Earth Day | April 22, 1970. I planted a tree on the first Earth Day. My husband planted a tree too — and his is still standing. We look at it from his parents’ breakfast window several times a year.
I wore earth shoes, plastered the school in “Save the Earth” posters, and sang songs in celebration — the lyrics were pretty weird but refrains of “hello carbon dioxide, goodbye carbon monoxide” still run through my mind on Earth Day.
Earth Day | April 22, 2009. Green has gained momentum and made its way into our businesses. So, for this year’s Earth Day I spent some time looking around our technology office to see if I could spot any green at all. A week later, my list of the 3 R’s at Worthwhile looks like this:
Reduce
- Our water cooler is filtered (goodbye bottled water)
- We use several virtual machines in the office and most of our client’s hosting is virtual
- We have a very small overhead of printed material and only a few paper files — honestly! Our furniture consultants were amazed
- The heating/cooling thermostats have timers
- We have an employee who walks to work — thanks Matt!
- Client invoicing uses email — in fact, outgoing mail is rare and mostly consists of handwritten notes
- We rely on a data center to keep our servers in an efficient, sustained environment instead of repeating that process in our office
- Half of our employees use energy efficient laptops
- We have 3 printers — BUT, we shred, duplex, and print-on-demand
Reuse & Recycle
- We moved — brought our usable furniture with us and bought what matched it — instead of throwing everything out and starting over completely
- Parts and pieces of old equipment and servers are used and reused — and then sold or donated (this is true, you should see our storage closet!)
- We struggle with a good solution for our break room — convenience far outweighs green
- Paper shredding’s become packing material
- Our used print cartridges go back to the office supply store to be recycled
So, there it is. A short list to be sure, but it’s a start. These are easy practices, but I know there are areas for improvement. We’re careful about lights and most supplies and not buying a lot of equipment we won’t use for long. It’s made me curious, what does your business do to be green?
