The green way is to rent a live Christmas tree for the holidays and then have the tree returned to the environment, alive.

And, the glory of this approach is that you don’t have to do any of the work, you just order the tree and it arrives potted.

After the holidays, the company picks up the tree and bingo, a green Christmas. Your company joins the ranks of those adopting a green office strategy.

Two companies, Evergrow Christmas Trees Co. and Carbonsync Christmas offer the live-tree rental service for about $100 a tree. The trees are returned to nurseries until needed next year. Normally, a tree that takes six to twelve years to grow into a Christmas tree is turned into mulch after a single season.

By renting a live tree and returning it to the nursery, the trees continue to soak up carbon dioxide, so the rental service is yet another way to minimize emissions that create climate change.

In other green Christmas developments, how about running the lights on your tree in a carbon-free manner?

In Copenhagen, home of the big international greenhouse gas emission conference, the city’s Christmas tree lights are powered by pedal power — a team of stationary bicyclists power the tree’s lights.

The goal is to encourage energy and water use reductions to create a green office environment.

But there are many obstacles to achieving the elusive “green office” goal in landlord/tenant arrangements because there are so many variables to controlling overhead costs like electric and water bills.

To help businesses navigate these troubled waters, the California Sustainability Alliance has just published its Green Leases Toolkit, version 2.0. The toolkit helps commercial landlords and tenants:

• educate their organizations about green office and green building practices
• develop their own green leasing policies and requirements
• measure and compare green attributes of different buildings, and
• develop specific green lease language.

Right now the green lease idea is voluntary, but it may not be long before state governments start mandating the idea to help them meet their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction promises.

Like so many things, California’s pushing ahead aggressively to reduce its collective carbon footprint and encourage more economical water and electricity use. Secondary goals include reducing stormwater runoff and commuting times for workers.

For example, the Green Leases Toolkit helps businesses select appliances based on their energy efficiency, as rated by EPA’s Energy Star program.

One of the early adopters to the Green Lease idea is Thomas Properties Group, which is building California’s The MetroStudio@Lankershim. The developers are using the toolkit to adopt green building standards and earn kudos from EPA’s Green Building program. The company has set goals to reduce:

• water use by 30%
• construction waste that goes to landfills by 90%
• stormwater runoff by increasing infiltration into groundwater, and
• carbon emissions by 40% to 50%.

Click here for details about MetroStudio’s green office plans. A list of Thomas Properties Group’s projects with the Alliance is here.

The Alliance’s Green Lease Toolkit is here.

Get ready for green lease negotiations, whether you’re the commercial tenant or building owner.

The goal is to encourage energy and water use reductions to create a green office environment.

But there are many obstacles to achieving the elusive “green office” goal in landlord/tenant arrangements because there are so many variables to controlling overhead costs like electric and water bills.

To help businesses navigate these troubled waters, the California Sustainability Alliance has just published its Green Leases Toolkit, version 2.0. The toolkit helps commercial landlords and tenants:

• educate their organizations about green office and green building practices
• develop their own green leasing policies and requirements
• measure and compare green attributes of different buildings, and
• develop specific green lease language.

Right now the green lease idea is voluntary, but it may not be long before state governments start mandating the idea to help them meet their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction promises.

Like so many things, California’s pushing ahead aggressively to reduce its collective carbon footprint and encourage more economical water and electricity use. Secondary goals include reducing stormwater runoff and commuting times for workers.

For example, the Green Leases Toolkit helps businesses select appliances based on their energy efficiency, as rated by EPA’s Energy Star program.

One of the early adopters to the Green Lease idea is Thomas Properties Group, which is building California’s The MetroStudio@Lankershim. The developers are using the toolkit to adopt green building standards and earn kudos from EPA’s Green Building program. The company has set goals to reduce:

• water use by 30%
• construction waste that goes to landfills by 90%
• stormwater runoff by increasing infiltration into groundwater, and
• carbon emissions by 40% to 50%.

Click here for details about MetroStudio’s green office plans. A list of Thomas Properties Group’s projects with the Alliance is here.

The Alliance’s Green Lease Toolkit is here.

Still looking for a way to do something green for your company that won’t cost an arm and a leg?

Target all that paper your company’s buying and then paying to dispose of. Paper recycling programs are one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get started on the green business path. And, the paper industry is pushing hard to help all of its customers get into the recycling business.

Lending pressure to recycle paper and paper packaging, from office paper to cardboard shipping containers, the industry trade group, the American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA), has set a goal of recycling 60% of its products by 2012. America recycled 57.4% of paper products by close of 2008.

To join in on the action, the group tracks successful case studies of how businesses, universities, schools and municipalities create various paper recycling programs. Most stories tell a similar tale of starting small and then letting the programs grow more sophisticated.

