Q&A: Office eco-audits and certifications

Your eco-questions answered:

Question: I've been thinking about how to go about ways to make the workplace a more environmentally friendly place.  It seems like one would be a lot more successful in convincing others to join in if you could give some facts and measurements. GreenOffice.com, for instance, has an office footprint calculator.  Is there a green office certification agency? Thanks, Maraya

Answer: Your green question has two parts: 1) How to measure an office's carbon footprint, and 2) How to get certified as an eco-friendly office. The two seem to naturally lead from one another -- but actually often end up being very different goals. Let me explain --

First, let's start with measuring a business' carbon footprint. An accurate eco-audit will usually cost the business some money -- so unless you're a bigger business, you might be better off self-calculating some basic figures for individual eco-initiatives (i.e. figuring out how many trees you'll save by switching to recycled paper) instead of going for an all-out footprint measurement. Or, you could use basic, though not as specific or accurate, office footprint calculation tools, such as the FREE Office Footprint Calculator offered by The Green Office, a carbon offset company.

Still, many businesses can benefit from professional eco-audits, which analyze which aspects of the business have the biggest footprint, as well as what eco-initiatives to undertake to get the most footprint-shrinkage per dollar. In the long run, businesses could recoup the money spent on the audit in energy, water, and other resource savings.

Assuming you've got buy-in to proceed with an audit: A good organization to help you get started is Global Footprint Network, a nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif., that has worked to develop uniform and accurate standards for measuring a business' -- or even a country's -- ecological footprint. GFN and many of its participating partners offer footprint analysis services to businesses for a fee. To find one near you, scan the list of participating partners on the GFN website.

If you'd rather not work with an organization directly, but want similar calculations, you can buy the Footprint Scanner software, available for $395 from Sustainability Planning Partners, one of GFN's partners. For more information about this software, read TriplePundit's overview.

For more detailed information on green auditing, including examples and additional resources, read GreenBiz's more in-depth article.

As for green certification: Usually, companies that want certification seek it for marketing reasons. A green grocer, for example, might want to announce to its customers that it is a green business. And because so many businesses are trying to ride the green wave right now, all sorts of odd certification schemes have sprung up. There's even an office supply store giving out "green office certifications" to businesses that their business deems green. Unsurprisingly, more green consumers are getting critical and skeptical of these various less-than-reliable schemes, as they can have widely varying standards.

So -- if you're going to go to the trouble of getting certified, you want that certification to be trustworthy and recognizable for consumers. To that end, city certification efforts are perhaps the best way to go. The City of Santa Monica, for example, has a Green Business Certification program that recognizes green businesses; qualifying businesses get a leafy decal announcing their greenness.

Unfortunately, the City of L.A. doesn't, as of yet, have a similar program -- though the enviro-coalition Green L.A. is working with the city to create one. While we wait for that to happen, one eco-decal green businesses can pursue is local eco-directory Greenopia's "Four-Leaf Award," awarded to very green businesses. This award isn't a certification, and isn't quite as satisfactory as having a city-level program with more solid, publicly-available green guidelines -- but more local people are starting to recognize the Greenopia stickers.

Top photo by brianhendrix