I wish I had comforting things to say about business on this blog this week.

I'm sure everyone reading here was pained by last week's unemployment figures that showed the country's unemployment is holding steady at 9.7 percent. Some of you live in places where things are even worse, as high as 12 or 13 percent. A few are in places where things aren't as tough, but still painful indeed. Very few Americans at this point can say that their lives haven't been touched by the unemployment of a family member or friend, or perhaps they themselves are struggling with it.

All of us are interested in green business practices, but these days, it seems that the greenification is coming from workers who are having to do more with less. They are doing it to try and give their employers the best chance of staying in business, and thereby, hoping to avoid unemployment themselves.

We already know that there simply isn't an easy way out of the tight spot that we've worked out way into. If there was, we would have already gone for it and be in a happier spot already.

So instead, I'm going to suggest that we take a minute at the start of each day to consider how we can best help each other that day. Take a moment to consider how you, as a green business owner, can help your employee feel better about their job and more secure. Stop and think if there's any way you can bolster a neighboring business or someone whose services you may use. Ponder for just a few seconds as you go through the week on the question of what your best, greenest goals for your business will be in the future.

I can't promise that any of this will solve your problems. But if it helps you stay in business one little bit longer or encourages the person in the shop next to you to provide better, more marketable services or helps your employee to feel a little more confident, maybe that's helpful. And maybe that's all the “better” your business can afford this week.

I'm hoping to be blogging about more upbeat topics to Greenify soon. But until that “bright light appears on the horizon,” perhaps just trying to imagine the attitude that goes with those, for as many minutes as we can, will help lighten the load a little.

Looking for more ideas for Greenified businesses? They are out there. Some are obviously "side businesses" and others will take awhile to grow, but that's the nature of all green things, isn't it? Here are some ideas just to get you thinking:

What about starting a business for "green maid services." This is a small, home-based business idea involving having cleaning personnel go to a home or office, but only use all natural cleaners for their customers. The appeal is great because many people are becoming sensitive to chemicals, perfumes and other aspects. This is an idea whose time has come.

Along the same lines, natural pest control. If you are already in the business of pest control, then you know how important this is. It's time to open up the doors on pest control, and either go for it fully with all natural pest control involving no chemicals (always preferred) or at the very least, begin selling those services in a special offering. We've seen here at the Green Business Alliance that consumers will pay more for green services and this is one that would undoubtedly sell.

Green Dry Cleaning? Same goes for these customers. Using safer solvents and advanced technology for non perc (a dangerous carcinogen affecting industry workers and too often, the properties where these chemicals are used) is an attractive alternative. It's a big selling point, particularly among those of us who have known people in the dry cleaning industry. It's a lot safer for everyone.

Lite packaging consulting services. If you've ever consulted, this may be an area where companies are reconsidering. You could provide information about greener packaging to save money and landfill. Information services require extensive research, but the information is out there and available. If you are the one providing it to businesses, you could recoup some of the money you help those companies save on their packaging.

Car sharing. Community car time share. "Zip Cars" are very handy alternatives to full time vehicle ownership and maintenance. If your community doesn't have them, then maybe there's an alternative that you could organize. Not everyone needs a full time car, but sometimes, they need access to a handy vehicle. Consider the options in your community and whether that could put you into a green business of your own.

Greenifed business opportunities exist, and with a little thought, effort and hopefully, a tiny investment, they could be something that would benefit you and the community around you.

You've never seen people so grateful to see sunshine as those who live in the city of Washington, DC this week. I did exactly as I said and waited for the sun to melt the snow around my car. But after ten days, I confess I got a little impatient. I searched out the house shovel, walked the half mile to my car and shoveled for about ten minutes before I was able to easily drive off.

We have a beautiful planet. It may be a little cold and wet at times, but it's a gorgeous, beautiful and amazing place to live. And while I've been locked up in the house this past bit, I had a lot of time to look at some of the garbage that we carelessly toss around it.

