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Moving to a Studio in the garden on my home property provided me with the opportunity to put many of the ideas that I advise people on, as an Architect, in to practice.

My motivator came initially from a review of my practice operations from an environmental perspective. I undertook this as part of putting my own business through a process called "The Natural Step", you may have heard of it. This is a process which helps business people large, and in my case small, to develop a decision-making framework based on sound environmental principles.

I had already drawn up a "Green Footprint" for my home

property.  This is a ten point plan of eco-friendly based ideas that would enhance our lifestyle. The final piece of the plan was a former garage, waiting for me to renovate. As a result of moving in to my home office or the Studio, as we refer to it, I was able to considerably improve the environmental performance of my own business. A real case of practicing what I preach and the bottom line benefits to enjoy as well.

So, what does this mean for a home based business?

• A healthy, more environmentally friendly home property is going to benefit all the occupants and the visitors or Clients.
  I find it particularly good that my family can enjoy the benefits of what we've achieved.
• Many of the things you can do, you can do yourself and do them at a reasonable cost as well.
  For example, how about trimming your energy costs, significantly?
• It's quite likely that your business would benefit from promoting itself as following these clean green ideas.
  Would it help your business to say this? You could be surprised at the support from some of your Clients too.
• Your property will develop and improve in value at the same time.
  I call it 'green asset value', some call it an externality in accounting circles, but on your own property there are lots of ways to enjoy the real benefits.

In this article I am intending to encourage you to develop business and operating practices which are more environmentally friendly. I hope to encourage you to see that these ideas have real bottom line benefits for your business and for your home property.

I'll be following this article up with a series of articles which will focus on a particular topic and a specific bottom line issue each time. The bottom line is definitely financial, not just the warm fuzzy of doing something good that will benefit our children in the future - although there is that too…

'Green Asset Value' does apply particularly to the Home property as you will see.
Starting with the end in mind, an overall picture can be drawn up, a Green Footprint - for your property. This is your own plan of the things that you want to achieve, over a period of time, and a checklist of the progress you are making.

This will include:

• Making that plan - guidelines
• Home and business energy costs
• Using solar energy
• Waste minimization
• Healthy buildings
• Sustainable building and renovating practices
• Transport energy issues
• Material choices - looking at your suppliers and the products you use
• Eco friendly gardening
• Renew, Reuse, Recycle and improve the image…