Accidently Green

I really didn’t try to start a “green” business. It was never my intention. Quite frankly, I am a man-made global warming skeptic. (I don’t really want to debate it, so I’m not going to.) But trying to work in the virtual world makes me accidently green. Here’s how:

1. I don’t commute 5 days a week. When I was commuting, I was travelling 20 miles to get to work. Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with rush hour often, but it was still a long drive. I still drive for business, after all, I need to network and find clients and some clients want on-site support, which I will happily provide if they truly need it.

2. I make dual use of my home. It’s home; it’s office. Whatever it is at the moment, it is a dual use space, but please don’t tell those sticklers in the HOA. It might be against the rules. Thankfully, I’m on the board and long ago (when I was still employed – for someone else) we decided that as long as businesses didn’t add to the burden of the neighborhood by adding excessive traffic, home businesses were acceptable.

3. Oh yeah, I also use a lot of CFLs i.n my home, if you want to count those. The main reason is because I’m cheap, so CFLs are a better value overall for lifecycle and electric savings.

4. I use almost no paper anymore. Because a lot of work is passed electronically, I don’t print the reams of paper I did when I worked in offices. Some of the change comes from using QuickBooks, which reduced paper use over a specialty accounting software, which printed every transaction, usually twice, sometimes three times. So now QB payroll produces 7 or 8 pages, where the old program produced at least 30 pages of reports, all vital for good record-keeping.

I feel bad sometimes, like when I attend my Chamber of Commerce “Green” events. Those people or at least some of them are true believers. I just fell into it because of my business model. I’m sure there are others in my situation, but few of us will admit it – at least at the green-themed meetings. I’m accidently green. None of this means that I won’t use my greenness to my benefit. It's a great marketing tool. I just may need to avoid the whole global-warming, the-sky-is-falling discussions so that I don’t out myself as a skeptic.

Maybe I can plant a tree to assuage my guilt. I hear planting a tree is an acceptable alternative to truly buying into the movement or something like that. Have you ever just accidently joined a movement you don’t really believe in – for the marketing possibilities or any other reason?