That's because, of course, I was locked up with my recyclables. When the city shut down due to the heavy snowstorms, we lost garbage service.

I've always tried very hard to recycle everything that I can, from used soda bottles to the cardboard rolls inside of toilet paper. (How many crafts did I imagine as a child?)

I grew up on a rural farm where all of the kitchen refuse was collected and fed to pigs. Anything that he could, my father would burn and toss into a compost pile for use in fertilizing a flower bed behind the house. The rest, after careful sorting (Dad hated to throw away so much as a button that could be reused) and washing, was sent to a landfill about 15 miles away.

This past week, I could see on a Capitol Hill listserv that a growing number of my neighbors were becoming very uncomfortable with their garbage. Because I recycle so much, I was just fine.

I bought a small “step can” (purchased at Goodwill) that is lined with a plastic bag where I put wet garbage. I'm convinced that the majority of the items put out in “regular waste bins” are probably recyclable, if I clean and sort them properly.

I've got a couple of large bags of clean recyclables that are blocking off a corner of my kitchen while I wait for full services to resume. There is a sizable box of nonrecyclable items (mixed plastic and paper containers, a few single use batteries and a little bit of this or that) and my tidy, sealed ziploc bag of wet garbage.

I'm looking forward to the city coming around for recyclables this week. Now that I've lived with my garbage in my small apartment for three weeks, I've got a much healthier respect for it. I could put my garbage, unsorted, out for the collection services, but now that I know what it's like to live with it, I don't want the planet to have to live with it either. I'm more excited than ever to recycle and keep my part of our world as green as possible.

By the way, have you chosen a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm to buy your produce from this summer? It's that time! We'll talk about that next week.

I have to share this idea with you. I caught wind of it (oh, that's a good pun in recycling circles, isn't it?) online and am totally caught up imagining it. Picture old railcars, stacked in two's, side by side and two deep. That's right, the hottest trend in eco-building is recycling old shipping containers.

I don't want you to think I am making another joke. The cars themselves are actually air-conditioned, with stylish bamboo cabinets, two bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, ENERGY STAR appliances and low-flow showerheads, too. Definitely green all over!

Consider the consumer-driven economy we've had in this country for the past decades. We've bought everything that we wanted, used it for a bit and tossed it aside without any regard for landfill or consumption levels.

These days, we're reforming. Our new creedo is “eat it up, use it up, wear it out; anything but throw it out. We're finally slowing down the all consuming greed for stuff. One thing we may have left overs on is shipping containers.

Think about it: durable, mobile and definitely economical. Can you imagine anything built to last longer? They are plentiful and comparatively inexpensive. The only thing you can't do is move right in, of course, because until the developer goes over them, they're quite basic.

“We thought they would be a great platform for us to start from since they are extremely durable and are designed to be shipped with heavy loads and to withstand the rigors of ocean travel,” Ashton Wolfswinkel of Upcycle Living adds. “And because the shipping containers are so plentiful, we are able to get them at a reasonable price, thus allowing us to shift costs, to improve quality and make our homes more sustainable.”

Upcycle Living in Phoenix, Arizona, develops the houses that I glimpsed, but other companies have been making use of the containers for housing for some time. Upcycle's new angle is developing them clean, green and ready to shine out for the economy minded house hunter.

Maybe that's our future: green, recycled and altogether indicative of a Greenified, smaller carbonprint.

I am considering what I can do to Greenify this week from a very confined corner of the world: Washington, DC.  In case you didn't see the news this past week, the nation's capital was directly in the path of a huge winter storm.  It struck with the force that hasn't been seen in more than 50 years. 
 
It started at mid-morning on Friday with tiny and widely scattered flakes.  By mid-afternoon, there were several inches on the ground.  And before it was done snowing around 6pm on Saturday, there were more than 20 inches of snow on the ground.  Washington, DC is getting a dose of "how to conserve resources" this week.

