Environmental Leader

Moving companies are cashing in on consumers desire to go green, reports the New York Times.

For years, businesses, supermarkets and pharmacies have rented reusable plastic crates to relocate from one office to another. Now the crates are coming to the residential moving market. The L.A. – based company Rentagreenbox.com will deliver a truckload of these “Recopacks,” you pack them up for the move, and after you’re done the company picks up the empty boxes for the next customer.

A seven-year-old company called Movers Not Shakers in Brooklyn rents and moves bins, and in December started a Web site called GreenmoversUSA.com which the owner hopes will become a for-profit listing service for eco-friendly movers around the United States.

Other moving companies around the country are taking steps to be more green, including converting trucks to biodiesel, setting up free cardboard-box exchanges (in which consumers return boxes for use by others) and offering biodegradable replacements for bubble wrap and foam made from materials like cornstarch and recycled paper sludge.

Movegreen, a year-old two-truck company based in Santa Barbara, runs trucks on biodiesel, and the company says it plants 10 trees for every move through a nonprofit group called Trees for the Future. The business also plans to design and order 200 to 300 of its own plastic bins, which it hopes to have by June.