1. Lower your winter heating by at least one degree. If you can stand two or three degrees lower, then all the better. You will use less energy and still feel comfortable. Then in summer, let the air conditioning cool the house a little less. That’s a great start in how to go green.

2. Set your washing machine to wash clothes in cold water. Modern cleaning powders don’t need hot water, and heating the water is what consumes most of the energy that the laundry machine uses.

3. Don’t use the dryer to dry your clothes! That’s not how to go green. It uses far too much energy and it’s expensive too. Hang your clothes out to dry. The air is great at drying clothes – your grandmother could have told you that.

4. Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs use 10% of the energy that a standard bulb needs and they last 10 times longer. So, change your light bulbs. And if you want to know how to go green in a bigger way with lights, check out the new LED bulbs. They can be twice as efficient as the CFL bulbs.

5. Use less water. Check all faucets for leaks and fix any you find. Take shorter showers, don’t bath, and consider getting a new toilet cistern that will use less than two gallons of water per flush. Standard cistern use some three and a half gallons. Using less water uses less energy and saves you money!

6. Walk rather than drive for very short trips. Use a bike for moderate trips, and only use the car if you really have to. Gas is expensive and it pollutes the atmosphere. Save on burning it and you will save on your money too, as well as help the environment.

7. When you have to drive, keep your speed down to around 55 miles per hour if possible. Your car’s engine will be running at its most efficient at that speed burning the minimum amount of gas. Practice driving smoothly as well. Don’t accelerate fast from a standing start, and don’t brake hard. This is how to go green with your car, though using public transport, walking and cycling is even better.

Ruta, whose organization Environmental Defense was one of the early groups to partner with big corporations, said her company’s motto is “finding the ways that work.”

“If you work with somebody who’s a strange bedfellow but it gets you where you want to be, then that’s what it takes,” she said.

Still, other environmentalists insist they still have a healthy dose of skepticism about whether corporations will really help make a tangible environmental difference. For example, Dorner said the Sierra Club doesn’t expect to see eye-to-eye with corporate America on issues such as how drastically greenhouse gas emissions need to be curbed to offset global warming. “Of course, anything that they would find acceptable would be very different from something that we would find acceptable,” he said.

Dorner said his group also is quick to call foul when a company appears to be taking too much credit for an insubstantial environmentally friendly move. “Small commitments to the environment do not a green company make,” he said.

PR power of going green
Indeed, many of the companies touting environmental improvements have plenty to gain from a little good publicity.

As the main producer of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, DuPont was once considered one of corporate America’s worst environmental bad guys. The company admits that one motivation to improve things was a concern about its reputation.

“Nobody wants to be the No. 1 polluter,” said DuPont’s Rittenhouse.

Despite major changes, Rittenhouse concedes that the company still has work to do.

“There’s no question we’ve still got issues,” Rittenhouse said. “We’re trying to learn from our past mistakes and make sure we are doing better.”

A push toward more renewable fuel sources also could help the battered images of oil and gas giants, who have seen record profits as Americans have felt pain at the pump. And Wal-Mart, which is facing an organized and aggressive campaign against its labor and expansion practices, certainly wouldn’t mind a little bit of goodwill.

Environmental groups also worry about whether companies will live up to their own sustainability initiatives, or drop them if cheaper or more amenable alternatives come along.

Some advocates see hope in companies that are making the type of environmentally friendly investments that could take years to pay off, such as major plant revisions or extensive green remodeling.

For example, both FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. have made some investments in vehicles that run at least partly on alternative fuels, as part of efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels over the long term.

Ruta, who worked with FedEx on their project, said those trucks are still more expensive to produce than their traditional counterparts, and zigzagging fuel prices can make it hard to predict a payback. Still, the hope is that the production process will eventually become more streamlined, bringing costs down and prompting more widespread use.

“We’re getting there,” she said.