The city is shut down.  The federal government is mostly closed, except for "essential personnel."  I had to go in (I'm not very important, yet somehow, I was considered "essential") to work and because I knew things might get difficult, I went to work on Friday night with an overnight case and pillow. 
 
In spite of regular treatment with plows, sand and chemicals, the streets were soon blocked by snow and impassable.  Only the main thoroughfares of town got plowed immediately (and even they had to be plowed repeatedly).   The buses shut down.  Metro, the famed federal rail service also closed wherever the rails were exposed aboveground.  Trash pickup and recycling services also are out of commission.  So what's to do?

For many people, it was still a day of work by telecommuting.  Thousands of federal and other workers went to work in their pajama pants and sweaters.  They "ordered out" from their own refrigerator.  They got their work done without wasting the time, gas or other resources of commuting. (Commuting in Washington, by the way, can add an extra ninety minutes on each end of the day.)  Studies have shown that many people are happier, more relaxed and more productive when they telecommute.  And employers like it better, too, because they don't have to provide office space. 
 
Tomorrow, a lot of Washingtonians will be doing the same.  Maybe you should consider it, too.  Talk to your employees about telecommuting.  Talk to your boss about telecommuting.  Consider whether the work that is being done in your office could legitimately and more reasonably be done at home for one or more days per week.  You may be quite happy with the results.
 
As for me, my car is just off Pennsylvania Avenue, under about 2.5 feet of snow.  I'm not going to dig it out.  I'm going to let nature take its course.  Which means tomorrow, I may have to "telecommute" to the gym.  That's my new name for my pilates workout DVD. 

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I recently attended  "The New Green Economy" conference organized by the National Council for Science and the Environment.  The conference was held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington and welcomed 1,000 attendees at this year's gathering.  I worked with the team providing the event coverage and was fortunate to meet and interview Van Jones.
 
You may remember Van Jones.  He was nominated by President Barack Obama to be his Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.  Although ultimately, Jones withdrew under a cloud of controversy, he is widely regarded to be at the forefront of innovation on environmental jobs and entrepreneurship.  He was a little reluctant to be interviewed, but he did want to get his message out as widely as possible.  I asked him what that message would be.  His response:

"The main message is the tremendous opportunity that we have to make a difference.  The desire that is still there in the country to make a real difference with green solutions.  People in the country are concerned about the economics and jobs and America's strength for the long term.  We need to help them understand that there are green economic solutions for all of that; that you can save money and make money and not just spend money with green solutions."
 
That is the sound of positive thinking at work.  It's also what we believe first and foremost here at the Green Business Alliance.  Right now, a lot of people are thinking the worst about the economy, but those people are wrong.  We've always turned things around in this country and we're likely to do the same again.  And even though things can seem a bit bleak right now (it is difficult to be positive, with the unemployment rate at 9.7% this month, but consider that's up from 10 percent in the final month of 2009), the reality is that the American economy has started to grow again.  The gross domestic product grew at 6 percent in the final quarter of last year. 
 
There really is a lot of good news out there for us.  Sometimes, it can be hard to focus on the good things that are going on.  At such moments, it can be even harder to make good things happen for ourselves and the planet.  But Van Jones seems to think it's the best of all times to do exactly that.  Click here to see more of his interview. 
 
(You can click on his photo to check out his interview or watch all of "The New Green Economy" conference coverage.)

Have a Coke and smile. You are Greenifying. As we have often discussed here at the Green Business Alliance, going green is a good thing for the environment and for business. And one of America's biggest names in business apparently realizes that. That's right, the world's biggest maker of beverages, Coca Cola, has begun using new bottles made partially of plant-based materials, making them biodegradable. The new bottles are only 30% made of plant-based materials, but Coca Cola sees it as a step in the evolution of packaging.

