Like every major telecom service provider, Verizon is looking throughout its organization for ways to reduce its carbon footprint and be more environmentally conscious. Verizon has taken its efforts one step further, however, to view the broader picture and work to wield its influence with vendors, customers and fellow service providers.

That’s one of the reasons the company was cited by Frost & Sullivan for its Green Excellence of the Year Award in the Corporate Leadership category for the telecom services industry. In recognizing Verizon, Frost & Sullivan noted that in 2007 alone Verizon’s energy conservation efforts eliminated an estimated 76,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Verizon achieved this by improving the energy efficiency of its buildings and by using alternative energy sources such as clean-burning fuel cells or microturbines for its central offices.

More recently, as part of its 14th annual Network Equipment Building System Forum in Orlando, Fla., Verizon focused on what the telecom industry in general can be doing not only to reduce its own energy consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions, but also to help other industries through the promotion of telecommuting and recycling of electronics.

“Globally, the information and communications technology segment represents about 2% of the emissions, but we can make a contribution not only for our own industry, but to others,” said Chuck Graff, director of corporate network and technology for Verizon, who headed up the NEBS Forum, which attracted 262 people from 80 companies and nine countries.

In fact, using its technology to enable corporations to be more environmentally responsible is a sales opportunity, said Chris Kimm, vice president of sales engineering for Verizon.

“For us, a big piece of what we are realizing is there is a lot of stuff we’ve built over the years with one problem set in mind that you can apply to the green IT space with real value,” Kimm said. “We are now just trying to make a solution sell. We know we have this capability; what is the green benefit?”