How to green up your consulting business

Even though Earth Day was a couple months ago, I just read a great article on Electronic Recruiting Exchange (ERE.net) by Dr. John Sullivan, Green Recruiting: Building Your Environmental Employment Brand. This article urges firms to market their current green strategies to prospective candidates and also highlights how firms can become more environmentally friendly, using specific examples from other companies who are already actively turning green.  John uses Google as an example of an environmentally conscious company with these practices in place:

• $5,000 subsidies for employees buying hybrid cars
• Company dining facilities that serve organic sustainable foods
• Charitable contributions to organizations that fight global warming
• On-site farmers markets
• On-site composting of food waste
• Use of green fuels and solar power
• Fully subsidized employee bus pools for commuting employees

As consultants, we may not be able to incorporate all of Google's practices, but we can do other things, such as using mass transit, or only using 100% recycled paper.  I was curious about what green strategies were out there for consultants, so I asked Andrea Coutu, the creator of ConsultantJournal.com and here are her own tried-and-true suggestions she incorporates into her consulting business:

• Work from home (no commute and use less gas overall)
• Install a programmable thermostat which can automatically turn down the heat when you are out of your office
• Turn off your computer when you are not at your desk
• Use an all-in-one multifunction printer (less office equipment) and turn off when not in use
• Recycle all office paper
• Live in an urban location with the ability to walk to office supply stores and business meetings
• Focus on knowledge-based companies, instead of resource-based companies

Do you have your own green practices?  What are they? Do you market this to your clients? On the flip side, do you have a preference for working with clients that have set 'green guidelines'?

---Colleen

Colleen Williams is the Consultant Community Manager for the HotGigs Staffing Exchange