1. Automate it… and cut out more green duty to remember in January
In “10 Resolutions to Green Your Technology“, Anna Jaeger from the TechSoup blog suggests setting up an office-wide policy on computer settings. She recommends taking a few minutes to set up a power-management feature (available on a Mac and a PC) that can help save money, reduce impact on the environment and extend the life of the office hardware for years to come. According to Climate Savers Computing Initiative, one of the leading power-management advocacy organizations in the United States, the average desktop PC wastes nearly half the power it pulls from the wall as heat.

2. “Travel less as a company”
Straight out of Greener Asset’s Resolution No. 4 in “Top Green New Year’s Resolutions Your Business Needs to Make“.

But seriously, a debate is emerging that, it is not our technology we need to be worried about when going green, but, rather the degree of mobility our new technology (e.g. the very Blackberries that were promised to reduce our carbon air miles) has afforded us and its dynamic effects on sustainability (or lack thereof). Hello, videoconferencing.

3. Add just one green option to your product or service list
No need to go big just yet by generating electricity for the entire building with solar energy with Solyndra (as cool as that would be). Instead, start small at the beginning of the New Year to avoid frustration and stretching company resources too much, too fast. If you are a branding company, offer 100% post-consumer waste marketing packages by Green Printer. If you are a retailer, offer eco-friendly alternatives to your regular product lines (buy in bulk to offer discounts to customers). Blair Kingsland from Industry Week, for instance, has research-backed advice on opening new markets and enhancing reputation that speaks directly to small company owners.

4. Be kind, recycle
Yahoo! Green’s electronic recycling guide could not be more straightforward. Peer pressuring your co-workers to purchase the new and alluring iPhones? At least show them where to recycle their old cell phones or where to give to them charity. And, while they are at it, why not their old computers, TVs, printer cartridges…

5. Have a special someone…or rather, a special company, to look up to
We reported how GreenBiz.com said that every ton of paper that is made from recycled fiber saves about 17 trees. And, when it comes to taking a lead on going green one small (recycling) step at a time, here is who we are looking up to:

• Bank of America saved $483,000 in trash hauling fees by recycling tens of thousands tons of paper for decades.
• Hewlett Packard saved 367,000 trees by recycling 43 million pounds of paper.
• Nynex, a division of Bell Atlantic, recycles old phonebooks into payment remittance envelopes.

Tear our that green company’s blue-sky story in Forbes or Fortune and post it in the office kitchen. It’s amazing what a little role modeling and healthy competition can do when it is spelled out visually.

For now, keep on trekking and here’s to a kicking and green 2009.