As we all know, plant materials like corn and sugar cane are renewable resources. The U.S. currently uses over 200,000 barrels of oil per day in production of plastic. The old Coke bottles that we've all grown accustomed to required 17 million barrels of petroleum per year to produce. The new bottles will decrease that amount and with it, Coke's carbon footprint in packaging falls an estimated 12 to 18 percent.

The move is part of a new nation-wide movement away from petroleum-based products. The motivations behind it are three-fold: concern about the price of oil and our dangerous dependence on it, safety concerns about chemicals in plastics production and of course, our growing worries about the amount of plastics we are putting into the environment. Instead, the newer plastics are dependent on corn, wheat, sugar beets, sweet potatos and rice to make an alternative to plastics called polyactic acid, or PLA.

Other companies that have already starting using such bottles include Newman's Own (which has been one of the companies at the forefront of the green movement), Wild Oats, WalMart and yes, Coca Cola's nemesis in the beverage market, Pepsico. And if you're drinking soda, you might as well have a few chips. Sunchips are also in a new bag which is made of 33 percent polyactic acid, with plans to increase that amount to 90 percent.

Keep in mind, consumers still need to recycle the packaging itself. PLA is wonderful stuff, but tossed along the side of the road, those bottles and wrappers will likely still be there in a few years. And it's not perfect: products shelf-life isn't quite as long using the PLA packaging. But the manufacterers are working on that as well.

But isn't it amazing to see how important and vital to their industry (and marketing!) greenifying is? They consider it a key part of their strategy. It's the direction they want to go and they want others to see them heading that direction as well.

The new bottles were unveiled at the recent Copenhagen Climate Summit. Drink up! And if the soda you're drinking tastes greener, maybe that's because it is.

This past week in Washington, DC, I interviewed the Environmental Protection Agency Adminstrator, Lisa Jackson, at the "The New Green Economy" conference organized by the National Council for Science and the Environment.  The conference was held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington and welcomed 1,000 attendees at this year's gathering.  I caught Adminstrator Jackson as she entered the back of the hall and waited to be announced for her speech.

The keynote session topic was what many of us wonder these days: "The New Green Economy: (How) Can We Get There From Here?"  Since she was waiting to address the group, I asked her what her message for the 1,000 conference-goers would be?  She said she wanted to offer them the encouragement of President Barack Obama's administration and said that all of us must find our places in the new green economy.  She talked about how the future is full of opportunities to Greenify and that businesses, if they want to survive, will need to fit into the new green economy to succeed in business.

We all want that, don't we?  To fit into the new green economy and to succeed in business?  A lot of people are wondering that right now, so that was my other question (you don't get many questions in while waiting to be announced before a speech) to Administrator Jackson.  "Is there a choice to be made between the environment and the economy?  Can American businesses do both?"

Her answer was extremely encouraging.  She said businesses are going to have to do both. We all are worried about the economy, staying productive and growing as a business, but we need to join the new green economy, too.  In fact, she says that now is the best time to Greenify because being greener is often less costly to businesses. 

That's right, both Administrator Jackson and every expert I spoke with this past week said that a greener business is a more productive and cost effective business.   For instance, if you put on a sweater to lower your thermostat and install energy efficient lightbulbs, you will save money.  If you use recyclable paper, you will save the environment and be able to advertise that to customers.  If you drive an energy efficient car, you will pay less for gas.  If you drive a hybrid, you can save even more.  Re-use, use it up, wear it out and recycle your way into the new greener economy. 

It's an exciting time to be in business.  It's a great time to Greenify.  And doing both is the only way to move forward into the future with the New Green Economy.

By the way, I interviewed someone else that I was very excited to meet.  I'll tell you about that in a week or two.  I'm waiting for the video link to go up so you can all see that interview in action.  I think you'll be excited, too!

Most of us, at some point in the past week, have turned our eyes, minds and hearts towards the Caribbean nation of Haiti. As we all know, this country, the poorest in the world, was hit by a terrifying earthquake one week ago. The quake measured 7.0 on the richter scale, making it the most severe earthquake in 200 years and one of the largest natural disasters of our times.

