Starting to wonder how much impact all that work travel is having? The average American commutes 20 miles a day, that’s about 5,000 miles a year, resulting in just over 2 tons of CO2.
Consider purchasing carbon offsets to counteract the carbon dioxide emissions of driving or flying home to meetings and conferences. A carbon offset for the entire year’s worth of commuting emissions could cost as little as $45. According to the Colorado Carbon Fund, a Carbon Offset means “neutralize,” “balance,” or “cancel out.” Carbon offsets counteract these activities by funding projects to compensate for CO2 emissions occurring at another source. These offsets help fund projects that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Though there are many organizations that offer Carbon Offsets, the Colorado Carbon Fund and Aspen’s Canary Tags are two great providers that use the proceeds for projects in Colorado.
Most offices have a janitorial or custodial vendor who cleans offices. It is important to have your vendors support your organizations sustainability program.To encourage ‘green’ cleaning ask your vendor for the following;
Use green cleaning supplies. Make sure cleaning supplies are non-toxic and eco-friendly. Seventh Generation and All Green have a great line of cleaning products.
Turn off lights. Ask your janitorial staff to turn off all lights upon leaving the building. This supports accountability with this simple energy saving action.
Provide recycling and waste data. In order to improve recycling and waste management it is important to get data from your janitorial staff on the usage of receptacles along with rate of recycling. Make sure your janitorial staff is managing waste responsibly.
E-mail and scanners have all but made the fax machine a thing of the past, but most offices can’t quite give them up yet.The good news is there are now Online Faxes that allow you all the convenience of a fax machine, but use less paper, and offer other benefits:
Lower Cost
More Efficient Use of Time
More Reliable
Environmentally Responsible
Security
How it works:
Sending: When sending faxes, you log in to the fax website and upload the document.If the document is already a file on your hard drive, you simply upload it like an e-mail attachment.If you only have a hard copy, you’ll need to scan it, save it, then upload it.On the receiving end, the recipient will get a paper hard copy, just like you had sent it via traditional fax (unless they too have an online fax).
Receiving: When receiving incoming faxes, rather than a paper print out, you get an e-mail with an attachment.If you need to print it you can, otherwise you can just save it to the appropriate folder on your hard drive.
All those unwanted faxes, just hit delete – no need to save them to your desktop, waste paper.Need another reason?Most spam fax comes through whether you want it to or not, that means it gets printed, and you have to pay for the paper.
As the holiday season approaches you may want to add some decorations around the office, as well as at home. One easy way to spread the holiday cheer while saving energy, and some company money, is to switch to LED (light emitting diode) holiday lights. LED lights are an alternative to conventional incandescent holiday lights and are gaining popularity and availability. Though still more expensive than conventional lights, LEDs offer a number of benefits that not only outweigh the cost, but actually may make them cheaper in the long run. Some stores are offering a take back program, where they will take your old holiday lights, recycle them, and give you a discount on new LED lights.
Benefits of LED lights:
90% more energy efficient – saving you money on the utility bill
When one bulb goes out, the others stay lit
Unlike incandescentbulbs, LEDs are cool to the touch
LEDs are more durable and less likely to break
Pricewise, LEDs cost about five times as much as incandescentsupfront. But their life span is 50,000 hours, instead of 1,000-2,000 hours for incandescents. That means if you lit the LEDs for 45 days each year, 24 hours a day, it would take 46 years for them to dim.
Today, business leaders have a chance to get their voice heard on climate change. The University of Cambridge is compiling a list of world business leaders that will sign a statement that will lead to aggressive changes on climate change globally. Business leaders from the Corporate Leaders’ Group will be handing a copy of The Copenhagen Communiqué to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown on December 10, 2009 which will be passed onto the leaders at the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
For more information on climate change visit these websites:
In order for sustainability plan and initiatives to take hold, it is important to get staff within your organization to be engaged and involved. There is no better way then to form then green teams inside your organization. Green teams is a small group strategically chosen that can build momentum and excitement about sustainability and be crucial to the culture shift within an organization.
To learn more about forming a green read my recent article in Colorado Biz magazine. Another good article about green team formation was written last year by GreenBiz.com called Corporate Green Teams. The EPA also has a short guide on creating green teams.
Inform IT has launched a 4 part series articles by myself, K.J. McCorry, to be released in the coming month on becoming the paperless office. This is preparation for my upcoming book, Becoming the Paperless Office.
I will also be teaching an online webinar about paperless office through Ragan Management Resources on Wednesday, October 28th. click here to purchase the CD of the recording.
There are a lot of definitions of ‘sustainability’ created by individuals, groups and organizations. Depending on how you use ‘sustainability’, it can have a variety of contextual meanings. To date, the sustainability industry itself has yet to settle on one definition. There are common themes expressed in the multiple definitions – about our resources and the environment, and maintaining their equity and balance for future generations. Businesses sometimes use the term “triple bottom line” to define sustainability in terms of increasing profits, improving the planet and improving people’s lives. Peter Senge of MIT talks in a recent article about how sustainability is not a useful word and sometimes motivates by fear. I believe that defining ‘sustainability’ is still worthy of a good conversation and debate. It is important for individuals and organizations to discover and explore for themselves the meaning of ‘sustainability’ and its effect on their lifestyle and business operations. I invite you to share your own definition of sustainability.
I just got back from a 2 day certification workshop on the Global Reporting Initiative or commonly known as the GRI. The GRI is the international framework and standard for sustainability reports. I gained two great insights from this workshop. The first is that this framework requires companies to have dialogue and discussion with all its stakeholders on what they see as important regarding social and environmental issues of the company. Secondly, I realized that this tool was more than a published, printed piece of information. Through its framework it requires companies to give careful thought and consideration on various aspects of economic, environmental and social implications of their business. Essentially, through stakeholder engagement and the conversation within the company, this tool is a catalyst to provide more thoughtful analysis on sustainability issues within a company. I’m excited to begin helping my own clients prepare and learn about the GRI
Carbon Offsets, Conferences/Events | officiency March 5, 2010 | 
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