It’s difficult today to go grocery shopping at a local store and NOT see many products that are marked “Environmentally Friendly” or “Good for the Environment”, especially if your looking in the cleaning aisle. In fact, entire companies have been started that only make and sell cleaning supplies that are bio degradable and won’t pollute the local environment. Others have been established that only advise other, bigger companies how to establish a greener image and corporate culture by suggesting what kind of green initiatives they can implement in their companies.

Approximately ten to fifteen years ago many companies, from big box stores to small mom and pop stores, started recognizing that their customers were making buying decisions by not only which stores had the best prices and services, but which ones were doing something about their environmental impact on our environment as well. This has caused many companies to take green initiatives to stop polluting the environment and start to reduce their global footprint. They’ve also begun to realize that by implementing typical green actions (that most homeowners do on a daily basis), such as replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFL bulbs and establishing policies of turning off lights in areas that no one is working in, that they can save millions of dollars a year in operating costs.

But what does a company really mean when they say they are taking green initiatives? Especially when you are talking about a multi billiion dollar corporation, such as Wal mart or Dow Chemical? Most companies green initiatives started out small by taking little steps to cut costs, which coincidentally also lowered their impact on the environment. For example, when a huge conglomerate like Wal Mart decides to replace their light bulbs in their stores with more efficient environmentally friendly ones, they aren’t just saving millions of dollars a year in their electric bills, they are also reducing their impact on their local environment.

But when a company decides to implement an overall green strategy in their corporation is when they can really lower their impact on the environment and start making profits from it as well. Many companies have fleets of cars that they lease for executives or salesmen to meet with their customers. It used to be that these companies would lease big gas guzzling cars that only got 15 or 20 mpg. Now, many companies have begun to lease (or purchase) smaller cars so that they not only save on fuel costs but also so that they can advertise that they are a company that has taken green initiatives and is worth buying products from. Another big step that green companies have been taking to be recognized as such is by reducing their products packaging. Wal mart, for example, has reduced their annual shipping container use (by reusing plastic or cardboard containers that are shipped to their stores everyday) by over 1,000 units a year, which has prevented their consumption of 4,000 trees and barrels of oil while saving them over 2 million dollars in shipping costs at the same time.

One of the most important thing that companies going green have begun to do to lower their impact on the environment and actually make money at the same time has been to recycle all their waste products that they used to just throw away into the local landfills. By recycling all the cardboard that is shipped to them everyday, and then selling the cardboard to a local recycling company not only are they keeping it out of the landfill but they can make a profit that can fund other green initiatives as well. Did you know there is a local grocery store chain in Cleveland, Ohio that recycles enough cardboard every year to pay the entire companies electric bill for the year? Savings like this are a major factor that has pushed companies to go green.

Green Living