The resulting agony of Haiti will be months in unfolding, but most immediately, at least 50,000 are dead and the number could rise as high as 200,000. In a nation of nine million, this loss is very painful. The capital city of Port-au-Prince was flattened and all of Haiti's plans for economic development have been put aside in favor of rescue and recovery.

The United States has promised $100 million in assistance and already sent at least 12,000 U.S. military personnel to the region to assist the United Nations and other agencies in recovery and peacekeeping operations. Other countries around the world including China, Brazil, Britain, Japan and Italy have or will send assistance, also in the millions of dollars.

Also being sent are individual donations. If you are considering such a donation, you are to be commended. It's a difficult time in Haiti and if there is a chance that a few dollars could make a difference in someone's life, then surely we all want to help out.

Whether you send that money through your church, a private organization or by offering the money to a public group such as the Red Cross or the fund that President Obama asked former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to set up, we want to offer you some reassurance about a greener future ahead for Haiti. This is part of a statement by President Bill Clinton (made on Fox News on Sunday) about what he sees in Haiti's future:

"Before this earthquake hit, Haiti's per capita income was about $780 a year. Seventy-five percent of the people were living on less than $2 a day. One of the big problems was the deforestation. One of the reasons that the hurricanes hurt more there is its trees have been taken down. People will cut for fuel. They cut up the trees for charcoal, (to) cook dinner.

By the same token, Port-au-Prince and the other cities, like most cities in poor countries, hardly pick up the garbage and they have these unsightly landfills that are public health menaces.

There is a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince which brought the crime rate down and the employment rate up by collecting the garbage, taking the organic material and turning it into fertilizer for farmers, recycling the plastic and the metal, and taking the paper and mixing it with charcoal -- I mean, with sawdust and wetting it then drying it and cutting it into these little briquettes.

And three of them will burn as much for as long to cook dinner for a Haitian family as charcoal, and at about a quarter of the price.

So it's -- you employ 10 times as many people in the process. You save money for the families. And you reduce the incentives to tear down the trees. And if you do that and at the same time build income-earning trees, like mango trees, and reconstitute the mahogany forest and other of these fast-growing trees you can cut down without deforestation. That is, the roots stay and they grow up again."

There is hope for Haiti and we can help them Greenify as they recover from the disaster that has befallen them.

We’re continuing our ideas for new businesses (or updates to existing businesses!) that Greenify.  How about…

6. Green Marketing Expert. You can help companies develop marketing plans that reduces costs and improve their reputations both with consumers and in their communities. From social media marketing to cooperative marketing and using green promotional products, green marketing methods are in demand!

7. Green Investment Adviser.  People that are concerned about the environment want to put their money where their mouth is.  They are looking for green ways to invest and want someone to do the due diligence to find green companies as opposed to green washed companies to invest in.  Could you be that person?

8. Green Business Consulting.  Help businesses that can't afford full time environmental management departments, take the steps toward sustainability.  We’ve got a lot of experts here at the Green Business Alliance that will help you help them.  (We’re ready to help anyone who wants to put a greener foot forward!)  If you can get in there and help them develop a plan, we’re all for that.

9. Boutique Organic Foods for Restaurants.   This truly is a new, small business idea and much of it depends on what kinds of things you can produce.  It can be done on a small scale on less than 5 acres of land and can provide local restaurants with seasonal produce at premium prices.  Might take a deft hand with a hoe and a good supply of the neighbor’s cow manure, but you could find yourself sitting in clover.  And  producing honey.

10. Green Plumbers.  You could help homeowners and businesses reduce their water costs and pollution by promoting, selling, installing green toilets, faucets, and water heating systems.  This one is obviously not meant for a “quick start,” but is more of a lifetime commitment and we wish you luck.

As we wish everyone luck who starts a green business or any new venture this year!  Good luck Greenifying in 2010.  The Green Business Alliance wants to encourage you in every way possible.