Employing green metrics allows companies to assess their environments, said Davis, "because if you don't know where you are today, how do you plan for tomorrow?"

Jean-Paul Desmarais, enterprise marketing manager with Mississauga, Ont.-based HP Canada Co., who was also on the roadshow, said measuring the company's current status with respect to power costs, paper use, and recycling is the first step in a Green IT Action Plan.

He suggests the business should then identify opportunities where the greatest and swiftest impact can be made. Then, market the plan and gain support from various parties within the organization. Set measurable and timely goals, like "an X percentage of something, an increase of this, or a decrease of that." Identify which devices -- like multi-purpose hardware that prints, copies and scans -- work best with those green goals and modify business processes accordingly.

But Desmarais acknowledged that changing employee habits is a long-term task and will require some change management. "You make that change person by person," he said.

Hewlett-Packard isn't the only one to push the importance of green IT metrics. Forrester Research Inc. has a Green IT Baseline calculator to help businesses justify investments in green technologies and the time spent to institute operational best practices. Doug Washburn, analyst with the Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm, said understanding where an organization stands with respect to green IT will help it prioritize money and time expenditures, "otherwise, you're putting money out blindly in areas where you think you may have an impact, but you don't really know."