What started as a fringe movement has finally gone mainstream as people have realized that “going green” is not only good for the planet, but great for business. Hooray! But how do you get your web design company on the train to green-town? It’s easy, here’s a few ideas we put into place at PatrickOrtman, Inc. in Los Angeles:

Get Rid Of Your CRTs

Are you still using cathode ray tubes? Shame on you. They hurt your employees’ eyes, and they suck tons of power and put off lots of unnecessary heat. Replace them with LCDs immediately, and dispose of those old CRTs responsibly- there are some nasty things inside them. There’s probably a company in your town that will take these dinosaurs off your hands in an environmentally safe way. Don’t just throw them in the trash.

Embrace Telecommuting and Flextime

The easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint is to get your employees off the daily freeway commute. Guess what? It’ll make them happier, too. Give up a little bit of control- studies show that letting workers work from home makes them more productive, not less. It’s amazingly easy to use tools like video chat and IMs to stay in touch and even have virtual meetings with your staff.

If your folks need to come in, at least give them the flexibility to set their schedules to a certain degree, to minimize the time they need to spend in rush hour traffic. The planet will thank you.

Upgrade Your Computers

Newer computers, like Apple’s MacBook Pro, use a lot less energy and put out a lot less heat. Some web design company workers really don’t need a tower to do their jobs- replace them with an energy efficient laptop and an extra widescreen LCD.

Make Your Company Car A Hybrid

Newer hybrid vehicles- even SUVs capable of hauling equipment like the Ford Escape Hybrid- get amazing mileage and save gas.

Duh. Recycle.

If you don’t- shame on you! First reduce the amount of paper and printing you do. Use PDFs instead of printing out tons of documents. Then, make sure you recycle the paper you do use. You know you can shred sensitive documents with a cross-cut shredder and then recycle the pieces, right? And don’t forget to recycle your printer cartridges. Most companies include a prepaid mailer in each cartridge package. Use it.

Vendor Love

Try to work with vendors who support green causes. A big target is your web hosting company. Those racks and racks of servers eat up a lot of power. Does your hosting provider do everything to reduce their carbon footprint? If you tell them being green is a priority to you, and they hear this often enough, they’ll change.

Get The Word Out.

Maybe the most important thing when going green is letting people know. Not so you’ll get a gold star or a cookie. But because talking about your efforts will get the idea in other peoples’ minds, and it’ll go viral. Your employees will know that you’re open to ideas that can help your web design company be greener, and they’ll go home and think to themselves about ways they can have greener households. Your clients may start thinking about how they can green their businesses. Green is good, and it’s the kind of idea that should be spread about. Get to it!