Encouraged by the private sector’s snowballing love affair with eco-consumerism, businesses have recognized that “going green” is both a surprisingly profitable—and responsible—way to boost one’s profit margin.

In fact, businesses are finding that many things can be done both in-house and with the assistance of government funds to ensure one’s business is both eco-friendly and profitable. And with so many incentives available, businesses are giving themselves the green light to go green.

“Going green is definitely good for business,” said Joy Hinz, environmental specialist for DuPageCounty. “You will see an immediate savings in energy bills, and more efficient waste haul away.”

The bedrock of eco-friendly businesses has always been the classic three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle. In recent years, however, the push to “reduce” has gained popularity, undergone a re-branding as “energy conservation,” and is now employed as the best action to save companies money.

“Energy conservation is big bang for the buck,” said Hinz, adding that by switching to energy-efficient light fixtures businesses “see immediate savings in energy bills.”

The changing of light fixtures, perhaps the easiest way to conserve energy, is achieved by replacing common fluorescent and incandescent bulbs with the newly popular Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL).

Incandescent bulbs are known as the tear-drop shaped bulb found in common household lighting fixtures, while the CFL lights are the squiggly spiral-shaped lights cropping up in local hardware stores. While a CFL bulb costs $2 more than a traditional incandescent bulb, CFLs makes up for it by providing 10 times the lifespan (six years) in addition to consuming 300-400 percent less energy.

Assuming lights are on eight hours a day in the office, the total energy plus hardware cost of one incandescent bulb is over $82 for a 3.4 year period (the average lifespan of a CFL at eight hours). In contrast, the CFL’s total cost during the same 3.4 year period is $22 per bulb. That is a savings of more than $60 per bulb.

With most offices consisting of hundreds of overhead fluorescent tube lights—in which CFLs also exist—the potential for saving energy costs is great. Switching office light fixtures, then, becomes an easy and profitable act.

Sensing the value of CFL lighting, both Capitol Hill and large multinational companies are making the switch as well. The nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, announced last year that it would double its annual sales of CFLs to 100 million by 2008 as part of an effort to make both operations and inventory more green.

Then, on Dec. 19, 2007, Congress passed an energy bill that aims to increase energy efficiency for light bulbs by 30 percent and completely phase out inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012.

In addition to reducing energy consumption, many businesses are also saving money by reducing their waste stream.

“First you need to figure out what kind of waste you are creating,” said Hinz.

Waste that is recyclable, and appropriated as part of a recycling program, costs less to dispose of than other forms of non-recyclable waste. In short, if businesses separate their recyclable waste from their non-recyclable waste, there is potential to save money.

“The biggest and easiest thing to do is reduce the waste stream,” Hinz said.

Helping the effort is the non-profit organization, SCARCE, based out of Glen Ellyn, which assists in aiding companies to reduce their waste consumption and energy use and to then turn a profit out of it.

“SCARCE goes into buildings and does waste audits,” says Hinz. “They show businesses how to recycle and be more energy efficient and they do so at no cost.”

Last year, for example, SCARCE helped Now Foods—a Bloomingdale-based company specializing in natural foods, vitamins, and herbs—to save more than $66,000 by becoming eco-friendly.

Capitalizing on the green trend, many businesses and developers are also building office complexes that are eco-friendly upon construction, as opposed to transforming pre-existing structures. By doing so, developers are cashing in on lucrative federal and state grants earmarked for energy-efficient projects.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, buildings are responsible for 39 percent of total energy use in the U.S., 12 percent of total water consumption, 68 percent of total electricity consumption, and 38 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Providing grants, then, is in the best interest of governments aiming to nurture energy efficient economies.

Currently the state of Illinois offers several incentive packages and grants available to businesses going green. Among them are the Manufacturing Energy Efficiency Program offering energy audits and cost-effective energy management; City Water Light and Power’s utility rebate program offering rebates on energy-saving insulation and heat pumps; and the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation fund, a $225 million endowment earmarked for lighting, solar heat and other energy-efficient developments.

Also available is the Small Business Environmental Assistance Program, a free state service that aids small businesses in their efforts to comply with environmental rules.

All of these incentives and more can be found on the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE) at dsireusa.org.

The city of Chicago offers the DCAP Green Permit Program that “provides developers and owners with an incentive to build green by streamlining the permit process timeline for their projects.” The greater number of green elements involved in the project, the shorter the time to acquire a permit.

Yet while businesses profit from going eco-friendly, so do average Illinois consumers. In accordance with the Green Rewards program, in 2007 the Illinois Treasurer’s office committed $2 million to a fund aimed at rewarding buyers of new fuel-efficient vehicles. Now, Illinois drivers are eligible to receive a $1,000 rebate—in the form of a gift card—upon the purchase of a new hybrid or other fuel-efficient car. Federal subsidies are also available.

The green movement, while growing under the auspices of money-saving potentials, is given further credibility by the recent “Carbon Beta and Equity Performance” study of 1,500 companies conducted by investment firm Innovest. It noted that companies with strategic and comprehensive climate change strategies have outperformed their competitors in the past three years.

Furthermore, according to the study, there exists a “strong, positive, and growing correlation between industrial companies’ sustainability in general, and climate change in particular, and their competitiveness and financial performance.

“In the longer term, the out-performance potential will become even greater as the capital markets become more fully sensitized to the financial and competitive consequences of environmental and climate change predictions,” the report said.

Ultimately, from large multi-nationals to community companies, updating one’s business to be eco-friendly is profitable, easy and sure to make an impact on energy bills, waste removal and the overall bottom line. And with so many incentives, both environmentally and monetarily, businesses are finally turning over a new leaf.