Can a company be both green and profitable? The myth still persists that environmental responsibility is a luxury that only non-profits of publicly funded organisations can afford, but nothing could be further from the truth. Efficiency has always been good for business; a company that reduces its carbon footprint is reducing waste.

When Sawdays moved to new offices in Long Ashton in 2006, the company made the most of the opportunity. By super-insulating, and by installing under-floor heating, a wood-pellet boiler, solar panels and a rainwater tank, a comfortable workspace was created that has also reduced the company's carbon emissions from 26 tonnes a year to just seven. The farmyard conversion won a Green Apple award.

Sawdays is a successful publishing company known internationally for the Special Places series of guide books and its hard-hitting environmental titles. In 2006 the company won a Queen's Award for Enterprise, in the Sustainable Development category.

Owner Alisdair Sawday is a lifelong environmental campaigner, one-time Green Party candidate, founder of Avon Friends of the Earth and the Momentum Group, but he is also running a business. And Sawdays, like any other business, has to be profitable.

To do this, the company taps into the high end travel market where it find not only good customers but also a group of people who are interested in the values Sawdays champions: authenticity, individuality, high quality, the local and organic. Last year saw the publication of Green Places to Stay, and there are plans for a series rooted in the ideas and values of the Slow movement.

Other businesses are taking up the challenge. Bart Spices launched its Delicatessen brand of organic spices in response to consumer demand, and the same stimulus encouraged it to start supplying Fairtrade spices to the supermarkets in 2006 - the first company to do so. Bart Spices has a detailed environmental policy in place, and is a signatory to the Bristol Green Capital Initiative.

In 2003 the company introduced an energy efficiency scheme, with new factory equipment, new energy saving procedures and improved waste management. Transport and distribution systems have also been improved, with a saving both in energy use and overheads. A green business is a better business.