Be sure to check out Part 1 of “Go green: All the cool companies are doing it!” to get caught up. Here, we begin with number six out of my 10 favorite tips for going green. As with the first five, some of these are well-known but others may be completely new to you. Dig back into the earthy goodness:

1. Go for recycled paper or at least recycle your own. Even paper that is only 30% recycled makes a difference while being more cost-effective than 100% recycled paper.  You may not even think about how much paper you’re tossing in the trash right now, but make an effort to recycle all of the paper you have and you’ll see a big difference in your landfill contribution.

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For about 40 years, companies have been making efforts to go green. Going green is often mistaken for “environmentally friendly,” when in fact it’s more like “not particularly harmful to the environment” or “environmentally neutral.” There isn’t much you can do that will actually improve the condition of the environment, so many experts say that we shouldn’t get caught up in that line of thinking.

Although I can’t say for certain, I don’t think most business people and entrepreneurs reading this are based in the fields of energy or manufacturing (readers should speak up!).  So I won’t bog you down with details about how to produce things that are energy-efficient; however, these tips can also help those producers:
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Several weeks ago, I’d talked briefly about the importance of building value into your company from the start to prepare for a final sale.  But valuation is just for those who are preparing to sell, right?  As was pointed out in the previous post,  you should be working on building your company’s value no matter how young or old it is.  Businessweek has posted a few articles explaining the why and the how of valuation for small, privately held businesses, and the most recent piece has at least a few interesting pointers.  Here’s a bit of what Neil J. Beaton, who does valuations of new, venture capital-backed startups, had to say.

• “The reality is that people value their companies informally all the time.” In Beaton’s example, you’ve just sold a quarter of your company’s ownership to one or more investors, who have paid a total of $1 million for that piece.  Your company has more subtly been valued at $4 million.  Because transactions like this or even subtler can occur frequently, pay attention to how others are valuing your company to get a real-world estimate.

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