Every company, it seems these days, claims to be a green company, but I've often wondered how true many of those claims really are. For instance, paperless billing and e-payments are sometimes promoted as green initiatives, but can companies with such initiatives really call themselves green when they still conduct large-scale direct mail marketing campaigns?It's called 'greenwashing' and it was one of many topics covered in "Green IT - Facing the Downside of Moore's Law," a Wednesday afternoon session at CSC's Connect 2008 conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

"If you really look at what companies are doing, you can see that there's a very fine line between what companies think is best for themselves and what the outside world would [consider] greenwashing," said David Moschella, global research director for CSC's Leading Edge Forum Executive Program, who led the led the session.

Things get particularly interesting, Moschella says, when metrics get involved. "If you want to make yourself look like you're improving things and are lowering your carbon footprint, the first thing you want to do is get energy emissions and usage off your books," Moschella explains. "You can simply outsource your data center...to someone else or move it to another country. All that energy will no longer be on your books, but nothing has actually happened."

Moschella's presentation, to me, was eye opening. The green IT issue is one that, as an technology journalist, I have followed for the past couple years. Some insurers are truly working to use less energy and do less harm on the environment. Others though -- and sometimes this is unintentional -- have launched green initiatives without making it a priority.

In other words, just because a carrier says it's a green organization doesn't mean that it is. In fact, Moschella says that around half of all corporate green initiatives are led by marketing departments (note: his stats were not specific to the insurance industry). That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but a marketing department is not positioned nearly as well as an IT department is truly reduce an organization's energy consumption and emissions.

It is a good thing that companies are beginning to realize the importance (and true value) in "going green." Still, most companies -- inside and outside the insurance vertical -- have a long way to go. Until an insurer takes a good hard look at its overall carbon footprint and not just its perceived carbon footprint, it's just greenwashing. Marketing efforts are great, but it's time for everyone to put their money where their mouth is.