The Basics of Greening Your Business

Many small businesses are helping their employees set up carpools and vanpools and even encouraging bike riding with incentives such as free lunches, flex schedules, once-a-week telecommuting options, gift cards and other perks. While it's not practical for all companies, some businesses provide an incentive to walk or bike to work by setting up showers, lockers and private changing areas. To encourage biking and walking, businesses have also helped set up buddy systems, where they help arrange for two or more people living in the same area to travel together.

If you'd like an easy-to-manage means of arranging your carpooling that rewards those who embrace alternative transportation, you might contact RideSpring. Since the toughest part of starting and maintaining a carpool program is actually organizing it, RideSpring takes the onus off the business by providing software to handle the task. It also has a means of tracking the energy savings of your alternative commuters.

You can also look into Zipcar or Flexcar as a means of having cars on hand for employees who need them. Both of these are innovative ways of having a car available when necessary, and yes, they are low-emission, fuel-efficient vehicles.

Rich Mintzer is the author of 101 Ways to Turn Your Business Green, available from Entrepreneurpress.com and for sale at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders. He is an expert in making complicated topics reader-friendly, including business, technology and environmental concerns. He has written more than 45 nonfiction books on a wide range of topics. He has also spent 20 years as a magazine journalist and the past several years writing and producing Web content.