Also this year I’m supporting Blog Action Day an initiative that aims to unite bloggers around the world to post about the same issue on the same day, 15th of October.

This year the Blog Action Day topic is ‘climate change’ so I thought to share some tips on how I’m conducting a greener business and consequentially reducing the impact on climate change.

These are some of the solutions we implemented at iTive.net (the international digital strategy agency I’m leading).

• Do not accept/send any paper invoices/mail. At iTive we only accept/use e-invoices/PDFs. Shifting our record of invoices to electronic format helped us in managing our archive better, faster and from wherever we are (quite handy since we have an international team).
• Provide remote consulting via online/virtual meetings at cheaper fees. Clients save money on their budget paying lower fees, we save time and reduce CO2 emissions avoiding traveling. We started to do this at iTive mainly for green reasons (since this meant reducing our fees) but in the long run we realized that the time we saved in trips went to address the needs of more clients so it all turned into more business for us. If you don’t do consulting I’m sure you can find similar approaches in your niche too.
• Use digital business cards instead of traditional ones. Go digital by sending your contact vCard/info via bluetooth from your Nokia/PDA or from your iPhone by using applications like beamME which lets you create a vCard and send it to people you meet via email, mobile number, or even Twitter direct message. You can also use tech gadgets like MyNameIsE. If you (and the people you meet) are web savvy you can point them directly to your Card.ly profile.
• Invite people to think before printing out any page from you website. There are countless number of tools that can help you in doing this but at iTive we use Eco-Safe which enables visitors to download pages as PDF or send/share them via email. You can add reminders also in email signatures (I’m shocked by the number of people that still print emails).
• Monitor your carbon footprint using Dopplr. Last year Dopplr teamed up with AMEE to help you measure your travel carbon emissions. What I love about it is that they are able to monitor your emission not just for past trips but for future/planned ones too. Here’s my CO2 report for 2009, you can view all the data on my dopplr profile.
• Reduce emissions from your company energy use. Focus on energy efficiency starting from little things like turning on the energy savers on your computers, use your HDD minimally, go for LCD monitors  and forget about CRT (they consume way more), etc. Now you can also monitor your electricity usage in real time via web thanks to software tools like Google PowerMeter (Google even suggests you what devices to use).

These are just few suggestions but ultimately are your intelligence and consciousness what make the difference. Keep it mind!

Andrea

Here you find my post from the previous Blog Action Day editions:

• Poverty (2008)
• Environment (2007)

Via Email

Or if you prefer subscribe via RSS feed