of these are practical for small business while others; not so much. There are steps any business can take to make their practices "more green" and help out the environment as well as improve your company's image. Go with "green" cleaning products. Even if you use a cleaning service, ask them about the possibility of green cleaning products being used in the cleaning of your business. If your service does not have this option available, see about a discount and provide your own.

Going Green Business Ideas

Going green business ideas are everywhere on the internet. Some of these are practical for small business while others; not so much. There are steps any business can take to make their practices "more green" and help out the environment as well as improve your company's image.

Go with "green" cleaning products. Even if you use a cleaning service, ask them about the possibility of green cleaning products being used in the cleaning of your business. If your service does not have this option available, see about a discount and provide your own.

Most offices see the value of recharging their ink cartridges. And while this is a good practice for the large network printers, the smaller bubble jet printers are often overlooked. In most towns there is a business that does nothing but recharge these. Often the fee is cheaper than buying a new cartridge and definitely more green. The down side to this is planning; no one wants to have their printer down awaiting ink for an entire day or two. What we did was simply buy another cartridge and as the first one was emptied, we began using the second while the first one was being serviced at the local pharmacy. We managed to save money by opting for the week service instead of the expedited variety as well. The result was a few more dollars in our pocket and less chemicals and plastic in the local landfill.

This next suggestion is "Green101" but it's amazing to me how many people miss it; recyclables. Sometimes it is as easy as providing two receptacles per desk and at others it can be a little more stringent. I have a friend who is an office manager for a major natural gas provider. After instituting an office wide recycling policy, he noticed that cans were turning up in the paper receptacles and the like by his team's desks. Eventually he went to three strategically placed cans in several locations. This forced everyone to get up and toss their refuse into the right container in full view of everyone. This seemed a little militant to me, but I wasn't the one picking ½ empty cans out of the trash as he pointed out.

A decidedly high tech solution to paper waste is to have a fax server on your network. This way incoming faxes can be looked over before they are printed up. This could save some paper and also help your bottom line a bit as well. Faxes can be saved in PDF format and filed away more quickly than hard copies. In addition to that, so projects that require a single fax be sent from the field to an individual can be equipped with barcodes. These codes will be read by the fax server and put into the appropriate in box. This saves on lost faxes as well.

Making your business green is not as expensive as it sounds. The perception is that "Green" costs. This is not true at all. Watching the environment is in a sense the same as watching your own bottomline.

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Article Tags: business ideas, environment, green, green business, small business
Referred by: http://7inchlcdtv.com/



Related Forum Posts
Re: Are you a Blue, Red, or Green? - Hum... a lot of reds responding... Business owners must be a very aggressive community. Now, I was surprised when I took the course personally to find out I was a Green, secondary Blue. Of course, not believing this, the first thing I did was turn to those around me to get their opinions on my colours (typical Green!). The only thing I can really say about STRUCTOGRAM is that it was fun to explore the depths of my social and physiological make-up... I did this a over a year ago now and still use it in my daily interactions (always be on your toes with Reds).
Re: Interested in Pinterest? - This means pinterest is here to stay and this is what ideas is all about. Ideas make the world go round. Ideas is the fuel of this economy.
Re: 10 ideas to make you money in 2010 - I think Education would be hard to break into. Baby Boomers, Life Support and Trading Down, however, seem like good markets. As for Green technology goes, I don't think the business has to be entirely based on Green ideologies, but rather a business that embrace Green philosophies and use that as a marketing tool.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Ideas For Business - Hello Lucy, you may consider this list for Ideas for Business: (Top 23 list) Rank Company 1 Google 2 Genentech 3 Wegmans Food Markets 4 Container Store 5 Whole Foods Market 6 Network Appliance 7 S.C. Johnson & Son 8 Boston Consulting Grp. 9 Methodist Hospital Sys. 10 W.L. Gore & Associates 11 Cisco Systems 12 David Weekley Homes 13 Nugget Market 14 Qualcomm 15 American Century Invest. 16 Starbucks Coffee 17 Quicken Loans 18 Station Casinos 19 Alston & Bird 20 QuikTrip 21 Griffin Hospital 22 Valero Energy 23 Vision Service Plan


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