Chris Bjorklund: You’re listening to an AllBusiness podcast. If you’re getting this through iTunes and RSS feed or an online streaming-media player, you can hear more interviews with other experts at AllBusiness.com.

Bjorklund: This podcast is part of a series called Green Money, a look at the greening of the business world with Stuart Hampton from Hoover’s

Kermit the Frog: It’s not that easy being green.

Stuart Hampton: During commercial break from the action in Super Bowl XL, viewers were treated to Kermit the Frog’s longtime lament that it’s hard to be green. Until he encountered that 36-mile-per-gallon Ford Escape, the environmentally friendly car prompted everyone’s favorite frog to reconsider his world view.

Kermit the Frog: I guess it is easy being green.

Hampton: Leave it to a Muppet to lead the charge of the greening of corporate America. A study commissioned by Siemens Building Technologies found that 60% of corporations think that green practices would lower operating costs. Corporations are facing increasing pressure from a range of stake holders to not only reduce their greenhouse gas emissions but also to buy and produce green products. In fact, over the last two years, many corporations have added a new seat to the executive table, the chief sustainability officer, whose purpose it is to help their companies profit by going green. In this series, we’ll follow this burgeoning corporate greening trend in all of its forms paying particular attention to the ways that enterprises are using green to get into the black. You’ve already heard how important Ford thinks the green strategy is to its company’s health. Super Bowl spots to that year went for upwards of $2.5 million for 30 seconds of airtime. But for now, let’s take a brief glance at the wide range of green strategies companies are adopting to turn an inconvenient truth into a profitable one.

Hampton: First, water conservation. In Atlanta, spurred on by record drought, UPS is saving some 10,000 gallons a day by experimenting with waterless urinals and dry mopping delivery trucks. Coca Cola and its bottlers have reduced water usage by about 18% over the last three years. The beverage behemoth has also foregone some of the aesthetically-pleasing features of its headquarters, turning off a fancy but expensive fountain and pulling back on landscaping so it doesn’t have to water as many flowers. Another example, Atlanta-based air carrier Delta Airlines has cut water use at its operations center by 50% and has its eye on lowering that another 30%. Then there’s the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. leviathan General Electric with its awkward Eco-Imagination slogan is also greening up. GE has promised to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases by 1% by 2012. Without this initiative, emissions at the company would have increased by 40%. Some companies take a more unconventional approach to environmentalism, making products that are made from organic matter such as animal waste. For instance, Michigan State University and the Department of Agriculture have collaborated on a procedure used to process cow manure along with plastic in order to manufacture fiberboard. Fiberboard is used to make a variety of products such as playground equipment and flooring. If the idea catches on, this new fiberboard may solve a disposal problem for the 1.5 to 2 trillion pounds of manure produced each year in the United States and when researchers asked home-improvement retailers if they would be willing to purchase products made from fiber once found in manure, they expressed willingness simply because they perceived the products to be green. In spite of the fact that fiberboard is odor-free, there were still concerns about the smell.

Bjorklund: Thank you for listening to this Green Money podcast with Stuart Hampton from Hoover’s.com.