Living Green: The Missing Manual

Greener Business Travel

Businesspeople cover a lot of ground, making more than 200 million trips each year in the U.S. alone, a third of those by plane. And with air travel growing by nearly 5% a year, it's also the fastest-growing source of carbon dioxide emissions. So it's important to make the trips you take for work as green as possible.

Tip

Chapter 8 is all about traveling greener, and many of the tips apply to business travel, as well, so page through it to see how to go green when you're on the road (or in the air).

Frequently Asked Question: Green-Collar Jobs

What's a "green-collar" job, and what industries are creating them?

It used to be that jobs were broken down into two main categories, defined by the kind of shirt workers in each category usually wore:

• White collar referred to salaried managers and professionals, who wore dress shirts and neckties to work.

• Blue collar described the jobs of the tradesmen and laborers who got paid by the hour and wore uniforms or denim work shirts.

As more women entered the workforce, the term "pink collar" came to describe jobs traditionally held by women, like typists and secretaries. And now that people are realizing the importance of living in a sustainable, environmentally responsible way, a new color is emerging: green.

A green-collar job is one in the environmental sector. These positions cross the old boundaries of salary vs. hourly wage, professional vs. labor, men vs. women. Workers in these jobs fight pollution, reduce waste, and help ...