Businesses are immensely selfish enterprises. They’re always doing things for the bottom line.

No wonder most businesses reject environmental issues.

The assumption seems to be that “going green” means more cost and less revenue. Not all green products are pretty or functional.

Yet we see examples of companies profiting by “going green”. Toyota started addressing rising oil costs in the 1990’s. The result? The Toyota Prius, one of the best selling cars in America.

It’s no surprise that a Japanese company is now a world leader in cleaner technology. It was Japan that embraced Dr. Deming and the total quality movement. One of the central tenets of TQM is to minimize waste. Toyota expanded this idea from the factory to the product.

However, minimizing waste doesn’t have to mean breakthrough technology. Kaizen, an idea borne from TQM, means continuous improvement. Little improvements made consistently over time lead to huge savings.

So how can companies minimize waste? The first step is to identify waste.

There are many examples of waste:

- Time

- Resources (I exclude people as a resource)

- Talent (this is where I include people)

Going green focuses on resources, but I submit that minimizing waste is a mindset. If it’s a good idea to minimize resource waste, then it’s a good idea (or perhaps a great one) to minimize time and talent waste.

Some examples, by no means exhaustive, of waste:

- Commuting time. For years, this cost was the price paid for operating as a business. With the growth of knowledge work, is commuting time more wasteful than beneficial? Besides the time waste, commuting uses resources too, that create their own waste (trains, planes, and automobiles).

- Paper, ink, printers and copiers. How much waste is there in printing documents that could easily be shared via collaboration tools or projectors?

- Plastic, cardboard, and styrofoam. How much waste is there in disposable plastic water bottles, coffee cups, and boxes, that could be replaced by permanent water bottles, coffee mugs, or electronic storage?

- Water. Do bathrooms use water minimizing technology? Do your operations consider water conservation?

- Meetings. How much time is wasted in meetings? I believe that meetings are a valuable tool to collaborate and innovate; but many times, they waste time with too many invitees, too many people checking out of the meeting and checking the Blackberry instead, unclear agendas, and uninspired purpose. Are all these meetings necessary? Could more be done with less?

- Data centers. Do you consider the cost of managing a data center? Energy costs for data centers have been growing for years, with more powerful processors requiring more energy. Can servers be reduced? How about replaced by more efficient models? Can virtualization reduce the amount of servers you require?

- Boring jobs. Many jobs are narrowly defined, uninspiring, and use the least amount of human capacity. How can jobs be turned into callings? What movements are in your company that inspire people do their best, or to stretch them? How can jobs be redefined to get the best out of our available talent?

What other ideas do you have? What other kinds of waste do you see?