The basic approach is to start small and tackle the easy things first, then expand your company’s paper recycling programs. For example, to get an office paper program going, AFPA recommends that you:

1. first, audit your office to get a list of the types of paper you’re dealing with
2. then identify which ones are recyclable
3. then develop an action plan with a recycling company
4. then get your management on-board
5. then educate and win buy-in from your co-workers, and
6. finally, measure and share results.

The AFPA case studies are here, at paperreycles.org.

The site also includes a special chapter on recycling in office environments, click here for details.

One solution is the .pdf file by Adobe, which can help you eliminate paper, the hassles of filing and all the hardware costs associated with printing, faxing or copying a page.

That’s the promise offered by Duff Johnson, CEO of Appligent Document Solutions. Johnson helps companies get their arms around the .pdf technology to move towards the paperless office goal.

He promotes cost-saving opportunities in any office situation because each office-worker consumes 4,000 sheets, or 8 reams of paper a year. And Johnson likes to point out that making paper releases carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on top of creating water and air pollution problems, even if the paper contains recycled content.

But “electronic” paper skips all that pollution, as well as the costs of maintaining copiers, fax machines, scanners, printers, software, etc. Then, there’s the savings on clerical costs of handling all the documents that can be better managed.

All this can be reduced with .pdf technology, as is detailed in a blog Johnson writes. Johnson’s articles are here.

Three business desktops have recently been anointed as green bargains by PC Magazine. The bargain winners offer a mix of good value with energy saving features to help promote a green office.

They’re green because they conserve energy. They’re good values because of recent price cuts by manufacturers. Some prices have dropped nearly 40%.

The keys to a “green” computer are a mix of fast processing power, which reduces power demand and heat, plenty of hard drive space and compact size. Winning choices this summer include units by HP Compaq’s dc7900 Ultra-slim and two from Lenovo, the ThinkCentre M57p and the ThinkCentre A62.

Bargains range from $553 to $1,373.

PC Magazine sees these bargain units working well in office environments where workers don’t need extra power and space for music and videos.

Click here for the magazine’s desktop picks.

Despite vocal complaints from global warming skeptics, the debate is over for many companies. They assume greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation is a done deal, and they’re looking for ways to capitalize in a world where fossil fuels are liabilities.

One strategy emerging is to adopt green building technologies that will reduce GHG emissions related to lighting, heating and cooling.

Cost cutters in green buildings include more efficient plumbing fixtures that reduce water use by more than a third. Other innovations help “green” a building by reducing use of ozone-depleting air conditioning refrigerants and buying renewable energy from wind and solar providers.

But green building techniques also help reduce employee absenteeism.

Those are all part of the reason why the insurance and risk management service provider, DNV built a 90,000 sq. ft. headquarters for its North American operations that meets the U.S. Building Council’s Gold Level, LEED certification, inside and out.

The new DNV headquarters is just outside Houston, and is home to 275 employees who consult on energy, healthcare, climate change, food safety, maritime and transportation issues.

DNV made the green building investments that will save money and have bonafide short-term returns on investment by installing:

• more efficient lighting systems
• timers and motion detectors to turn lights off in empty rooms
• Energy Star rated appliances, and
• special coatings on windows that allow light in but reduce the heat transfer that comes with all that sunlight.

But the company also justifies these energy-saving upgrades by citing harder to quantify benefits, including making office life more pleasant for the employees. DNV’s convinced green building innovations help boost employee satisfaction and productivity, which in turn reduces absenteeism by:

• letting in more natural light
• using more attractive lighting fixtures, which has prompted positive responses from employees who say the new lights are “invigorating,” and
• reducing the new building smell by buying “green” versions of floor coverings made with reduced levels of volatile organic compounds.

DNV’s case study highlights are here.

Most companies leave way too much green on the table. But there’s good news in a new analysis of Green IT practices: Becoming more efficient does not require new equipment.

Instead, IT departments can cut costs and go green at the same time by focusing on accountability and productivity. The best green saving opportunities are to be found at companies with less than 500 employees.

The common problem: Many companies only focus on one aspect of improving a computer department’s eco-friendliness, say by buying equipment with high energy efficiency ratings.

But to maximize profitability, Redemtech Research reports that IT departments can contribute to their company’s bottom line by adopting a holistic approach towards sustainable computing, one that:

• extends lifecycles of desktop and laptop computers
• increases energy efficiency
• raises utilization and reuse rates, and
• emphasizes responsible recycling.

Redemtech’s Sustainable Computing Assessment reveals that companies can save more money by using products longer instead of replacing them. For example, the Redemtech’s analysis recommends extending the lifecyle of desktop computers. A three-year life generates savings of $325 for every $1,000 of original cost while keeping them four years generates nearly $500 in savings.

To improve a company’s IT sustainability quotient, Redemtech’s research survey recommends:

1. establish baselines to quantify sustainability targets
2. create specific policies for achieving each sustainability goal
3. extend desktop and laptop computer lifecycles
4. optimize utilization to reduce reliance on idle technology, and
5. make people accountable for achieving each goal.

To review the report, click here.