These days, most forward-thinking companies are exploring their “green” business practices, which help maintain and sustain good environmental quality. For water treatment or bottled water businesses, this concept makes perfect sense: Pure water is nature’s lifeblood and the source of your livelihood.

The opportunities to incorporate green into your water business’s operations are innumerable. They include small, day-to-day practices and larger steps that offer greater sustainability, such as greening up your retail or walk-in water store. Inside your water store, promote your “green” building practices to visitors — after all, your customers come to you for cleaner, healthier water.

Go green in a small way
Some businesses might find it easier to begin with small steps toward green practices.

Authorities on taking the environmentally friendly plunge recommend setting new goals in several areas, such as paper waste. Recycling is good, but creating less paper waste from the start is better: Begin by printing fewer documents, and update your customer base to go paperless by using software that allows electronic maintenance of accounts, including billing.

Institute company-wide practices that encourage sustainability. For example, when updating your water business’s vehicles, consider whether it would make sense to switch to hybrid or more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Does your company encourage installers, salespeople, technicians and delivery personnel to turn company vehicle engines off when making calls or deliveries, even on very brief such stops?

Grassroots organization Idle-FreeVT reports that a warmed-up, parked vehicle should not idle for more than 30 seconds, noting that the impact to the environment is greater than if the vehicle’s engine is completely turned off and restarted. Also, according to the group’s Web site (www.idlefreevt.org), warming up a cold engine for 30 seconds, even in subfreezing weather, usually suffices. If you’re concerned that a 30-second warm-up is too brief, don’t strain or gun the engine for the first few minutes of driving.

Before leaving the office or water store for the night, shut down equipment that will unnecessarily draw electricity. Turn off and unplug computers, printers, external hard drives and other appliances that are not needed overnight. As equipment is replaced, check local options to recycle used electronics items.

While the above is not an exhaustive list of small ways to decrease your business’s carbon footprint, once instituted, they may help pave the way for bigger changes, including operating a green water store.

Get started on sustainable building
To help make your building or operation more Earth-friendly, you may want to consider the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.

Considered one of the most recognized ways for businesses to take their facilities green, the LEED rating system was developed in 2000 to reduce the environmental impacts of the built environment. New buildings or renovations would follow the LEED “New Construction” system, and existing buildings can be updated with its “Existing Building” rating system.

Both systems are based on five areas:

• Water efficiency
• Site selection
• Energy and atmosphere
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality.

A look at water conservation
According to the LEED rating system, you can conserve water through three different measures: irrigation, sewage conveyance and fixtures. In the newest version of the Existing Buildings system, you get credit for simply metering and submetering your water use, and there are points available for better management of the cooling towers used for heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

In considering how to green up your business building, start with landscaping.

In the LEED system, points are based on reducing the amount of potable water used for watering the grounds at your site. Of course, one way to do this is just not to water — but you also can do things like capture rainwater to use later for irrigation (see “Treatment for rainwater catchment,” Water Technology®, November 2008).

If you do decide to water less, you can change your landscaping to use native plants that do not require additional irrigation. You also can use adaptive plants, which are plants that will need only the same amount of water as local plants.

Look for opportunities within your business for collecting “graywater,” which can include sink water and wastewater that has been used to wash vehicles; to assemble, design or repair your water-system products; or perhaps to supply a bottling process. It is possible that this water can be collected after its primary or secondary use in irrigation or for flushing toilets. Check your local codes first, but if you are able to do this, that is what sustainability is all about.

Earth-friendly choices
“Site selection” in the LEED system is all about preserving or even improving the land on which your business is located. Examples of this are landscape features that reduce stormwater that would flow into neighboring sites or a sewer system, a location near public transportation, or otherwise making it easier for employees to carpool or even ride bicycles to work.

If your water business has a parking lot, you can cover your parking lot or install a white roof to reduce the heat-island effect. There also is LEED credit for shading your lighting to prevent light pollution of the night sky.

The “energy and atmosphere” section is about energy conservation — primarily lighting and HVAC-related energy. LEED points are awarded for generating your own “renewable” electricity on-site or buying renewable energy from your utility. On the atmosphere side, the goal is to reduce the use of ozone-harming refrigerants.

“Materials and resources” addresses such initiatives as using recycled materials and having a recycling program in your facility. It also encourages using local products (those produced within a 500-mile radius) and rapidly renewable products (those which are harvested in a 10-year cycle or less), such as bamboo used to make office furniture or other items.

A breath of fresh air
“Indoor environmental quality” is about the health and comfort of you and your employees. Here the LEED rating system addresses outdoor air delivery in your ventilation system, the right type of filter to use on the building’s HVAC system, and the types of paints, sealants and adhesives that you use in building construction or your business activities. It also addresses such topics as lighting and temperature control performed by building occupants.

For existing buildings, the LEED system places a lot of emphasis on “green cleaning,” which addresses the elimination of harmful chemicals used for cleaning. It also advocates the use of “integrated pest management,” which means driving the bugs away from your building or keeping them out, instead of killing them inside your building with insecticides.

Green building is an ongoing process, and sustainable technology will continue to bring new advances. You will find that if these measures are done correctly, you can save money on your energy bills and also reap better productivity from your employees because they are healthier and more comfortable.

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Dan Bulley is executive director of the Green Construction Institute, which is based in a green building in the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge, IL. He also is the senior vice president of the Mechanical Contractors Association of Chicago (MCA Chicago), and is the association’s resident expert on green building. He is secretary of the Chicago Chapter of the US Green Building Council, volunteer chair for Greenbuild, and a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-accredited professional.