As times get tough, perhaps the biggest issue facing businesses is cost management—small businesses in particular can only afford actions that cut costs immediately. So will businesses take this opportunity to ignore environmental consciousness to save cash? I’m hoping that the tide has turned enough that businesses will use a desire to become greener as a lens to filter all their cost savings through. At Caxy, we’ve upgraded our web server systems significantly in recent months, reducing our server landscape by 75% by running on fewer, more efficient systems. The primary goal was to reduce cost (which it did), but it also reduced our direct and indirect consumption of power, saved precious metals and decreased our production of difficult-to-dispose-of waste. As we look forward to the rest of 2009, we are simultaneously looking for cost savings solutions that can also do things like reduce our carbon footprint. The double-entendre of conserving resources here is interesting. In general, whatever we reduce in the company is reflected in reduced resource consumption. That means businesses need not look at cash vs. eco as an either/or situation, but rather as an opportunity to do both. All it takes is smart planning, in the short and long term—in the end, it’s all green.