Company Incentives for Going Green?

Greenie asks: "With fuel costs reaching record highs and more eco-friendly vehicles on the market than ever before, one has to ask, is it making a difference (yet)? NewEnough.com is an online retailer of new and surplus/wholesale motorcycle apparel based in West Texas. Recently, they posted a letter to the public on their website about how they've 'gone green,' and are offering incentives to their employees for switching to modern, fuel efficient vehicles (hybrid electric, diesel, bio-diesel...). While the specifics of their incentive program were not discussed, has anyone ever heard of larger companies offering a similar incentive program? According to Fortune.com, Wal-Mart is the largest employer in America. If Wal-Mart, McDonalds, UPS, GM, and Ford, the five companies that Fortune lists as having the most employees, all offered a similar incentive, more than 2,865,700 people would be eligible for incentive to go green. That could really start to make a difference for the environment. Now imagine the environmental benefit of every company in America making this same incentive offer..."

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Greenbacks

[Doc Ruby]

In California there's a market for "landfill credits". Corporations get landfill credits they spend when filling land with waste. They can trade their unused credits in a market. I used to work for a recycling company that was paid to haul off several shipping containers each week from Silicon Valley firms, which then traded that volume in credits for cash. Big "customers" of ours included Apple, HP, IBM, Lockheed, Bank of America. We resold and recycled all that material, redistributing technology around the Pacific Rim in partnership with our Phillipine and Australian branches. California managed its landfill expansion, corporations had a market for their participation, material got distributed more around the world, and we made a bundle. And I got to play with the craziest Frankenstein lab ever, right on the shore of the San Francisco Bay - even buying my first BMW for $300 as "salvage" - and my first SGIs and VAX, too, along with all kinds of Akihabara-grade tech mutants. The landfill market monetized the hidden costs of the product lifecycle which otherwise would be paid by everyone in pollution costs, while still making clear that "we're all in it together". When the actual costs are included in the economy, the incentives for "going Green" are simple and obvious.