Does “going green” from a technological perspective imply additional costs and possibly a negative operational benefit? Not according to a recent Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) white paper. In fact, going green can lead to significant cost savings while streamlining business operations. Adoption of the right technology has been found to typically result in three significant winning propositions for your company — cost savings, improved operational efficiencies and environmental benefits.

EMA defines green IT as “products, services and practices designed to improve the efficiency of computing resources in such a way as to reduce the environmental impact of their utilization”. So, greening a company’s operations involves changing processes in order to reduce their impact on the environment.

What does the term "greenwashing" mean?

As the trend of corporate responsibility steers companies to jump on the "green bandwagon," some remain involved only at surface level. "Greenwashing" refers to companies who unjustifiably portray themselves to the public as environmentally conscious. These companies make more efforts to appear to reduce their environmental impact than efforts to invest in the business practices that would actually do so.

As consumers, I think we are aware of the necessity to change the way we produce and consume things – from food and clothing to transit and buildings – to be more environmentally friendly. And no matter where we fall on the “green” spectrum, I’d wager that we all make some personal efforts to reduce waste and conserve energy.