Blogger Maryanne Conlin of ecopreneurist.com writes in her post on Friday that a struggling economy might be the ticket for a sustainable product boom.

"As I discussed in an earlier post, high energy prices lead to higher shipping prices which support locally produced goods by lowering the price differential. This may tend to keep not only deep green consumers but also those further down in the LOHAS segments shopping.

"For green companies focused on the reusable market, this economic climate is a plus. While sometimes downturns are accompanied by a rush to cheaper goods, the changing belief systems inherent in this one will tend to lead toward longer-lasting, well made goods…in other words, those that last, as consumers eschew the “throw-away” society."

As I read this, I began thinking about what she mentions earlier in the post, namely that Wal-Mart has been seeing record profits over the first two quarters of this year, which made me curious because my thinking was that people were going to Wal-Mart because it is less expensive to shop there than at other retail stores. But perhaps Wal-Mart is doing something else to make themselves alluring in this troubled economy. I was curious so I did a little research.

In the fall of 2006, Wal-Mart announced that it was going to make it's business more sustainable. They said that they would invest money in new technologies to help them reach their goal of using completely renewable resources to power their business. By most accounts, Wal-Mart has, at the very least, begun to make good on their promise. They are encouraging companies to use less packaging for their products. They have replaced the incandescent bulbs in their stores with much more energy efficient spiral bulbs. They have begun a solar initiative. To read more, check out this article by Jack Uldrich.

So Wal-Mart's environmental initiatives are real, but perhaps most importantly they are showing that sustainable business is smart business. Because of these green initiatives, Wal-Mart is saving a lot green in overhead and transportation costs. Hence, the question is not whether Wal-Mart has gone green, but perhaps why. And in the end, whether Wal-mart is going green because it makes better business sense or because of some sense of corporate responsibility doesn't matter. No matter of Wal-Mart's motivation, their green initiative is preventing untold amounts of CO2 from being released into the air.

Venture capitalists have begun to invest heavily in Green Tech. In fact, in 2006, the amount of capital invested in just about doubled from the previous year. An article on the "Knowledge @ Wharton" website wonders if this is the beginning of a "Clean Tech" bubble.

The article points out that the current green tech boom is different from the dot com and housing booms because green tech makes people's everyday lives easier, financially at least. As energy and gas prices climb - and these appear to be higher for the long haul, unlike real estate interest rates - green technology becomes more and more important to people's daily lives. This underlies something that we at LimeLeap have learned and advocated to our clients, namely that green business is good business because it is a great way to cut overhead and in turn affect your bottom line.

The article, through interviews and quotes from various experts, goes onto argue that government regulation is increasingly important to make sure that the bubble doesn't burst, or more accurately that there isn't a bubble at all:

"New kinds of fuel and new forms of electricity generation often depend on government support during development and will continue to do so during their early stages of commercialization. But the need for subsidies would disappear if lawmakers in the United States and other countries imposed some sort of carbon tax or capped emissions and created tradeable emissions permits (a so-called cap-and-trade system), DeRosa pointed out, adding that either step would make clean technologies cost-competitive with conventional fuels such as oil and coal."

Hence with a robust federal energy policy that possibly includes a carbon tax, clean tech businesses might be here to stay... Check back in 5 years.

There's an interesting article in today's issue of the Central Valley Business Times that details the preponderance of green collar jobs, "With an expected growth rate of about 1.3 million new jobs per year through 2030, “green collar” jobs could present the best career opportunities for a generation of college graduates."

This, in turn, the article notes is beginning to change higher education, as universities clamor to provided certificate and degree programs for sustainable businesses. Moreover as the economy changes and green collar jobs gain more and more of the market, lifestyles will change in much the same way that the ".com" boom made computers a necessity, it is possible that green industry will change consuming patterns as well. Could this be a case of business driving a cultural shift towards a "sustainable" economy? I think so, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

Many businesses have made the commitment to environment. As part of a branding and public relations effort, it is important to be certified as an eco-friendly business. This will help to shirk off allegations of green-washing and increase your market share (as consumers are demanding green products and services). For more info, check out Navigating the Wilderness of Green Business Certifications. It is a must read for businesses trying to understand how and why to certify as a green business.

In today's Guardian, there are some very useful tips to lighten your carbon impact while engaging in business travel. You can read about them here.

According to businessgreen.com, consumers are still leery of business' green initiatives. According to a survey done by YouGov, "Two thirds of the YouGov survey's 2,000 respondents rated companies' efforts to reduce their packaging as poor, while 51 per cent were not impressed by their efforts to reduce the environmental impact of transport operations. Moreover, 43 per cent rated initiatives to cut energy use – an area many firms have focused on as they attempt to curb both carbon emissions and soaring energy bills – as poor."

Interesting. There obviously is a market for green business, but consumers want to think that businesses are doing more than just greenwashing. As I've written before, at LimeLeap, we've found that adopting green business practices is a smart strategy as it reduces your impact and saves you money. Moreover, as this poll shows - in Britain at least - consumers are hungry for businesses that devote themselves to conducting themselves in an eco-conscious manner. Maybe your business should jump on the wagon and help satiate these consumers appetite for eco-friendly businesses.

No matter your political persuasion, it is gratifying to see that both candidates from the major parties are taking global warming seriously. Our friends at Grist have compiled a pretty robust report on both candidates proposals for combatting climate change.

Moreover, the Phoenix Business Journal reported today that John McCain has proposed to have a $300 million prize for the company who develops the best battery technology to power hybrid and electric cars. An interesting suggestion, for sure.

