Sometimes, “Green Living” gets a lot of attention on recycling paper and cans – but businesses can do a lot more to “Greenify” their work-flow, and usually save a good amount of cash in the process. 20 years ago, it cost businesses and consumers more to live green. Happily, that’s not the case anymore!
Today is Blog Action Day, in which the blogging community is helping to focus awareness on the Environment. And to help the cause, this blog is donating 100% of the commissions received today to The Nature Conservancy from all sales from any of the companies highlighted below.
So what can your business, big or small, do more to prevent Global Warming?
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Work at Home & Telecommute
A no-brainer! Present full-time home business owners & telecommuters save approximately 4,439 million gallons of gas per year. If businesses could allow their employees to work at home even one day a week, we could make a measurable impact on reducing carbon emissions from cars (not to mention the measurable impact on your pocketbook!).
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Do the Paperless Polka
Personally, I can’t stand using paper anymore – quite honestly, it either messes up my house, I lose it, or I have to file it (and you don’t even want to know how infrequently I do that!). Keeping electronic records not only makes things easier for you, but it is GREAT for our forests. Great paperless products include Adobe Acrobat
for creating PDFs and eFax
which sends and receives faxes via email.
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Play del.icio.us Tag
I used to print out things I wanted to save for later. No more! Now I use del.icio.us to organize my bookmarks, never again having the need to dig around in paper piles.
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Meet Virtually
Unless an in-person meeting is required, why bother leaving the office when there are so many easy ways to conference online? Skype offers free calls AND free conferencing, and if you need visuals, try a service like GoToMeeting
, a provider of online meeting and collaboration software.
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Reduce Snail Mail
Most companies offer an electronic alternative to notifications traditionally sent out by mail, especially when it comes to invoicing. Request that all communications be sent via email rather than snail mail to reduce the paper sent to your business. And to ensure you don’t get a swamped email inbox, use email filtering to automatically send incoming messages to their proper folders.
Additionally, Earth Class Mail
is a new service that will act as a virtual PO Box and forward only the most necessary items. It may not reduce the paper getting sent your way, but it will help you to organize everything electronically.
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Do More E-Marketing
Many businesses, especially local businesses, don’t realize that the internet is such a powerful driver of sales and leads – right down to the zip code level. Even better, many of the ways to market online are ridiculously cheap or free. There’s a time and place for a fancy brochure – but I’ve found blogs to be an extraordinarily powerful business tool, and they are a heck of a lot cheaper to create!
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Get a Green PC
I just found out about these computers in my research for this post – and what a killer find! Zonbu
PCs consume one tenth of the power of a normal desktop, plus stores all of your data on their servers, so you don’t even need a hard drive (nor do you have to hear it – these PCs run completely silently!). To make things better, they are ridiculously cheap – as in less than $100.
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Stay Informed
There are excellent resources to learn more ways to improve your green efforts that are specific to your industry. Both GreenBiz.com and SustainableBusiness.com are free news & learning resources with some seriously great content.
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Get More Free Green Tips
Ideal Bite
is an eco-living newsletter that sends short and sweet email tips for both home and business – and they even have editions just for San Francisco and New York.
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Shop at TheGreenOffice
From recycled paper to recycled ink, and from green technology to earth-friendly industrial cleaning products, TheGreenOffice has it all. They also offer free delivery on orders over $49 and a link to find local recyclers. And remember, if you buy anything from TheGreenOffice today, 100% of eMoms at Home commissions go to The Nature Conservancy!
(Quick note, TheGreenOffice page seems to be taking a little while to load – please be patient!)
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Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Easton Ellsworth is owner of 
Nice list Wendy! There are some on here that are easy to do that I hadn’t really thought about before.
Char – your list is quite impressive as well! Allow me to spam my own blog with your link!
http://essentialkeystrokes.com/5-rs-for-a-greener-world/
Great list Wendy! I did a post for Blog Action Day that elaborates on #5 on your list called Rock. Paper. Scissors. How Do We All Win?
I know working from home has drastically reduced the number of miles I drive. Now if I could figure out a way to teleport my kids to school…
Yay! These are such great suggestions! Thanks, Wendy, for spreading the environmental love.
And use Sendside.com instead of email.
In my blog yesterday, on the environment topic, I mentioned that “to be environmentally responsible I will have to put thought into how my product is being manufactured and what kind of packaging I use. If anyone has experience with this, please let me know! Nothing I have learned about starting a business has addressed this issue, so I could use some advice.” And then I read your point #8! Thanks for pointing me to those sites that address green business- I asked, and you answered. Thanks so much! lightmotionandmagic.com
I have only subscribed to this blog for a week and its articles like this that just have me reading from start to finish.
Global warming prevention is a hot topic at the moment and it is “trendy” to be seen to doing your bit.
One of my customers has gone as far as buying a hybrid company car and now displays a small footer at the bottom of his email signature, telling you to save on paper and not printing off the email.
I have saved this blog post as a guide to how I can be doing my bit. I shall send it to my customer as well.
Best regards and keep up the good work!
Most people look at the air conditioning model in their room and see a simple machine that can do no harm to anyone or anything. Well, I will fill you in on a little secret: they’re wrong! Because of the heat in Singapore we like to blast our aricon systems to cool us off after a long day of sports practice, or even just because we like it cold. But, what many people don’t know is that it can lead to massive air pollution, and it can accelerate global warming. You see, when you turn on your air conditioning it releases a very dangerous chemical that gets into the air and can slowly break down the o-zone layer, there fore contributing to global warming. And though this chemical is not directly dangerous to humans, as time goes by it could be the downfall of the human population. As more and more houses are supplied with the average system the more and more the air is polluted. We have all heard the latest environmental buzz on how global warming is increasing and becoming a huge threat. However this can prevented by simply using your air conditioning a little less. So next time you think about keeping your aircon on all day… think again!
good suggestions here! unfortunately, it seems a lot of employers are still hesitant about the telecommuting issue. it’s good that this thinking is changing, but not fast enuff.
If only I had more confidence in my brain so I could file everything in this computer and be able to go back and find it.
While I’m recovering from surgery this month I will try to learn more and file..with less and less paper.
Thanks for the information
Dorothy from grammology
remember to call gram
http://grammology.com
Great blog!
If the economics don’t work, recycling efforts won’t either.
As our little contribution to make this economics of recycling more appealing, http://LivePaths.com blogs about people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.
These are the good ways to living green. Besides, it didn’t cost much and almost everyone can do it!
Greentac’s last blog post..Save Their Planet, Recycle All You Can
These are all great ways of furthering the green momentum of the day! Great list.