Think Green Alliance

The Think Green Alliance is a community of businesses and organizations that are committed to environmentally-friendly and sustainable operations, technologies, services and products. BaudryCybernomics Corporation, a Green IT company based in Toronto, launched the Alliance to bring green businesses together to promote and showcase their initiatives as well as provide an educational platform for businesses looking for ways to "green" their operations, vendors and offerings.

The Think Green Alliance was founded on June 1, 2008. The Alliance seeks leaders in the industry in terms of their adoption and integration of environmental strategies into their business plan. Emphasis is placed on organizations that take a step-by-step but concrete and measurable approach to Green initiatives and are committed to a continuous cycle of improvement. By showcasing companies that take action and make environmentally-conscious decisions, the Think Green Alliance believes it will set precedence for other companies to improve their workplace practices.

Members and What Makes Them Green

Access: provides a unique, low cost, easy to use "VPN-as-a-Service", utility that enables small business owner/operators to run their business better by reliably connecting mobile workers in a more efficient and secure manner to company files, applications and proprietary company data over the Internet

AutoShare: promoting car sharing and integrating hybrid cars into their fleet; a recent Canadian study found that the average member of a car sharing organization reduces their CO2 output by over 1 tonne, simply by joining and changing their lifestyle

BOMA Toronto: building audits/best practices to reduce energy consumption, operating costs and improving waste management

Bullfrog Power: provider of 100% green alternative energy

Compass Promotions: a promotional advertising and design agency who are committed to seeking effective methods to reduce their carbon footprint, and excercise this practice through their Compass on Campus Education Program

Computer Room Services: optimizing IT infrastructure from the datacenter side, including “intelligent” infrastructure planning and engineering and selection of energy-efficient equipment

Cybernomics: leader in Green IT, Virtualization, Lean Solutions, Proactive IT management; Think Green Alliance founding company

David Chernushenko: is an independent sustainability communicator and a consultant to private and public organizations in Canada and internationally through his company Green & Gold Inc.

Dell: has built environmental considerations into every stage of the Dell product life cycle - from developement and design, to manufacturing and operations, to customer use and product recovery.

EcoLog: leading source of environmental health & safety news, legislation and risk information

EnVille Event Design & Catering: a Toronto based catering company created en Ville's environmental stewardship policy that has incorporated environmental strategies to their own catering business. [http://www.enville.com/en%20Ville%20Environmental%20Stewardship%20Policy.pdf]

EPEAT: premier program for environmental rating of computer desktops, laptops, monitors

Gracious Living: is a leading Canadian manufacturer and importer of a variety of products Garden, Pet, Garage and Indoor & Outdoor furniture. They have inluded environmentally friendly solutions (EFR) that redirects materials that were potentially headed for landfill sites and reintroduces them into the manufacturing mainstream as valuable raw material

Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance: pilot Cybernomics client for virtualization; bring GTA communities together and promote environmental initiatives within municipalities/governments; lead expedition to Norway and Sweden for analysis of green energy and “green” cities in Northern Europe

Hazmat Management Magazine: in-depth analysis of current issues related to environmental performance emergency response, safety and waste management

Info-Tech Research Group: global leader in IT research and analysis; first research group to offer practical information and case studies on Green IT initiatives (from survey/research based on over 600 companies)

Intel: world leader in processor development, pioneer in IVT technology

Investeco is Canada's first environmental investment company. By investing in both private and public companies in sectors like renewable energy, water, sustainable agriculture, and clean technologies they are able to tap into the growing demand for environmentally superior products and services

iRecycle Computers: first company in Canada to offer SMB and consumer solutions for the growing problem of e-waste

Jacques Whitford: leading provider of engineering, sustainability, environmental and earth sciences solutions

Kyoto Cooling: pioneer in development of data center cooling solutions that are energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable

Miller Thomson LLP: one of Canada’s most respected law firms; making a lot of headway as first law firm to really engage green technology and business policies and regulation, working with the business community and all three levels of government

Nova Marketing Group: Nova is the maker of the nCode line of address quality software. Major corporations and government agencies use the nCode Toolkit and nCode Web Services Edition to validate, correct and transform their address data

Our Cool Blue Architects: design firm dedicated to designing architecture which supports the beginning of ecological restoration and does not contribute to global warming and climate change

QMP Media: discusses green IT issues and publishes InformationWeek Canada, InformationWeek.ca, CRN Canada, CRNCanada.ca, Canadian Government Executive, and NetworkedGovernment.ca

Rimrock Corporation: MS Dynamics consulting boutique that simplifies and optimizes the ASP model using streamlined consulting practices and a backbone of virtualization

Softchoice Corporation:recognizes the growing importance organizations place on reducing the environmental impact of their IT investments
Solid Waste and Recycling Magazine: industry journal that focuses on municipal and industrial waste management including collection, hauling, processing and disposal

Steam Whistle Brewing: using various green initiatives from the use of steam to brew and heat their facilities to the engineering of their beer bottles and recyclability of their packaging, they are Canada’s greenest brewing facility

TELUS: is committed to being an environmental leader and focuses on integrating environmental considerations into their business and offering innovative communications solutions that protect the environment. They provide solutions such as telework, video and audio conferencing, fleet management, paperless forms, and managed data services, TELUS is helping other organizations go green

Terago Networks: a premier provider of business-level wireless broadband, which is “greenest” connection choice

The Printing House Limited: is focused on reducing their ecological footprint and is committed to applying continuous environmentally friendly improvements to their operations. TPH Green Initiatives include: achieved Chain of Custody Certification (CoC) from the Forest Stewardship Council of Ontario, Degradable bags, Toner Recycling, Low Volatile Organic Compouond (VOC) Inks, Hazardous Waste, Recycling Programs, Hydro Initiatives

Trend Point: provides energy and carbon metrics systems for high density sites such as data centers. Their products allow individual energy use and carbon emissions

Turtle Island Recycling: broad range of recycling options from organics to plastics to paper; also offer full waste management solutions for communities, events, residential & commercial buildings; developed first “zero-waste” building in Toronto

Whole Foods Market: provide organic food choices from sustainable farming; big proponent of local food and supporter of local farmers (through the Local Producer Loan Program, which $10 million available annually for low-interest loans to small, local producers); other initiatives include first "green building" award for HQ in Austin, TX, promotion of non-toxic cleaning products and reduction of waste through "nickel per bag" program

Zerofootprint: enable companies, universities, governments, cities, communities to measure, aggregate and track their carbon footprint through the use of innovative tools and technology

External Links and Sources

Think Green Alliance website: http://www.thinkgreenalliance.com

Toronto Company Launches the Think Green Alliance to Promote Green Business: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS119866+29-Jul-2008+PRN20080729

PC World Canada Article: http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-23fb15c6-2964-4030-81a2-d8d4aac4ad96&Portal=4fb7319b-aa7c-423a-822d-2f6e24698c71&ParaStart=0&ParaEnd=10&direction=next&News=Daily+ITwire&Next=Next