This interestingly, dovetails with exactly what Dennis Kucinich suggested in our first Lime-Aid Roundtable, namely that it would be business leaders - not policy-makers - who would be crucial to our struggle with Climate Change.

For those interested in Greening your business, Datamation is a great resource. And in a recent article, Polly Traylor sums up in the best way I've seen what Green IT in general and what the Green Business movement is all about: Using Less to do More.

The article goes on to detail the benefits of greening IT and how to begin. To read the entire article, click here.

A couple of posts ago when discussing Jennifer Zaino's article, I wrote, "It seems larger corporations, while trying to cut costs, are wont to buy more expensive, energy efficient hardware."

Apparently IBM was reading and took my advice to heart as they announced the arrival of Project Big Green.

Check out this short article on istockanalyst.com

Every morning, when I wake up and am getting ready for work, I turn on the television and watch the Today Show on NBC. Most days it frustrates me for a variety of reasons that are not germane to this post. But today one of the stories they were covering was about businesses going to a four-day work week. Their angle on it is that the expense of gas is sky-rocketing which is making it much more challenging financially for the average worker to get to work. I think they missed the boat as they neglect to mention the environmental benefits of this policy. This omission is especially glaring since NBC has been touting their "Green" campaign for a few months now (sometimes laughably on shows like the reality weight-loss challenge The Biggest Loser).

Getting people out of their cars one day a week is quite a boon for the environment. According to our calculations and taking into consideration that the average commute is 22 miles per day, if in 100 companies 30 employees only drive to work 4 days a week, almost 170 metric tons of CO2 would not be emitted into the atmosphere per year. A four-day work week of course is not the only way these sorts of results can be achieved. Simply allowing and encouraging your employees to telecommute one or two days a week will net the same result.

Check out the Today Show's report below.

From our experience at LimeLeap, transforming a company into a green business involves a heck of a lot more than a name change (which we did). In other words, it is more than a marketing ploy. If this wasn't the case, then we would simply be greenwashing. When we got together about 6 months ago to talk about our rebrand, we committed not only to a change in our marketing and look, but also to a change in the overall culture of our business. If we were going to become an eco-business, we would have to walk the walk (not just talk the talk). We knew that. But this walking the walk involved a whole lot more than just having a meeting and saying "green is good. let's do green." We would have to get all of our employees to buy into it; in other words, we needed to incentivize our employees to green our company. This is where a robust Human Resources comes into play.

Adrienne Fox writes in HR Magazine, "HR executives have a lot to do with "greening" businesses and employees. The strategies are not just operational. Many involve educating employees, engaging them in ideas and innovation, and translating environmentalism into employment brands that attract and retain talent." And she's right.

To read Fox's article, click here

There is an interesting article by Jennifer Zaino on bitaplanet.com about how in a recent survey it was found that Green IT is not a priority. It seems larger corporations, while trying to cut costs, are wont to buy more expensive, energy efficient hardware. We at Lime-Aid/LimeLeap think the opposite, namely that the costs of energy efficient equipment will be offset by the savings (both monetary and envrionmental) they provide. Zaino agrees and astutely points out:

"For smaller organizations where IT does want to help the effort to create a more energy- and cost-efficient infrastructure — whether it’s part of a plan to go green or simply to control energy costs — part of the hurdle may be just around understanding where to start. Jessica Vreeswijk, founder of Green ITTools, recently spoke to that issue during a webinar sponsored by Strategic Sustainability Consulting, a firm that specializes in helping under-resourced organizations implement sustainable solutions."

As LimeLeap began to go green, we ran into several of these hurdles that Zaino points to. We hope that Lime-Aid will be resource to those businesses trying to mitigate their footprint. Zaino quoting Vreeswijk's reccomends these technologies to those beginning to wonder how to navigate the greening of their IT departments: upgrading power supplies, consolidating peripheral devices, optimizing the server room set-up so that servers are not right next to the air conditioning, and remotely managing power for the network.

Check out this article here.

Hot of the press. The inaugural Lime-Aid Roundtable is available on youtube. Check it out on our homepage or click here

Check this out. It's an interesting spin on an ancillary business expense but one that the majority of employees participate in: the drinking of a morning cup of joe.

Read more here.

The idea for Lime-Aid came about as our company (LimeLeap) was in the process of re-configuring ourselves. You see, we are an IT company, and as we began to craft our new eco-friendly initiatives around Green IT service offerings, we ran the numbers and noticed that with very small changes to our business model, we could create huge changes in the footprint we and our clients on the environment. In other words, our service wouldn't change; we would just administer these services in a different, more eco-conscious way. It's a novel idea, but certainly there has to be someone else doing this. I mean it makes sense right; eco-conscious practices - like turning off computers and monitors, telecommuting, and responsible printing - save time and money. In other words, eco-friendly business is also smart business.

There certainly are other companies - IT companies even - who have devoted themselves to sustainable technology solutions. And along the way, we read their websites and blogs, watched their videos, and got a good idea of how they do things. As with any subject, in the internet era, a simple Google search for "Green Business Practices" turns up thousands upon thousands of search results. What we hope Lime-Aid will be is a central hub - a gateway of sorts - with a community built around it so the idea of greening your business is not so daunting. We have compiled information on green business practices, put together news and video feeds, created a calendar of events, among other things in order to give those interested in eco-conscious business a stop to go to in this vast web of knowledge we call the internet. In the future, we hope to build a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and businesses, which will freely share their stories and information making it easier for all of us to become more socially responsible businesses.