Use digital storage solutions to cut paper and reduce clutter. According to Office Depot, one 100 Megabyte zip drive can store the contents of a four-drawer filing cabinet, and one CD-Rom can hold nearly a roomful of paper! Many businesses still use hundreds of file boxes for all their information, creating more paper waste, and information is hard to file, organize, and retrieve.
Once you scan and convert your files into digital format, the paper documents can be shredded and recycled. Not only have you reduced your impact on the environment, you and your colleagues have instant access to your archived files. Information at your fingertips! Digital documents can save hundreds of trees per year for your company. And wouldn't that tree look pretty in the corner of your office instead of your filing cabinet?
Bottled water is more expensive than tap water and has a greater environmental impact. Consider getting a water filter, and you can save more than a thousand dollars a year. In blind taste tests, many people can't tell the difference. Plus, studies show that bottled water is not any healthier then tap water.
Fossil fuels are needed to make the containers that most bottled water comes in. It takes more than 30 million barrels of oil a year to make the plastic for the world's bottled water - enough to keep almost two million cars running for the same period of time.
Virtual conferencing saves you money and also helps your business be greener. One 2500 mile flight per person emits 760 pounds of C02, which is equivalent to 5% of a U.S. home's electricity for one year.
Recycling has a huge impact on the environment. It saves raw materials, utilities, and greenhouse gases.
Have your business designate an area for recycling. Using bins for recycling is cheaper than garbage removal. And it's fast and easy.
The average U.S. white-collar workforce burns more than 583 million gallons of gasoline commuting to work each week. If, on average, one employee worked from home one day a week, 1,680 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions would be saved each year, according to Telework Exchange.
Many more companies are exploring and implementing telecommuting programs. Companies that promote telecommuting also have happier and more dedicated employees who appreciate the flexibility and trust they get from their jobs, which results in higher productivity!
Last year, 2 out of 3 tax returns were filed electronically. Was yours? E-file is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from the convenience of your own home. In 20 years, nearly 800 million e-filed returns have been processed by the IRS.
Not only that, you can choose to have your tax refund deposited directly into your bank account and have you money as few as 10 days! The environment wins and so do you!
The Software as a Service (Saas) model helps your business reduce its carbon footprint. Instead of thousands of customers individually operating thousands of servers and the power hungry facilities to serve those servers, the SaaS model centralizes data center operations to use less equipment and a small fraction of the supporting facility costs.
There can be up to a 20 to 1 savings in electrical power consumption for deploying SaaS applications vs. running the same application on premises. SaaS saves hard dollars through reduced hardware, software, labor, and energy expenditures.
